20-year-old Valeriia from Mariupol planned to go to work on February 24, then to the gym, and then to meet a friend. But the war changed everything.

"This day started off not seriously for me, and for about a week I didn’t perceive it as something very big." People from Mariupol started hearing explosions sometime in 2014, and the outskirts of our city were affected. For some reason, I had an association that maybe something would happen somewhere again, but it wouldn’t affect us. And in general, it will not affect Ukraine."

The girl realized on March 9 that all this was serious. "Up until this point, we were in an apartment. Since there was no electricity, no gas, no water, we went outside and cooked food on barbecues. Periodically, we hid in the vestibule when it was very loud. On March 9, dad started lighting the barbecue to cook us food, and we heard some kind of whistling, some very strange sound, and at that moment we just fell to the ground - I didn’t have time to figure out what was happening yet. And the second wave - I fall to the ground again, I look at my mom, I look at my dad - they are also on the ground.

I don’t understand what happened, we only hear people screaming, people crying, people shouting the names of their loved ones. This was the first air arrival in our area. From that moment on, we started living in the basement, it was impossible to be in the apartment, because from that day on, constant flights to the centre began...