"When I write, it becomes much easier for me, I share my pain"

Nadiya Sukhorukova is a journalist from Mariupol. She wrote about everything that happened to her on those terrible days without water, electricity, heating and telephone connection, to the sounds of thundering shell explosions. Endless bombing attacks, an ice-cold basement, the fear of becoming maimed for life, the death of her cousin – Nadiya described all this in her war diary.

When shelling was really close, we hid in the hallway because the basement in our house, in my mother’s nine-storey building, was not available at first. We were told that it was not suitable for shelter, that it was impossible to be there. In the first days, they didn’t open it for us and so we stayed at home, observing the rule of two walls. Although I know that in case of a direct hit, these walls, basically, will not help us. But anyway, we felt calmer like that, as we did not hear the sounds so much.

To be honest, I was most scared when these sounds... When it seemed that something was flying right into the next flat. So we were staying in the hallway. It was very loud and we were very scared. But at the beginning, well, I don’t know how to explain it… At the beginning it seemed that all this would not last long, that everything would end tomorrow. We firmly believed in it. We were very afraid of the night-time in particular because at night, although the shelling continued all [day] long, but at night it was the worst of all. We stayed in the hallway all night long, until the morning.

And then we moved to our friends, to a private house. They had a basement there. Well, my brother’s children stayed in that basement and we stayed on the ground floor. And we did not feel so scared there because there were many people there. There were 28 or 29 people there, all staying together. Although during the shelling, during night shelling, when shellfire was heard from everywhere, I felt like they were shooting from every direction. It was from the sky, from the sea, and from land. I mean, MLRS and fire from sea ships – it was very scary too.

Everyone was petrified. For some reason we covered our heads with a pillow, although if an aerial bomb had fallen on our house, the pillows would obviously not have saved us. They would not have saved us ever. But we still covered our heads. Well, just once hearing the word “airplane”, when it was flying, we felt some horror, some kind of unearthly horror.

It was a nightmare. I recently heard an airplane flying here and got very scared. Well, I did not fall down to the floor and did not cover my head, but I thought, “Oh Lord, where does it come from? Why here? If there are airplanes here, something must have happened?” Well, that’s it. Just like that... So the airplanes were the worst thing. Air strikes were the worst thing because when it fell, when it dropped a bomb, it dropped... Well, it flew twice. An airplane flew around the area first and we waited: now it will drop its bomb. And it did. We thought, “Thank God it is not thrown upon us.” We breathed a sigh of relief but at the same time we understood that someone died because of this bomb.

The ground caved in, the walls shook and the house almost… Well, I mean, it was a real horror. Then it flew over the second time. It had two bombs under its wing, under the wings. And it has got two wings. It flew in again and dropped a bomb a second time. In the middle of March, on 14-15 March, they just flew in and out continuously. I mean, it felt like one after the other. It was just a hell of a nightmare. Well, we just could not do anything, neither sleep, nor sit, nor stand.

And that’s it. This will be the end. And you sit and think, “Lord, I hope it’ll happen soon.” Because it is very scary – to be sitting and waiting for it to happen. Roma, my cousin, came to visit us often in that house. Then we moved to a nine-storey building. When there was a direct hit in the house and he... To be honest, my mother and I thought that for some reason he had not come for quite a long time. For two or three days. When someone does not show up like that, we immediately start to worry.

We thought that we would go and visit him because he lived with his wife and little son not far. Their house was literally next but one from us. We wanted to visit them but we didn’t go because the bombing was very intense and we left on 16 March. We were already in Mangush when my son informed us, as my brother’s wife got through to him. She managed to leave with their son too. She said that Roma died. He was going to get some water for Sava, for his son, and he... a shell hit him. The shelling began when he was walking with some of his friends or neighbours. And one neighbour told him to get down. That neighbour fell to one side and Roma fell to another side but a shell hit Roma.

And as I understand he was simply torn apart because his body was not even shown to his wife Olya. She was told not to go there. His body was taken to the garage. In short, he remained there. Later, we got some information that he was buried. Allegedly, by “DPR” soldiers or the Russians. Someone of them buried him and did not even leave any sign, nothing. That’s the information we’ve got. His wife left. Their neighbours took her away. She left for Western Ukraine. Now she is there with the kid.

