«Explosion. I saw every cell of his face moving"

Olena and her parents' houses were located on Kuprina Street in Mariupol. It was the first line of defense. 

"On March 2, the electricity was cut off. There was no water and no communication. The worst thing was that my child did not know where I was and what happened to me. My daughter is abroad, she begged me and my parents to go abroad. I bought tickets for March 4. 

There were soldiers in my parents' house. We made them tea and coffee. 

There were big poplar trees near the house. The mines exploded above us. 

March 4. I remember the day when a missile hit the first entrance. We were collecting water. We heard a very strange sound, as if the air was moving. We stood under the wall. We stretched our bellies. My husband was at the end of the line. It hit the ground. Explosion. I saw every cell of his face moving. He was contused. He did not hear for some time. We went down to the basement. 

I worked as a junior nurse in the Regional Hospital, in the X-ray department. We took my parents and went down there. My father could hardly move, we barely got there. 

A lot of people were brought there. The admission department was covered in blood. My husband carried the corpses in bags. The morgue was overcrowded. Two rooms. Bloody stretchers. They carried people on the first floor, and then lifted them into the operating rooms, to the second floor. The whole hospital worked like a machine. People made bandages for the operating room. Doctors operated and slept in the same room. 

Food. The director of the hospital brought food from Metro and gave it to us. Biscuits saved us. There was a generator, so we had hot water and charged our phones. 

The Drama Theater was the evacuation gathering place, but we couldn't get there. 

For me, the cats were a tragedy. I could return only in 10 days. On March 17, I ran with my husband. My mother was praying. One cat ran away, and the other one died in a few days.  

I remember a fallen soldier, his call sign was Mukha, who told me about his son. His family had left.  

There were a lot of people in the hospital, standing on top of each other. There were hits in the hospital, in the admission department. We started thinking about how to leave. 

Russian stormtroopers came in: "We did not expect you to resist". Then the "DPR" soldiers came in. They were ragged, but with assault rifles. They were on every floor.

I went to the 8th floor to make a phone call. Our city was destroyed in squares, first of all, the State Emergency Service station. Cars with people were blown up, shot at, many municipal buses were burned. We saw it all", – Olena, a resident of Mariupol, told the Museum.