Tetiana spent 35 terrible days in a Mariupol bomb shelter. After all she endured, she says that even horror films no longer scare her. Eight russian air bombs struck directly into the building where they were hiding, but the most terrifying thing was not that — it was the crying of hungry children begging for water.

Hunger, thirst, water from an abandoned well that tasted of silt, scraps of food cooked on an open fire, people dying before their eyes… In the basement, her sister’s husband died, and his enemies did not even allow him to be buried — his body was left under the open sky.

Tetiana remembers the silent tension on the road out of the ruined city — none of the passengers knew whether they would live to see the end of that journey. And she recalls the tears of joy when she first heard the Ukrainian language.

Now she lives in a dormitory of the “I’Mariupol” Center in Dnipro. Every day she prays for her loved ones and for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, carrying in her heart the faith in peace and the return home.