Olena Kot from Mariupol
Join Us We Need Your Help
My son Valeriy is 17 years old and my younger daughter Milana is 1 year old. We lived like all other families, making plans, studying, and working. But the war came and destroyed everything. Then we no longer dreamed but learned to survive. The city lost water, electricity, gas, and cell phone service. There was nothing but bombing and devastation. It seemed to us that life was over. My son would get up at 5 am to gather firewood and make a fire to bring water from the spring so that when Milana woke up, there would be warm water and we could cook. We would find leftover food and make lunch from it. Milana was 4 months old at the time. When I think about it, I want to cry. My son had to grow up. We often lived in the corridor because of the constant air strikes. Fortunately, only our windows were blown out. The house was not destroyed. It was cold. We lived like that until March 16. Then my brother managed to get to us by car and we decided to leave the city. We decided to go toward the city of Berdiansk, we did not want to go toward russia. It took us 23 hours to drive the 20 kilometers to Berdiansk. There were a lot of cars. My daughter seemed to feel it, she was very quiet, did not cry, just looked around with frightened eyes and waited for something. We got to Berdiansk, where we were accommodated in a church, thanks to the people. We stayed there for 5 days. There we ate and bathed for the first time in all this time. The city was already under occupation, so we decided to move on. We were going to Dnipro, to the territory controlled by Ukraine. The worst thing was when we were driving from Berdiansk in a convoy with many cars with children in them, we were driving through a field because the bridges were blown up. Then they started bombing our cars. It was like a hare hunt. It was as if they were deliberately scaring us.