Olya still does not have the strength to tell him about it. That’s it. So we lost our Romochka [hypocoristic for Roman]. Well, poor man just went to get some water. I know, as we later talked to some people when we moved to the government-controlled territory. They told us that there were many people. A woman told us that near her house...

Thank God we know about Roma, but there are people who don’t even know about their relatives. So she told us that a man’s body, a young man’s body was lying near their house in Kalmiusskyi district for a very long time. They were waiting for someone to come and bury him. But nobody was coming. He had no ID, nothing. And she said that together with the neighbours, they buried him in a week. They just committed him to the ground. We don’t even know, it’s an anonymous grave, without any name plate. Apparently, he went to get some firewood because he had a backpack. There was a small hatchet in his backpack. So he was killed during the shelling. That is, there were a lot of such people.

I know about it. When I was leaving the city, I saw a man who was lying in the parking lot near Uspekh shopping mall, in the city centre, on Myru Avenue. His body was covered with something. He was lying there and no one knew that he was dead or maybe... Well, I don’t know. There were also many people who remained in their houses and were buried under rubble during the shelling. Some people burned down during the shelling or from a fire in their house.

In the morning, somebody suddenly started knocking on our entrance door and saying the family name. Well, saying something like, “Open the door” and pronouncing my brother’s family name. We opened the door and found out that our friends came for us in two cars, their own cars. I want to say just one thing. These cars were without windows. The cars also had some holes. They were pierced with shrapnel. I don’t know how much gasoline they had. There was very little of fuel but they hoped that they would still make it there. And there were 18 of us in those cars, in two cars. Two relatively small cars. They were not big. We squeezed ourselves in there together with our pets, together with everyone else, with my dog ​Denzhik. I don’t know how we fit in there. And the most interesting thing… When we were leaving, we did not take anything with us.

We don’t have any change of clothes. We were in those clothes we were wearing then... When they came for us, I was wearing a sports suit, a down jacket and I was with my hat on. Well, a hat was a very important item, in fact. I tended not to take my hat off. We had no water supply [for washing my head] and it’s clear that if I had taken off my hat, I would have looked awfully bad. And a hat... Basically, we were dressed in what we had. And what was also good... We stayed in the basement fully dressed, with our boots on, all those clothes on.

We didn’t take anything else but we also took some salo with us [cured slabs of fatback or pork belly]. Our neighbours treated us with some salo, which needed to be salted yet. For some reason we did not leave it behind. We took it with us. Our neighbour took some potatoes with him. I don’t know why we didn’t leave it. Probably because food was also the greatest value at that time. We got into this car and hit the road.

We were leaving very... Well, I did not care a damn. To be honest, I didn’t care at all what would happen to me and whether I would be killed during our departure. Since if we had not left then, I would have gone crazy there. We would not have survived there in any way. That’s the feeling. Every night we thought that it was our last night. Well, that night, the night of 15 March, the night from 15 to 16 March, was really terrible one, and we thought that the next night... That we all will just die. According to the theory of probability, our house, which was located in the middle, was encircled by other houses. And when they shelled, they chose some parts, some square-shaped areas. Some districts and houses. They just kept shooting, firing at these houses all the time. According to the probability theory, our house was next. We were going by car and I didn’t care at all. I was not even scared.

Because it felt like something was flying, something terrible. I don’t know what. Something special, like a projectile, or they fired from ships, or a bunch of air strikes. We departed amidst that dead silence and it was so creepy… And when we were on the way, we just, how should I put it… Grown up people were sitting behind me and just praying. What we saw during the departure is beyond any description. We felt like we were alone in this city, like there was no one else around, everyone died, everyone perished. You realize that some kind of catastrophe just happened, a terrible catastrophe. We were amidst that silence, in complete ruin.

There was a 15-storey building opposite to our house. We drove past it. It actually saved our house – a nine-story building. It “stood with its back” to the open area, so they shelled it. It looked like a cake from behind. In its lower section, some part was just missing, as if a piece of cake when it is cut out. And at first, when we drove up to it, it seemed from outside that only the windows were broken. Well, it looked kind of dead or abandoned. It looked terrible. Some dead human body was lying there. Some broken trolleybus wires were lying around, and there were flags on those wires.

