Our Story

Marina is a 41-year-old mother of three girls from Kryvyi Rih. Together with her husband, they work in a mine, so they are used to danger and difficulties. But neither Marina, nor her husband, nor all the residents of the "Stalinka" house in Kryvyi Rih were prepared for what happened on the morning of 16th of December. A russian missile hit their house.

Together with other women and children affected by the war, Marina and her daughters underwent psycho-emotional rehabilitation for three weeks under the Unbreakable Mom project, at the joint shift from Masha Foundation and the Saving Lives Humanitarian Project. It was there that she told us her story.

 - At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, we responded to every alarm. We made friends with our neighbours, a young family with a baby, and we went to the basement together. If I was sleeping after a night shift, my neighbour came to wake me up when she heard the sirens, and we went to the shelter together with the children. We also decided to evacuate to Poland together in early March last year. And six months later, we came back to Kryvyi Rih a month apart.

 After returning, we relaxed and stopped going down to the basement. We thought: what could happen?

But it happened. On the morning of the 16th of December. It was an ordinary morning, my husband had just returned from a night shift. He went to wake up our middle daughter, 7-year-old Varia, for lessons, but the sirens started to sound. So the four of us (the eldest daughter lives separately) went to breakfast in our pyjamas. Around 9 am, my husband went to bed. The younger daughter asked to be held by him, and together they left the kitchen. After 2-3 seconds, Varia said: "Mum, there's a plane in the sky". I didn't believe her. At that time, there was a loud bang, my daughter and I ran into the corridor, and then there was a terrible explosion. Everything around us began to collapse: walls were falling, metal-plastic windows were flying into the rooms like pieces of paper. There was a huge cloud of dust, and it started to smell of burning. I couldn't see my husband or children, I couldn't even see my hands. When the dust settled a little, I could see my husband: he was standing in the room, covering the child who was still in his arms. Some centimetres away from them was the balcony door, which had been blown into the room. Everywhere was a glass.

When I turned the other way, I heard Varia crying. She was in the middle of the rubble, with her head covered by debris. The explosion caused the walls of the house to fall on top of one another like dominoes. The fall was stopped by a load-bearing wall. If not this wall...

I had only one thought in my head: my child must breathe. So I climbed into the rubble to give her access to oxygen. Then my husband came running, gave me the younger 3-year-old child and continued to clear the rubble. Varia was conscious and kept asking for her favourite toy, a white bear. The husband was able to free her head, shoulders and back, but her legs were jammed by slabs. By then, rescuers had already arrived. They were standing on what that used to be the roof, but they could not come down to us because the rubble could move under the weight and kill the child. I don't know how my husband was able to free my daughter, where the superhuman strength came from to move the blocks being lifted by the machinery. But he did.

When Varia was pulled out of the rubble, a fire broke out somewhere in the house. Black smoke poured into the apartment. There was nothing to breathe. We were climbing the fallen walls. It was December, and we were in shorts and T-shirts. The only thing I took from the apartment was a bag with documents, which was in the corridor just in case.

We survived by a miracle. Varia spent a day in intensive care and another week in hospital to see if the effects of the severe compression would appear. My husband was cut by glass when he was covering the younger child with his body. But we survived.

I tried to call our friends and neighbours, but it was all in vain. While Varia was in intensive care, I was waiting in the waiting room for them to be brought in. The body of my friend-neighbour was found on the first floor, although they lived on the second. The floor collapsed under her. Their young child also died on scene, and her husband died in hospital.

In total, five people were killed on that terrible day.

I blamed myself terribly for not going down to the basement when the alarm sounded. We should have gone to the shelter together with our neighbours, like at the beginning of the war. We would be scared, we would have no place to live, but everyone would be alive. I was tormented by the feeling of guilt, I started to be afraid of sirens, and I forbade my children to be outside during the alarm. In the bomb shelter, I wanted to cry: children shouldn't have to go through all this, they shouldn't have to grow up underground! And only thanks to the psychologists of the Unbreakable Mom project I realized that I am not guilty. I realized that I have to live and to believe in the best. Being in the camp, my daughters calmed down and cheered up. Everything was like a remedy for us: the care of the staff, classes with psychologists, art therapy. Even the view of the mountains from the window! We will return to Kryvyi Rih and live on. But we will hide in the bomb shelter every time there is a serious alarm.