Just on 23 February 2022, Sofiya Silyutina dreamed of her school graduation party in her beloved city. However, the next month in the besieged Mariupol was on the verge of life and death. It was the month that ruined those dreams, along with her home. Sofiya and her parents lost everything they had, but saved and retained the most valuable things – their lives, their memories and their faith in a bright and peaceful future.

This was hell. In a word, I could [call] it hell. That month, that was... I will never forget it. Absolute hell, just darkness. It was very scary. On 25 February, we were supposed to have a concert dedicated to the end of the 11th grade of school, and a rehearsal was scheduled on 24 February. Well, I woke up and got a message, “The war, the war has begun.” Then I went out [of my room] and my mum said, “Pack up your things.

The war has begun, so you are not going anywhere.” Pretty soon, there was almost nothing left in the shops, and then our power supply and telephone connection were cut off. It was on or around 2 March. Electricity, telephone connection, and water. We had no drinking water. Then we learned that people began to ransack all the shops. The first store was a large food market Metro. And when those shops were ransacked, people took meat and then handed it out near residential houses.

There were huge queues, very long ones. If you joined that queue at six o’clock, for example, you could get some meat at around ten o’clock, if you were lucky and if the shop had not run out of it.

On 5 March, a shell reached our place. It bounced off the house and did not explode. It lay in our yard, and as we were very frightened, we went to my grandmother who lived in a private house. We came to my grandmother on 5 March. My godfather came to my grandmother too. He is my grandmother’s son, well, my mother’s brother. He was with his wife and a one-year-old child. So we stayed there all together, as it was not so scary. Then, on 6, 7, 8, and 9 March, I think it lasted three or four days, there were very intense shelling attacks. It was very loud and very scary. That was really scary. Shells were landing very close and explosions were incessant. There was no proper cellar in our grandmother’s house. Well, there was some, but it was such a cellar that if something hit it, it would collapse and we would be buried under the rubble. I mean, it was not a reliable cellar at all.

So all of us, all eight people, stayed in a small corridor. We all slept there too. It was freezing cold. There was no heating and each of us had several sweaters on. That was really far from fun.

There was no tap water and then gas supply was switched off too. We began to cook food on a fire, and as for water, we either got it from melted snow or collected some rainwater. That was if we were lucky. When it got warmer, we went to... first to one private house, as there was a water well there, and after that private house with the well was hit by shelling, we went to a small spring. There were heavy shelling attacks there. It was dangerous to go to that spring.

Well, we went there sometimes when there was almost no water left. Well, we also used that melted water for cooking some soups. On 28 March, a shell hit a neighbouring house. We were all in different rooms because it was pretty quiet then. I was in the room alone and my phone battery still had some power left. We charged our phones from the car. There was one street nearby where we could still catch some telephone signal from time to time.  Sometimes we could go online and see what was happening in the world.

And just because we saw what happened to the columns of cars when they tried to leave [the city], because we saw that cars were seized and shot at, we were afraid to leave. Therefore, we stayed until the last moment, until our housing came under direct shellfire.

Basically, everything was falling down. The ceiling collapsed and the windows shattered. We heard such a loud rumble... At first, it was as if a plane was flying. Well, the sound of a plane seemed to be a usual thing. I heard the birds singing, I heard the plane. Well, just a plane was flying. And then it came. I was knocked senseless and could not hear anything. Everything began to collapse, to shake and shatter... When everything stopped falling, more or less, I was lying on the floor and started screaming

“Mum! Mummy!” But no one answered me and I went into hysterics. I started crying badly.

.I heard my grandmother and realized that she was alive. She came up to me. Then I heard my dad telling us all to remain lying where we were. “Stay down.” Then my dad came up, his hands were covered in blood. “What happened to my mum?” “Everything is fine with your mum.” I felt a slight relief, and then we all started packing up. Amidst that rubble and fragments, we loaded the car and wanted to leave, but it was quite dangerous to leave by one car. In fact, our car was almost intact. Well, just the ceiling was a bit dented, but compared to other cars that we saw in Mariupol, it was intact.

We have a big black car with tinted windows. There were cases that cars were seized, so we were afraid that they could take our car from us, and then we would be left with nothing at all. And before that, my parents… We were running out of food and so they walked about 10 kilometres from my grandmother’s house to our own house. On their way, they came under very heavy shelling more than once. When they reached home, they saw that the house was left without windows and doors. That is, the military were going there, as if to their own home. Well, there was basically nothing left of our flat.

So only the car remained. We were afraid of losing it, but we had to leave because we had nowhere to live at all.

Our relatives came to us and we agreed to leave Mariupol on 29 March. We spent the night in their big house and on 29 March, we left Mariupol. The trip from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia took us five days. Five days. Those were the most interesting five days that I ever had. We got to Tokmak almost without any incidents. At the Russian checkpoints, they checked us very thoroughly.

Men were even ordered to undress. However, when we reached Tokmak, they gave us some food and drinks there. Some kind of assistance was organized there. We were given some food and something to drink, as well as a place to stay for the night, and then we headed on. That was when the most interesting part began because they did not let us out from Tokmak

We tried to pass by some detour roads but we were caught there. They took our money from us. They took the SIM cards from our phones.

We reached Vyshneve, if I remember the name correctly, a village somewhere near Zaporizhzhia, but they did not let us out from it. We had to spend the night there. We stopped for the night in some school building. There was quite a lot of destruction in that village too. We spent the night at the school desks in the basement. There were about 100 people there, or even more. Someone was constantly yelling and it was very cold there.

Then, the next day, we stood and waited all day to be let out of that village. They did not want to let us through; they did not let us go. But then they said, “When the buses go, you will be allowed to leave. We will let you go together with those buses.” We said, “Okay, fine.” The buses came at about eight o’clock. It was already dark and the curfew started. We were released from the first checkpoint. We drove on and up to the second checkpoint. Some Red Cross representatives came up to us. They were ready to accompany us. We were told to turn off all the headlights.

There were some burnt tanks and some burnt cars all around the area. We approached the checkpoint and let all the buses pass first. We drove up to the checkpoint and they pointed a gun at us, “We will now shoot you all. Where are you rushing to?”

We started... We were in a convoy of cars. We started shouting, “There are children here! We have children here, don’t shoot!” Well, they ordered us to turn around. Luckily, no one was hurt. Well, they pointed weapons at us, but they did not let us back into that village. So we stayed on the highway and spent the night in our cars, keeping silent and not turning any lights on, keeping low profile. In the morning, we finally made it to Zaporizhzhia. We were very well received there.

They gave us some food and something to drink. We registered our new SIM cards. So we finally breathed a sigh of relief. I really want to go home. I really miss everything, everything that we had. I look at the photographs that were taken in the pre-war time Mariupol. I really want to go home. I miss all those walks with my friends. I really want to go to school, my school. I want my school graduation party. Well, the city is gone now. When we were leaving, we just saw all those destroyed buildings with our own eyes. Then, the photos of those destroyed city quarters were posted on the Internet... Well, we simply will not be able to ever go back there.

I lived there for 17 years and then we just had to leave forever... Well, we have been left without our housing, without our friends and acquaintances. Basically, we are left only with our memories. Ukraine will win. I am one hundred percent sure about that. We are stronger. We have a stronger spirit and everyone is on our side.