The news was dubious for us people from Mariupol; no one believed in what would happen. One night, from February 23 to February 24, I watched the shorts and saw Putin’s appeal on TikTok. At first, I thought the invasion was a joke and just laughed. But in less than a few hours, my mother woke me up with the words that the war had begun. I suggested my mom and grandmother leave the city, but they did not want to, since Mariupol is their hometown; therefore, we decided to stay. Coming onto the balcony, I heard explosions on the left side of our city. I could not believe what I just saw more than a nightmare. We decided to leave just in a second to add some gas and buy some supplies. Suddenly, we heard a few heavy knockings on our door. I was petrified because I could not believe what would happen if those were the Russian soldiers. Luckily, it was Grady, my sister’s boyfriend, who came to say farewell to her since he was leaving. They hugged and sobbed together, knowing it might be their last meet. As soon as Grady left, we quickly drove to the gas station and filled up with only 20 litres of gasoline, but that was enough for us. We made a turn near the shopping centre, closer to the left side of the city, and my mother asked me to throw out all unnecessary papers from the trunk, which I did. But when I returned to the car, I heard several explosions. It reminded me of my childhood when there was a shooting in my hometown of Donetsk in 2014. At this time, a tank of our Ukrainian military was passing by. Immediately, we headed toward the store to buy at least some food supplies. Then, when we went home, there were soldiers shooting again. It could not be described. It was as if you were driving in the car, and explosions were behind you. After we arrived home and began to prepare for war, Mom turned on the news. My sister and I were cooking, and we were shocked that the Russian military was coming to Kyiv. They came to us for a long time because everything has been mined since 2014. The first two days were horrifying. Our area was one of the most dangerous because it was the city’s edge, and the Russian military could come at any second. These days, there were sirens and curfews with lights out all over the city.

My First Time Facing Death:
Feb 26-28

February 26 was a terrible day because the shopping centre was blown up. It was the biggest explosion ever. After the explosion, we still went to the shopping centre to see if there were supplies left. But we saw a man standing in the middle of the road, an ordinary civilian, was all blood, most likely coming out of the shopping centre. He had a TV in his hands and was shouting bad things about Russia. My mom and I approached him and asked what happened. My mom, as a doctor, said that he was shell-shocked and wounded, and at that moment, we realized that it was better not to go to this centre because they stole there, things were not needed in the war, and they also fired at me. Then suddenly this man fell, and my mother said not to look at him. He most likely died. That was the first time I faced death. That night was calm. There were no explosions or lights from the bomb. In the late night, we were woken up by the Ukrainian soldiers because we were told that we were already surrounded by the Russian soldiers. Besides angry and hate, I felt deeply insecure. I did not know what consequences my family and I might face. We were not the first to encounter this. Despite this news, there were a couple of explosions during the night, and that was it. All this time, I kept in touch with friends and school. At that time, I was 15 years old, and I thought I would calmly finish school and study in another big city. But dreams are quickly shattered by war. On February 28, we were completely left without electricity, water, or heat. There was a minus and an apocalypse on the street. I could not describe those black nights without light in the cold, and death was hiding somewhere there, but we were still so optimistic that we would be alive. We also spent a lot of time in the corridor according to the “four walls rule,” although we lived on the 9th floor of the last, and if an airstrike had come, there would be no walls to save us. I have a girlfriend. To keep in touch with her, I wrote letters, as in the Middle Ages, to her since all the electricity had been cutting down. She lived next door on the 1st floor, so we went with her around the house to walk the dog. It was the only time I could go out to see her, breathe the fresh air, and enjoy the sunshine. Even though, in those moments, it was still scary.

I Got Hit 
Mar 4-8

On the night of March 4, heavy shellings shook our house. March 5, around 12 at night, we came to the 1st floor of my girlfriend’s house next door. We were not alone there; there were many neighbours, even my classmate. We tried to be positive, but we still listened to a man who had just come from downtown to describe how desperate things were. Suddenly, a rocket flew outside the window as soon as we lay on the bed. The sky all at once turned orange. Then we realized it was a bomb that had been dropped in a neighbouring yard. The air strike was so strong and terrible that we had to spend the whole night in the corridor on the cold floor, surrounded by candles. Waking up in the morning, I have never seen such a terrible picture. Horror! The concrete was on fire. Immediately I burst into tears because my classmate had lived there since he was alive. We had to continue to find my big family. Luckily, we found my grandmother in a one-room apartment. There were all my relatives, eight people, my family: grandmother, uncle, aunt, their children, a little boy, five years old and a girl, three years old. In the remaining three days, we cooked with fire and got water from the well. We listened to the news on the radio in the car, and we had to find the Ukrainian one since Russia cut our radio off and inserted their radios in. I will never forget that announcer who, in a cold tone, called all Ukrainians to surrender and described how the Ukrainian soldiers tortured the Russian soldiers, which distorted the facts. Later the day, when I was walking my dog with my sister, we saw a silhouette on the 14th floor of the house, which was completely burned down. Suddenly, I heard crying, and I heard my Grandma screaming! Then, I saw how the house burned down for the first time and remembered it for always having a drawing. I was also shell-shocked; it hit us under the window. It was painful and scary. I crawled out into the corridor and began to call my mother. I got dark and light in my eyes and squeaked in my ears. There were also air raids, so terrible that sitting in the corridor, the whole family warmed themselves on the candles that I made myself. In those moments, we counted the bombs and prayed that if they hit, then only so that we would die not under the rubble but quick death. The next until March 8, we got into a neighbouring house. 20 people died, and there were many. We called Mariupol the city of bones. On March 9, I discovered that I could get connected on the 12th floor of my grandmother’s apartment. I went up there and called my friend. But the connection was interrupted, and I heard the arrival of a fighter plane at that time. I could already distinguish between arrival and departure. Other discoveries I made, for example, light is always faster than sound when you look out the window at night and see flashes of calls. After the flashes, the sound of an explosion was heard.

