Yuliia Shandro, who now works as an educator at the YaMariupol support centre for IDPs from occupied Mariupol in Lviv, met the full-scale invasion in her hometown. Her husband, who had no military experience, voluntarily went to defend Mariupol. Yuliia stayed at home with her child and her husband’s parents.

On the third day of the war, the family moved to the basement. On March 5, they celebrated the child’s birthday there. They were waiting for the father, but he could only drop by the next day. That was the last time Yuliia’s husband saw his mother.

Soon after, a fire started in the house (a shell fragment flew in). Neighbours reported the danger because the family was in the basement. There was nothing to extinguish the fire. 

“The snow that fell on March 8 saved us from the thirst: we collected it from the roof, we had melt water,” Yuliia recalls. She did not let anyone go to the well because people were dying there under russian shelling. “I was very afraid of losing someone. I said no! We have enough water, we will save it,” says Yuliia.

But this did not save Yuliia’s mother-in-law, Halyna Shandro. The woman was killed near her home when she and her father-in-law were helping to put out a fire in a neighbour’s house. Many people died that day under heavy shelling. A large mine killed her mother-in-law and wounded her father-in-law. Around the same time, the neighbour’s wife died. The men buried both their wives in their yards under the ongoing shelling.

The family did not leave for a long time, hoping for some information about her husband. When they managed to contact him, it turned out that he was at Azovstal. He said: “Don’t wait for me. I don’t know: whether I will come out or not...” Yuliia recalls. Then the family decided to leave. “We waited for a long time for the “green” corridor. They left in their car, where they spent three days in the queue for filtration.  They were lucky: a woman with a child and an elderly father-in-law were let through quite quickly. They got to Lviv through... occupied Crimea.

Yuliia’s husband was exchanged 20 months later. Now they take part in all the activities in support of the prisoners together: “There are many more guys in captivity. We need to get them all out, because captivity is a horror,” Yuliia adds.

The woman sees the end of the war as follows: “When my native Crimea returns home, so that I can go there safely”.