24 February

How could I forget a day like this. I was online in the morning and… Somehow, right up until the last moment I couldn’t believe that the Russians would do such a thing, that they would start bombing the whole country. I was even reassured by a somewhat cynical comment from old friends in Russia: ‘Why are you upset, nobody’s going to attack you.’ There is anguish in my soul. I know I’m still quite sick from Covid. Terrible timing.

26 February

I feel bad. I went to the pharmacy, but they were already closed, and many other shops and businesses were closed too. You look through the windows, and the shops are empty. I managed to get antibiotics from a nurse I know. There are soldiers nearby, in what used to be a boarding school. And of course there’s going to be fighting. I can’t stay here. There was a hit from a Grad rocket launcher very close to where I’m staying. I’m looking at options for moving to the city centre.

On the Left Bank there’s a crowd of people lined up along the road with suitcases and belongings, and no means of transport. They’re poor people. We went to the place that was shelled yesterday, it was horrible.

A girl I know rents an apartment right opposite the Philharmonic Hall. She agreed with the landlady that I can stay there.

27 February

A missile hit our building on the Left Bank; it was all over the news. By the end of the day, I found out that the other side of the building had been damaged, not the part with my flat. I very much hope that my flat will serve as a refuge for someone. I left the keys in the corridor, and told my friend from the seventh floor about it. There’s water and some food in the apartment.

Here we sit in the basement during the air raids. It’s a good basement, and the people are good too. They say there was a scandal about opening it. The president of the local housing co-operative refused, saying that there are meters and communication equipment down here. What’s the good of all that during a war, when people have to hide?

1 March

There’s no light. No internet either; I’m saving my battery. There’s a power bank, a headlamp for the basement – that’s my prize possession. We’re freezing. But there’s gas, we pray that continues. Bricks have already been brought to the basement to build a hearth. There’s virtually no information. The fighting is mostly on the Left Bank, but it’s getting closer to the centre too.

2 March

We heard a report that Mariupol is surrounded. We hope this is enemy disinformation.

I managed to get some connection. Cheery promises from the city mayor pop up on my smartphone about both light and communications. My son writes from Zaporizhzhia that a humanitarian corridor is being prepared so people can leave. But we feel like everyone has forgotten us.

3 March

No communications, no light. We went to the bomb shelter; it’s deep, cold, and damp, a total labyrinth. It was terrible to be there. And the candlelight dazzled the eyes of the small children. At that moment I felt for the first time that this is real, and I would be willing to kill.

We decided to go to our own basement, though it’s less safe because it’s not as deep. We were pleased to find that the people who go there are good, they support Ukraine. Most of them aren’t from this building.

There’s a family from the Left Bank here. They have children and they definitely want to leave. There are many private cars in the courtyard, all with ‘children’ written on them.

4 March

We’re alive. There’s gas, which is very important.

I’ve been coughing a lot since morning. It’s good that I was able to buy antibiotics and consult a doctor over the phone. I’m feeling more confident.

During the day, people poured out onto the street. Human contact is essential.

People are amazing, and responsive. We managed to get shoes for the daughter of our friends from Sartana. We just knocked on the door of a flat on the first floor where they have children, and asked them.

People go to the wholesale market where there are potatoes and other groceries. We don’t have much stockpiled. We made candles by melting paraffin and pouring it into chunks of plastic pipe that we found in the basement.

5 March

There’s gas. In the evening I put my pyjamas on under my clothes, and take them off in the morning. It disciplines you, the cold. I’m grateful for blankets. I’m still doing my exercises in the morning.

I’m not going to write about the shelling. It’s so terrible that one has to ask, does a person have the right to live on earth if they do this.

It looks like they’ve announced an evacuation. Or so someone says. The pick-up point is near the drama theatre. We handed around water and food, and headed there. I had a rucksack and a wheelie bag. And it wasn’t a long walk. That’s when I realised I’m completely out of shape. A lot of people had gathered, and there were many private cars. We waited for a long time. There was no evacuation, and I barely made it back.

I can’t afford to get sick. That was bad. I hung my damp clothes up in front of the gas fire to dry, changed clothes, and gradually started to come back to life. There was shelling all night. A Ukrainian mortar landed near our courtyard. We were afraid of return fire. I have palpitations and I feel weak.

