Petro Stasiuk is one of the Mariupol residents who stayed in the city during the siege of 2022. His wife was taken out by his son. Petro himself decided to stay at home so as not to leave his life’s possessions behind. “How can I leave my apartment? I’ve worked all my life, earned everything. It will be looted, bombed,” he says.

Petro was hiding first in the corridor, then in the basement of the apartment block. The first entrance of the building burned down and the walls collapsed. His paralysed neighbour Zina lived next door. Petro tried to evacuate her to a shelter. But just as he opened her door, a shell hit. “I started screaming: “Aaah!” – and the door was on me. It was good that it was Chinese – light, made of chipboard,” he recalls the explosion, which miraculously did not prove fatal.

It was cold in the basement where they lived, there was no electricity, water, doors or windows. They cooked on a fire in the yard. The local school was also under fire, with enemy vehicles there – armoured personnel carriers were firing, and fires broke out. He saw russian tanks hitting residential buildings on the neighbouring street.

When his daughter persuaded Petro to leave, he was still trying to get the apartment glassed up: “At least close it up a bit – how can I leave?” – he says. About 400 people had gathered for the evacuation bus, and it was a struggle to get inside. Someone in the crowd stole his belongings – a bag with food and a purse with money. All he had left was a backpack with crackers.

The man was taken for filtration. His damaged passport almost kept him in the city: “The passport is old, a page has come off. One of them said: “You’ll go back!”. But there was another one, a normal one. He returned the page and told me not to lose it.”