“I prayed that if a shell hit my apartment, I would die immediately so that I wouldn’t have to suffer,” says Svitlana. She is a resident of Mariupol who survived the blockade of her hometown, the cold and fear under constant shelling. Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, she has stayed in Mariupol to take care of her mother who is bedridden. In March, when the city lost power, water and heat, Svitlana and her neighbors cooked over a fire. Finding dry firewood, as well as water and food, was not easy. They managed to get out of Mariupol by chance, a neighbor helped her and her mother to a safer place in his broken-down car. “We had zero chances, we were just lucky,” Svitlana recalls of the rescue.