Yuliya Khasanova from Mariupol
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Good afternoon, I am Yulia and our family is from the city of Mariupol. Now we live in the city of Vinnytsia. The day the war came to our city, it was a horror. Russian troops were destroying everything – people, stores, electricity grid, and heating, so people would die. Houses were burning all over the city, people who lived there were hiding in basements and no one could help them, because there were no more services – no firemen, nothing. People were dying from hunger and lack of water, or freezing in their own homes, especially the disabled, who could not walk and no one helped them, only the people themselves. There was no evacuation of people, in general, the police who were there at the beginning of the war said that you cannot go beyond Mariupol because everything is mined. And you can’t go anywhere, so people were surrounded by Russian troops and without food. Everything they could get in the stores, water was taken from wells, of which there were very few across the city. For example, when it snowed, we drowned and used that water to wash our faces, and brush our teeth, because there was no other. The worst moment since the beginning of the war was when planes started flying and dropping bombs on houses. Before I was pregnant I worked as a barista and a salesman in a women’s clothing store, and after that, I was already on maternity leave, and at that point, I was on maternity leave because the baby was only 2 years old. My son couldn’t understand why he had to sit in the hallway all the time, sleep in the hallway, eat in the hallway, and play with toys in the hallway. He wanted to move, he was still little, and he wanted to walk around. He wanted to move around the rooms at least, but he couldn’t do that because there were windows in the other rooms that could have been blown down on him at any time or a land mine could have flown in. Now he has to go through rehabilitation to restore his nervous system because after that in Mariupol, he had some abnormalities and developmental delays, so we are now seeing a psychologist, sensory integration of neurologists, all sorts of lessons, and art therapy. At three and a half he stopped talking after Mariupol. We rent a house because here in Vinnytsia there is no free accommodation for families with children and pets. So we have to rent very expensive housing. We also have our dog and a small child with us. Shin is 3 years old and his name is Artem. We need money because it is very expensive to rent a house plus the utilities. We also need money for the rehabilitation of the child. We have a dog who is always sick, after Mariupol, he caught a cold because it was very cold.
I am afraid most of all of not being able to help my child, this is all serious, it should not be given up and it takes a lot of money, and secondly I am afraid of not returning to my Ukrainian Mariupol, to my hometown, most of all I want to go home. From Red Cross, we received humanitarian aid in the form of hygienic products, blankets and bedding, and pillows and we also receive humanitarian aid products not from our center Mariupol.
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