"Everyone knew that there were children in the drama theatre. It’s a miracle that we managed to remain alive there"

Viktoriya hid the children first in her bathroom, then in her friend’s flat, in a “safe city district”, and then in the drama theatre building. There were no more places left in the bomb shelter when she came there with her daughter and son. The family was sheltered on the first floor of the building. They survived a hideous explosion in one of the largest bomb shelters in Mariupol.

I learned about the outbreak of the war from my neighbour. I was at home. The kids and I woke up at 7 o’clock, and I called our neighbour for a certain personal reason. She asked, “What are you doing?” I said, “We’re getting ready to go to the kindergarten” – “Don’t you know that the war has started?” – “No” – “If you have the opportunity, go and buy some food that you can bring with you, to feed the children, at least for some time. So that you could have something in stock.”

I put the children back into their beds, went out myself, and closer to 9 o’clock I heard something exploding near our house. I called my friend and she said, “Take the children and come to me, as I have a bomb shelter set up in my house.”

When the first explosions occurred, they were hiding there – I have a six-year-old boy and a two-year-old girl. They were scared. The younger one did not understand it, and the older one more or less understood that there was a war going on, that there were explosions, and that they had to hide. Even when I hid them under the bathtub, I had no room there left for me, and he said, “Mummy, why aren’t you hiding? Something could happen to you.” That is, he understood then that something terrible could happen.

On that day, we went to my friend’s place and stayed there until 5 March. It was more or less good there. Yes, we heard some explosions, there were air raid warning alarms, and we had to hide them in the bathroom or in the corridor between the flats. We arranged one room accordingly and were able to [hide] there. For several days and nights, we slept in the bathroom together with the children. And it was a constant scurry.

On 5 March, we went outside with the children in order to stand near the yard and at least breathe some fresh air, and she [my friend] managed to get through to her husband.

We talked to our neighbour and he agreed to take us there. So we went there and stayed for two hours outside there. It was very cold. The military came and said that there would be no evacuation and that it had not been planned. My friend and I decided to go to the drama theatre in order to stay there at least for some time, at least for the children to warm up, because it was very cold outside.

We approached the drama theatre. There was a stage actor Damir and a manager Zhenya. At that time, the basement was already full. There were people who were brought there for shelter. Zhenya helped them settle in and kept an eye on the drama theatre itself. We asked to give us a shelter [in the basement]. She said, “I don’t have room left in the basement anymore. Where will I accommodate you?” – “At least for some time. We will now try to find us a car in order to return home” – “I can only accommodate you in the corridor with the columns and solid cast-in-place walls, only there.” We stayed where she took us, and closer to the evening (it was dinner time) the military brought some people who were the evacuees. They tried to [leave] from the left-bank part, from Cheriomushki micro-district.

They gathered everyone and unlocked the drama theatre. People were now accommodated inside it. At that time, we were not on the ground floor, but on the first floor. Some guy just helped us there. My child had pneumonia because we slept on the floor. The elder kid got sick, and she [the daughter] got pneumonia. And on that day he asked to unlock a room for us. We were given access to the spotlight room, and so my friend and I settled there. A few days later, my friend’s mother came and took her daughter, and the three of us and my friend stayed there. That explosion happened some four days later.

I would not say they shelled the area heavily or anything else happened. It was quiet until it [the bomb] hit.

My son was on the ground floor. I persuaded him to go up to the first floor to give him something to eat.  I took my two kids and another boy, their friend, who came up to us. He said, “Can I stay with you for some time?” When we came in, the boys were standing and the girl sat on the bed by the wall, while I went up to the table. We had a table, and the wall in the room was adjacent to the stage, where Tochka-U rocket hit directly. There was an explosion. I was thrown into the opposite wall, my face was smashed, my back was injured, and the girl was covered. There were some folded blankets there. I folded and put them there, as I wanted to leave the room neat and tidy if we leave. I piled up the blankets and the pillows, and she was covered with this pile. She fell on the blankets face down and was covered on top, towards me. When I realized that it was an explosion, I was scared not to hear her, while the boys were screaming, both boys were screaming, Nazarchik and my Artem.

When I realized that I needed to take them out, when I picked up the girl, for the first few seconds she did not cry or scream. My first thought was that maybe she was dead, and I would only have to take the boys out. But I told myself that I had to get her, I had to take her out, maybe even without arms, even without legs, even if she was wounded. I thought I would not leave until she was with me.

And she started screaming, “Mummy!” At that moment, I realized that she was alive. I began to grope for her, apparently I grabbed her by her jacket, because the first thing I saw was her face. I probably pulled her by the collar.