6 March

There was supposed to be another evacuation in the morning. I realised I was in no state to walk. I decided to talk to the family from Sartana. They said that if there’s a green corridor, they might take me.

There was no evacuation, again. Now we’re resting our hopes on a family from the Left Bank – Zheka and Tatyana, and their two sons, Svyatoslav and Arseniy, and another family with a child. They keep going out to try to get information about the evacuation.

7 March

Well, our last comfort is gone. They turned off the gas this evening. The building is very cold. Now that the gas has been turned off, our next prayer is for the glass not to be blown out of the windows. Then we’ll freeze. Oh well, there’s the dream of a green corridor.

We need to come up with some kind of outdoor stoves for cooking.

The family from Sartana with the three daughters has moved to the basement. Zheka and Tatyana and their kids have too. In the evening we played a word-association game. The longest list was for Putin. It’s endless – I didn’t know there were so many bad words in the world.

People have set up campfires. Sun, snow, barbecue – it’s a positive holiday. That is what’s absurd. No evacuation, again.

I’ve begun to go to bed at eight, when it gets dark.

8 March

There’s snow and frost on the street. People collect snow in all the containers they have, because it’s water. Yesterday evening, a few times people just approached each other and hugged: Andrey, Zheka, Sasha. And I just want to say kind words to everyone. People are amazing. All day until curfew, I either walk around the building or cook food. Well, and take regular dashes to the basement under shelling. I only go home to eat or sit down for a while. It’s cold. People walk around the courtyard begging for food and other items. I gave away a big pillow. I think the owners will forgive me. I found myself a warm jacket and trousers in the flat, and that warmed me up a lot. Once again I’m thankful to this building.

People are reacting in different ways. Some are panicking – “We’re all going to die”. Some remember the Euromaidan protests negatively, and say it all started with that. Many people are turning to victim-blaming.

9 March

The 14th day of the war. Yesterday they cordoned off part of the basement in case the windows get smashed in. It’s supposed to be minus seven tonight; how are we going to survive that? It was sunny today. There were airstrikes. It’s very scary. The external window in the kitchen of our flat was blown out, which made it even colder. Dear home, how it protects us. I’m thankful that we’re not on the street yet. A lad from a neighbouring courtyard sorted us out with duct tape and we sealed the windows where we could, and put books against them.

10 March

We spent the night in the basement. We took a mattress down there. It was almost impossible to sleep. Snoring. There were three other families down there apart from us. Sveta and Sasha and their three daughters, their parents, all from Sartana; Zheka and Tanya and their two sons from the Left Bank; another young couple with their boy who has autism. Zheka has taken them under his wing. Last night his wife’s son, Arseniy, drew portraits of everyone in the basement who asked him to. They’re excellent. It’s good that there’s a lamp in the basement, charged from a car battery, so that the kids can draw.There has been heavy shelling for three nights. We are on the second level of the deep basement. People who stayed in their own flats have come down to wait on the first level. I listened to what they were saying. They just soothe their children and say things like: “Here comes a plane! There it goes.”

11 March

Some more neighbours, a family with two sons, have joined us in the basement. Garik, the new neighbour, snored terribly all night, right by my hip. I managed to sleep a little anyway. In this situation everyone has to act like one big family – what else is there to do? Zheka, “the leader,” as the girl who I left the Left Bank with, Yuliya, calls him, is still looking after a family with a sick child. It seems like they’re all related, but like I said, they’ve only known that family for a few days. Then at night Zheka is on duty in the basement again.

Everyone lives amicably in the basement. In the evenings, they distract and entertain the children as much as possible.

People have been going to the centre – there’s a lot of destruction, and dead people are just lying there on the street.

Could this all be a dream? How could such a thing happen? Now the main topic of conversation is “if only we survive”. One careless word and there’s an argument. People’s nerves are on edge.

12 March

I slept poorly, but it wasn’t very cold. I was wearing five pairs of trousers and five sweaters, with three blankets. Planes flew overhead. People, especially the family from Sartana, fear the planes most of all. The older daughter, who is 16, talked so seriously and in such detail about how the planes dropped bombs… Like an expert. People react more calmly to mortars, even Grad missiles, because they know roughly how far away they are; all day they scurry around with pans and firewood under the thudding of gunfire. But when it’s a plane – everyone runs and hides with terrible speed.