The Last Days in My Home: 
Mar 9 - 10

The 12th floor was high, and because of this, I saw something in the sky flying to our apartment. I immediately returned to our apartment room with my mom because I knew the nightmare was coming. Just before my mom and I came back, two bombs hit our yard. We immediately hurried up to our house. It also turned out to be a kind of terrible picture because our apartment’s window was no longer protected by the glasses, and the door on the balcony was slanting as well. The entrance to our closet was bevelled from the explosion when we removed the furniture from my room because we knew the bombing was over. How would I understand that they would hit my room? I saw this large wholesale store outside the window; behind it, there were many holes from explosions, and there were mortars. As I kept observing, I saw a man standing there. I immediately realized that this was a Russian military man. They fired near the center. After they went to our area straight to us and we directly collected the necessary things. Unfortunately, I forgot the photos of all my relatives in my room. I regret it very much to this day. Before finally leaving my house, my mother took the icon in our corridor, kissed it and said: Protect my family and our house. When we got out, we saw a few Ukrainian soldiers who pursued us to leave because we would be dead if we did not. When we were about to get in the car, I heard and saw a man screaming from a neighbouring window that his friend’s leg had been torn off. The Ukrainian soldiers ran there. After that, we no longer went back to our apartment.

The Final Torture:
Mar 11-16

Today, the sixteenth, was the 21st day after the war. After escaping from our original apartment, I heard people say the bomb had been dropped on our apartment building several times. Now, the apartment no longer had 10, 11 and 12 floors. We now live in the basement of the city theatre. There were a lot of people who were like us: lost their homes, saw family or friends die, had nowhere to go, so they came to this theatre. We chatted about the apartment buildings while we were preparing food. I met a terribly injured woman looking for a relative in the basements who survived the airstrike. I got scared and went up to my mother, and we noticed that people began to come out of the basement with bags. We asked what happened? They said that the Russians had opened the corridor and we could leave. We immediately grabbed our bags and began to leave as well. We were extremely worried about the car because it was outside when the Russians were bombing the city. At the same time, our relatives told us that they did not want to leave, therefore we had to leave by ourselves. Luckily, the car worked, and we could drive. On the way out of this unsafe place, we saw our apartment after the bombings and my room. I could not stop crying and screaming. All of my things were in my apartment and my room! My childhood, the pictures with my family and friends, my happy nostalgia, and so on... I could not imagine how I would leave without those, but the truth was, I had to leave without them. Before we left the city, the Russians stopped all of the cars. While waiting, I saw those Russian soldiers. Those who killed my family and friends and could potentially kill me were pretending to be liberators when releasing us. The Russian soldiers were also filming videos. When it was our turn, they checked our passports, and we saw they were dividing all the cars into two columns, where there were men and no men in the car. We did not, so we drove faster than the ones that had men. While driving, we saw Chechen military soldiers cut the Ukrainian flag before us. This made me even more scared. Then we drove on, and the enemy soldiers recorded me as a child. We had my canvas for drawing in the car, which was pierced by a fragment from a bomb because it was lying in the car when there was shelling; we put those canvases on our car to let the soldiers know that we had kids on this car. We drove for a long time and went through terrible checkpoints. When we passed Pology - a city already under occupation, the military Russians and Chechens behaved very rudely, opened the doors of our trunk and forced my mother to get out of the car. My mom was crying. One of these military men asked: Why is she crying? My mom replied, “Because my home got bombed.” Finally, after this checkpoint, there was our military. After 21 days of the war and 6 hours in the car, we got to Zaporizhzhia. Already after we left, the Drama Theater and Azovstal were shelled. The blessing is all my friends and relatives are alive and safe. Even after a year of living in France and living in Canada, I won’t be able to forget it.