They fell during the shellfire and they fell right on people. It was terrible. When on the road, we did not go in that direction because, as our driver Maksym explained to us, there were broken wires there. He was afraid that we would not make it to our destination. He turned again and we drove between the houses. And we saw all that horror between the houses. All the houses were burnt. They were charred. We did not see a single house left intact. We drove through – all the houses were charred, all the houses looked terrible. There seemed to be no people. But we knew that they were all in the basements. It was even worse.

We then drove up to the hospital and I saw for the first time what it turned into, what was left of the maternity hospital, what was left of that entire healthcare facility. It seemed to me that all hell broke loose there. That there was a terrible funnel there. That it was simply driven into the ground.

Well, I don’t know how to describe it… It was some real horror. We drove through and moved further along Nakhimov Avenue. When we reached Prymorskyi district, at that moment, on 16 March, that district was the calmest and the least affected one. Compared to Prymorskyi district, the central district seemed to be a real hell. And what struck me in that district... I saw a girl who just went out for a walk and she was just walking along the sidewalk with a dog. When I went out for a walk with Beidzh [dog’s name], I stood near the entrance holding the entrance door with my shoulder, and she tried to go out. She did not want to go out – I pushed her out. She ran out but could not find where to put her paw. She could not find a single spot where she could just sit down. She looked at me and ran back in. Her paws and her tail were trembling. I told her, “Walk out again”, as the dog needed to do at least something. That was creepy. While that girl was just walking outside easily with her dog. I then saw...

When we turned to Cheremushky, on Gagarina Street I think, there were very badly damaged houses there too. They looked terrible. We felt scared again. Well, to cut it short, we left. We managed to leave. We went straight to the Bilosarayska Spit because we needed to at least fix or cover the car windows. Our windows were open. We did not have any plastic film or anything else to cover them with.

We arrived there. We had an acquaintance there and so we came to their house and they told us that on that day, on 15 March, they heard very terrible sounds of shelling. So terrible that it was simply unbearable. It was outgoing shelling from here, from Bilosarayska Spit. Russian ships fired at the city. I had my phone with me and from time to time, we charged it from the generator. I used my phone like a flashlight and for making some notes, you know. Like a notebook.

I wrote down everything that happened there. I decided that I would write about this house in which we stayed. I called it Noah’s Ark. Although Natasha’s mother said, “But you’re writing a book, right?” “I am not writing a book. I am just making some notes.” “Please, call it, “Coming out of Hell” or something like that.” “No, I’ll call it Noah’s Ark.” Because I thought that we would find our rescue in it. First, I thought that the war would end soon. Like in two or three days. Then, in a week. Then I thought that it would end tomorrow but it actually got worse and worse.

Then, when we were leaving, we were told that we had to delete everything because there were some russists’ checkpoints on the way and we could have problems. I deleted everything. We had some videos too and I also deleted them. Then I found some video accidentally. It was not deleted, which was a big surprise for me. I thought that I had deleted everything. And another thing. When I arrived, when we arrived... We first came to the occupied territory, to the city of Melitopol. We came to a small village outside Melitopol. It was in the occupied territory, and I began to write there.

My first post was intended to inform everyone that I am alive. Well, just to share information in order to draw attention to the city where a lot of people remained, who suffered there and who had very bad times there. My first post was published on 18 March, two days after we left. We were in the occupied territory still, and suddenly this post went viral and people started to write and call me. And to be honest, I was a little scared because I was in the occupied territory. I was with the children, with my nephews, and I thought that if they figured me out, then not only me, but also my nephews would have problems.

I still remember it, no one forgot about it. I think, no one will forget it for quite a long time. I think that people will never forget it. I miss home. I imagine what is happening to Mariupol now. I don’t even want to imagine it. I sometimes watch everything that is shown. Everything that is posted from there. This is a real hell but I still want to go back to Mariupol. I understand that... that nothing has been left of the city at all. I think we will be back. We will restore everything. We will push out those orcs [derogatory name used to denote Russian invaders] and will live happily ever after.