Fear 24/7 — Memories of Mariupol residents about the war

Mariupol residents Alina and Liubov managed to evacuate from Mariupol in Donetsk region of Ukraine, which was surrounded by Russian troops. After all, until March 15, 2022, they both hid from Russian shelling in the Mariupol Drama Theater, which was hit by Russian planes that day. 

The women told Novyny.LIVE how it was.

"My grandfather died in the drama theater"

According to Alina, she stayed at the drama theater from March 1 to 15 with her mother, grandparents, and dog.

"There were a lot of people, mostly women, children and elderly. We were all hiding from the bombing. I don't know how many hundreds of people were there, but it was a lot. Definitely over three hundred people. We got up around 7 a.m. to line up for breakfast. It was just pasta and broth and drinking water," she recalled.

However, there was not enough food for so many people, so some people gave their portion to children and their friends.

"The whole two weeks were accompanied by constant shelling from Russia. Especially at night, from 3 to 5 in the morning. We hardly slept, and our dog would howl whenever he heard a helicopter over the theater. During the day, we tried to go outside at least a little bit, because spring was just beginning, and we wanted to breathe some fresh air," Alina said.

It was able to evacuate Mariupol on March 15, just hours before the Russian air force bombed the theater. The Russians granted a green corridor for civilian transport. But the girl's grandfather, with whom she hid from the shelling in the drama theater, categorically refused to leave the city with his family:

"He said he didn't want to. He was 84 years old, he said: "Where will I go with you? I want to stay in the city where I was born. A day later, on March 17, we learned of the tragedy. And if we had not dared to go, we would have died with him. Now I live with my parents and grandmother in Kyiv. Unfortunately, our house in Mariupol was completely bombed".

"Fear paralyzed me"

Liubov, another resident of Mariupol, admits to Novyny.LIVE that she didn't believe in the war until the last moment. Even on February 24, when loud explosions were heard outside the city. She says she thought it would be like in 2015, when the shooting would remain only on the outskirts and in a few days everything would be quiet.

"I don't even know anyone who left town on February 24. Everybody was waiting for it to end. And around March 3, we realized that it wasn't going to end. The city was surrounded, there was no communication, gas, electricity and water were gradually disappearing. My husband was in the Ukrainian army at that time, and I realized that it was very dangerous for us to be alone in the city with our daughter," the woman recalls.

The shelling went on around the clock, Liubov recalls. She and her daughter spent the night with friends who lived in the private housing area and went home in the morning.

"It was such fear, you can't imagine. It lived with me 24 hours a day. I wasn't even hungry because of the fear. And when shrapnel hit my neighbor's apartment and almost injured his small child, I decided to leave. It was closer to the 15th of March. We left just one day before the bombing of the drama theater, and I learned about the tragedy from the news when I was already in Ukraine".

Liubov has an apartment in Mariupol that survived the shelling. Her mother currently lives there:

"My mother says that if she leaves, we will lose our home. She still has great hope that we will return. I want to hope that, too. I still remember everything I experienced, down to the smallest detail. It's like it happened yesterday. But three years have passed".

According to Olena Shvydka, head of the I Am Mariupol IDP Support Center, there are currently more than 20,000 residents of Mariupol who live in Kyiv.

Earlier, we shared what Ukrainian defenders at the front dream about and what they want to do the first day after the victory. 

According to the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union, the number of war crimes committed by Russia in Ukraine is estimated at more than 160 thousand cases.