A Happy Story
My name is Kateryna or Kate in English. I am a mum and we are from Mariupol, the city in Ukraine that suffered immense destruction by Russia in 2022 and is currently occupied. Mariupol defended itself against the occupying aggression of Russia and won the fight in 2014 and we were sure that Mariupol would withstand now as well.
On the 24 February 2022, not considering the situation to be serious, we brought our young child to nursery and went to work. Literally within an hour, the air defence system sirens wailed and the nursery teacher called us to tell that all children from the nursery were being taken to the bomb shelter. Starting from that moment onwards our life turned upside down. Under the air raid sirens, I ran out of my office (which was right in the centre of Mariupol, near the Drama Theatre and the National Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU) and rushed to the nursery to collect my daughter and take her home. We ran home, gathered items and documents and rushed to our parents' private house in the suburbs which had a basement. We sought cover and protection there for seven days and somehow we survived. On 2 March, one week later, we lost energy and water supplies and had no means of communication; the worse was still to come. We had only small food rations and a water container to survive on and firewood to keep us warm. Not before long, the water ran out and we had to rely on melting snow, gathering rain water and water from the valley.
With every passing day, the explosions of artillery missiles were coming closer and closer to our home. From our window on the second floor of my father’s house, we could see high rise residential buildings in the centre of Mariupol being attacked and consumed by fire. My father and my husband would go down together to the valley to fetch water. The stories that they shared with us were truly horrifying. They witnessed a lot of dead bodies that had been shot near to the well.
On 6 March, the sounds of attack were deafening. A bombshell landed in our courtyard. Our car was badly damaged and half of our neighbour’s house was blown away but luckily we all somehow survived. We remained in the basement in fear of our lives.
On 15 March, we heard rumours that seemingly the Russian occupying soldiers were allowing civilians out of Mariupol city. Collecting the bare necessities, we got in our car that had no glass in the windows and no windscreen. The weather conditions in Mariupol at that time of the year were below 0 degrees Celsius.
Leaving Mariupol City, travelling in the direction of Berdyansk City, we passed through 15 checkpoints of the Russian occupying army. During 8 hours of car travel, we managed to cover only 70 km (43miles). At each checkpoint, the men wore masks and had machine guns and would demand to check our documents.
Reaching Dmytrivka village in the Berdyansk region, we were not allowed to go to the checkpoint because of the imposed curfew and had to turn and go to a nearby village. Luckily, there was a school in the village where they housed fleeing Mariupol residents. We were persuaded to stay there for protection. We agreed because there were freezing temperatures outside and our car had no glass; it was impossible to go further with a young child. Despite all of this we remained hopeful that the invasion would end soon and Mariupol would come back to Ukraine.
An entire month passed and we finally had the courage to leave the village and continue our escape through the only remaining safe corridor via Crimea.
Upon approaching the Border crossing, we had to wait in a long line and then we were all interrogated for 24 hours including my four year old daughter. We were finally released. In a few days, we managed to reach the border with Estonia. From there we continued to travel through Europe to be reunited with friends in Edinburgh.
I believe that my story is a happy story, we escaped, we survived. praise the Lord for that. None of my loved ones died. But I know dozens of the tragic stories of my friends and relatives. We believe in our victory! Glory to Ukraine!