Today Polina turned 16. We hung up a garland in the basement, and there were a lot of congratulations and presents. I gave her a pack of cookies with an inscription. The family had a small feast, though I know everyone is trying to save food. Zheka regularly invites people to tea anyway. That’s normal. Zheka still goes out every day to try to leave; he loads two families and their belongings into his car and goes to ask about the evacuation corridor. People don’t take his place. As things are, he returns every day.

13 March

It was minus five in the morning, but very sunny. A lot of Hitlers, as I call them, flying around again. People stay at the campfires from morning, and everyone’s talking about food. Nobody knows what’s going to happen, whether there will be humanitarian aid or a corridor. Earlier people drove their cars to the wholesale market, but now they’re afraid. And they’re afraid of losing their cars, because soldiers might take them – such are the times. Yesterday someone said that a truck full of potatoes drove up to the wholesale market, and it was hit by a Grad missile. Picture it: a smashed car, dead people, potatoes strewn around the street. But people got up after the shelling, collected the potatoes and put them in their pockets… I think how many big stores have been looted – if you divided the stuff amongst everyone, it would be possible to make supplies last somehow. They say that the entire city administration has run away, just when we needed help to organise the preservation and distribution of food.

Today, during the shelling, the glass blew out of the windows in the next-door building, up to the fourth floor. Andrey, a lad from the next-door building, got a shard of glass in his leg, and pulled it out himself. Trouble is getting close, and people come from other streets and buildings. They tell of horrors; the city is simply being wiped out.* 

*In military jargon, “зачистка”/zachistka has a double meaning of general brutal destruction by the occupying army, or door-to-door checks by soldiers.

There was an argument with the local housing co-operative. People decided to light a campfire closer to the building as the air raids have become more frequent, and it’s a long way to run to the shelters. The co-operative refused permission, as there’s beautiful tiles there. Just imagine. At times like these, everyone shows their true face. Everyone is stressed to the limit.

Another plane. And everyone heads amicably, swiftly, to the basement.

14 March

The fighting gets ever closer. My neighbour in the basement, Zheka, wants to try to leave again. I think it’s the fifth time. Again they loaded their things into the car, took the couple with the autistic boy, told people not to take their place in the basement until the evening, and left. The day before they had been waiting for a long time to get through on the phone to people who’d already left. Some people managed it. Even some of our people. Sasha from Sartana, who promised to take me, said he will only go if the green corridor is confirmed. I did my morning exercises and made oatmeal porridge. This is my strategy, to retain some key moments from my previous peaceful life. I’ve stopped putting on my pyjamas, because it’s too cold.

The thing is that the oatmeal porridge is running out. That means we have to go. There was frost, but it was a sunny day. Everyone is scurrying around to collect water. It looks like a few cars have made it to Zaporizhzhia.

When I cook food on the fire at the end of the entrance archway, I hear people talking about how the people bombing and attacking the city aren’t to blame, but the defenders in the city. Clearly everyone wants to live and wants the war to end. The city’s under attack, so people are defending it. If they don’t defend it, that means we’ll give everything away piece by piece. And the pieces will be endless. It will end up being all of Ukraine.

Here in the yard, on Metallurgy Street, there are a lot of dogs and puppies. The most amusing ones belong to the woman who runs the housing co-operative. They’re an interesting breed, who roll rather than run, and probably have eyes somewhere, deep in their fur. There’s also a dalmation dog who belongs to a man who moved here*. She always rushes energetically out into the yard, goes in circles and talks about something – like so: half-grunting, half-squealing, half-barking. It does us good to see her. She loves being stroked, and always responds with some noise. And dogs who recently belonged to someone often come into the yard, too. What became of their owners? One can only guess.

* After his home elsewhere in Mariupol was destroyed.

15 March

I’ve eaten all the homemade oatmeal. And it turned out we had to leave. That’s how it goes.

Everyone who gathered was jumpy. We took what few things we could*.We went up to the fourth floor of the neighbouring building, where there is a weak internet connection. There I found out that Zheka had called my son on the road. It was hard to get there, under shelling, but they’d made it to Zaporizhzhia. There are a lot of roadblocks, and it’s especially dangerous on the way into Vasylivka, where cars have to wait for a long time.

* Cars fleeing Mariupol were often packed far over capacity with people, as they were desperate to leave.