Yesterday we left Mariupol under shelling at our own risk. We spent the night in the field, in the “grey zone”. We did not make it before curfew. It was frosty outside, but thank God, we are alive. We are alive in order to cry out that everyone who stayed behind in Mariupol needs help. This is not a hero city; this is a city of fear, death and horror!!!

We did not have a humanitarian convoy and no one was taking us out. There are no municipal authorities in the city. We ran after cars under shellfire. We made up some groups or convoys and placed “Children” signs on our cars.

There is no telephone communication, no water and gas supply, and no ambulances in the city. There are people with severed limbs bleeding in the yards, and there is no one to help them. These are civilian people, our and other people’s friends and relatives. The dead are buried just where they are, and then their relatives cannot find them. Most often, this happens while people are searching for water, in queues near spring-wells or street water pumps or while cooking soup on a fire.

Yes, we collected snow, melted it on a fire and cooked some pasta. My family was in the bomb shelter of Gymnasium No. 2. Three days ago the building was hit by a shell and some of the windows were blown out. One woman was wounded in the thigh by shrapnel. She lay on the ground floor of the gymnasium all night and begged to give her some poison not to feel that pain. There was no one to take her to the hospital.

Every day and every night there are shelling attacks, whistles, shaking walls and horror – where will it [a shell] land?

Part of the still-standing Third Municipal Hospital is working heroically – they perform operations, they save people. This woman was taken away by the Red Cross a day later. God willing, everything will be fine with her.

My mother Angela and my three brothers Roman (16 years old), Vasya (11 years old) and Vladyslav (9 years old) stayed in the city centre, in a house on the fifth floor. My mother-in-law Lyubov and father-in-law Anatoliy are on the ninth floor, opposite Mariupol State University, where buildings are all cut with shell fragments up to the ninth floor.

There are almost no bomb shelters in the city; there are not enough of them. There are no bunkers with air ventilation. At best, there are some basement floors, but there is none in my mother’s house.

People need to be taken out, women, children and elderly people. Give them buses, “green corridor”, make some agreement!!! I pray for my loved ones, for every resident of Mariupol and every Ukrainian soldier. The enemy came to us and left us no choice, but there is nothing more valuable than human life. This must end!!!

The dead are not taken out. The police recommend the relatives of those who died of natural causes to open the door and put the dead bodies on the balcony, and then take them to the church house.

I know that you think you understand it, but you will never understand if you have not been there. Now I hear the sound of a siren, and I am not afraid, because there was no electricity in Mariupol for 16 days. And when the planes dropped their bombs on us, we could not even know about it. I am begging everyone to stop this!!!

I don’t know what will happen next, but I pray for this not to happen again in any of Ukrainian cities and anywhere in the world, and not to happen to any family and mother. To a girl who gave birth to a child in a hospital where a shell landed. To a pregnant woman who died in the same hospital, who could not give birth to a new life. To a mother shaking with fear, covering her son in the hallway of each building to the sound of rattling windows, shaking walls and a flying shell. To an old man left without any chance of survival. To wounded civilians dying during street fighting.

This 21st day has changed everyone. Everything has changed. So many things do not matter now and are worth nothing. If only everyone who remained in the hell of Mariupol city would not be trembling with fear and horror.

I pray for the people of Mariupol.