The smoke began to dissipate. It was very difficult to breathe. I would say it was impossible at all. You are trying to take a breath and all this dust gets into your mouth. It was not possible to inhale. When I got her out, I examined her: her arms and legs seemed to be intact, so we had to run. There was a bag with our documents, everything remained there, as I took the girl in my arms, and the boys kept trying to get away.

I did not close the door because I knew that if it was blocked, we just would not be able to come out. The children saw the light – we had panoramic windows on the first floor, and we saw the light. All the time, they wanted to rush there and I stopped them while trying to see and check my daughter’s second arm. When I got her out, I took the boys and helped them to go down.

Panic, there was a very big panic… I tried to hold myself together, because I understood that no one except me would help them [the kids], they would stay there. And when I came out, people were mad. I went down to the ground floor. There were some elderly woman and man, not known to us at all. My child just called them grandma and grandpa. I left the children with them and decided to go up to the first floor again at least to get the documents, because I understood that if I was going to evacuate the children, I would not be able to do that without the documents. So I went up to the first floor, took the documents and went down. 

My friend and I decided to leave the place because we knew that the incoming artillery shelling would continue and we needed to go to a place where it was safe. She said, “Let’s go to my mother, to Novoselivka.” It is at a 30-minute walking distance, but we were running non-stop. My son was crying because he was tired. I said, “We cannot stop.”

That is, he saw some dead bodies, arms and legs; he saw that our central market Zastava was on fire. Everything was on fire, dead bodies were lying here and there; some people were probably thrown by the blast wave. When we fled to Novoselivka, we were provided with an accommodation there in a local school. This school was already under the control of, and basically, the whole area was under the control of the Russian military.

We left… The mother of one of the children, who was there in the school building, came. She wanted to pick up her son and take him away. We asked her to take us in her car. The grandma and grandpa said, “We will go on foot, take only them, please, because she has two kids with her and they will not make it to Mariupol on foot in order to go further to Staryi Krym.” (We had a point where people were then evacuated.) And she said, “She will not make it, even if she carries one kid in her arms. Okay, I will take you with me.” Three hours later, she came for her son, and she took us out of there by car.

But she warned us right away that it would not be easy – they [the occupiers or the soldiers from the so-called DPR] can pick on you, check the documents. Do not say anything, it is better to be silent at all, so that the children do not say anything, because the kids [may ask] who it is, and ask if these are our army [soldiers] or not our.

We understood that they should just keep quiet, and we would drive through smoothly. But there was a case when they picked on me. The girl started crying. And there was a checkpoint every 50 metres when you leave Mariupol. My daughter cried and my son was silent. He [the occupier] came in and said

He asked, “Do you have the documents for the child?” Because he said that the girl did not look like me. According to him, the boy looked like me, but the girl did not. I said, “Of course I have” – “Show them to me.” I took out the documents and showed that this was my child.

Now I was not so happy that we left. Far not as happy as when I learned that they [the kids] were all alive. Because we watched the news recently, where it was reported that a mother died, just burned to death together with a two-year-old child, and only a girl survived. It was probably just a gift from God that we remained alive, because it happened so just by chance that another boy, whose parents were on stage at that time, was with us.

I do not know whether his parents survived or not, but I am thankful to God that Nazarchik came to us and remained alive. He could go to his parents and be near that place where the explosion happened, as the children were active at that time, they were already used to that situation. They began to socialize, play and run everywhere, at that time they all knew each other.

There was a field kitchen. People came out of the drama theatre, so they [the occupiers] did not just see them; everyone knew that there were people there. And some people even asked the [Ukrainian] military, “Do they know that there are people here?” – “Yes, but they can still attack the place. Let’s hope they don’t.”

One night four [UAF] soldiers stayed in for our safety because there was incoming shellfire near the drama theatre during the day. They would come in the morning and say whether there would be a “green corridor” or not. It was maybe just a half-an-hour visit, and they would leave immediately. Otherwise, there were never any police officers, nor the military.

I have nowhere to return, because there is no Mariupol left any more. It has been destroyed by bombing.

What has not been bombed by shells, has just burned. My brothers stayed there, and my grandma too. I do not know what has happened to them. I hope, and will hope to the last moment, that they are still alive and that they managed to leave by some miracle. There is simply nowhere to return.

If Mariupol remains a Ukrainian city, then, I think, thanks to our president, it will be rebuilt, and there will be a place to return to. We have a flat and a house left there. The Russian military bombed the drama theatre, and the Ukrainian, our military, Azov Regiment, when they learned that there were children and adults in the drama theatre, they brought their food to us – they helped as best as they could. They protected us.

In order for the war to end as soon as possible, I would probably just bow down to the feet of the first soldier I meet as a sign of gratitude for the fact that we remained alive, for the fact that the war has not come here.