Julia tells the hell of Mariupol, “when the night lights up with the flames that burn the buildings”

Before being one of the victims of the Russian invasion in Ukraine, Julia was a saleswoman in a perfumery. The 36-year-old Ukrainian woman kept the agenda of the siege of Mariupol, which she experienced from the window of her in-laws’ apartment in the city center.

The dates are very precise: she says that on February 27, three days after the outbreak of the war, she had the latest news from her parents who were staying a little further away. On March 2, she no longer has a connection for the telephone. On March 5, the fighting became too heavy to go out and take advantage of a humanitarian corridor. In her diary, Julia says that in this apartment, the alarm clock goes off at 5 a.m. every morning, because it is time for the start of the bombings, and you have to get off the beds, get on the floor to protect yourself. .

By small touches, his life in the besieged city is destroyed. First there is the threatening presence of planes in the third week. Then the courtyard of the building which was bombed twice, on March 10. The gas is off. His father was killed in a strike that targeted collaborators.

Iive under the bombs is a mixture of terror, powerlessness and struggle to try to preserve what makes dignity. Julia came out of Mariupol. We were able to reach her on the phone. “When you don’t sleep, when you always eat from the same plate, when you live in a hallway, when you use the toilet and only empty it once every three days, when the last weekend you understand that the water is going to be cut off but you don’t know where you are going to find it, when your building is shaking because it has been hit and the night lights up with the flames burning the buildings next to it… it’s hell.”

Today, Julia is safe, she was able to leave Mariupol. Her husband, she said, took ten years. She thought she was going crazy. She thinks she won’t set foot in town again for years.