Ilona lived with her son and husband near the train station. They bought the house they had been saving for for several years in January 2022. During the full-scale invasion, 11 people were hiding there.

“On March 6, we moved to my sister’s house. There was stove heating and a well in the yard. We were constantly shelled. My husband and brother went to get water. Two men were killed at the well.

March 9 is the most terrible day. In the morning, my husband’s brother came running and said that a bomb had been dropped on our house. My father-in-law died on March 12. We buried him behind the fence. We also saw a man with a blue face lying near the supermarket for several days.

When we were walking near the clinic, I saw a house that had completely burned down for the first time. The town was empty. There was a mountain of corpses near the maternity hospital. The clinic was smashed. The shelling started. We ran away.

On March 20 in the morning my friend came running. She said my house was on fire. The flames were 6 meters high.

On March 22 at 6 am we left. Everyone had a bag in their hands. We saw burials on playgrounds. Blue and black corpses on the streets. That’s how we got to the checkpoint on the way out of Melekino.

We stayed in occupied Mariupol for almost a month,” said Ilona Koval, a resident of Mariupol.