Vira listened to Katia for three hours after fleeing Mariupol with her fiveyearold brother. The volunteer then wanted to share the 16yearold’s statement on social media and via her Telegram channels. Here is the full translation:
do you know what pain is I fell in love with a boy once, but he didn’t fall in love with me, I thought it hurt. I was wrong. The real pain is watching mom die before your eyes. My little brother kept going to her and saying: “Mom don’t sleep, I’m cold”. We will never be able to visit her in the cemetery. She stayed in this dark, damp basement.
We went to the bathroom, slept, ate what little food we had left, all in the same basement.
One day Mr. Kolya caught a pigeon, it was the fifth or sixth day, we cooked it on the fire and ate it. Then we threw up.
Mom resisted to the end, but she died three days before we evacuated. I told my little brother she fell asleep, she shouldn’t have woken her up. But I think he understood everything.
She also knew when the neighbor died but we couldn’t get her out and she started to stink. Then they stopped bombing and Mr. Kolya took her away, but she died in an explosion. My mother cried a lot. After the death of her father, Mr. Kolya was closest to her.
Corpses stink so much. They were everywhere there. I covered my brother’s eyes with my mother’s scarf so he wouldn’t see. As we ran away, I was on the verge of throwing up several times.
I don’t believe in your God anymore, otherwise we wouldn’t suffer like this. My mother has never, and I mean never, done anything wrong. Mr. Kolya never let him sleep in the house, not even in the next room, until they got married.
Mom often went to church and confessed, and so did I. Mr Kolya gave up smoking because his mother said it was a sin. Instead, your God took them from us. A priest told me that Mama would minister with God now, but it would have been better if she ministered here alongside us.
i hate russia My uncle is there. Do you know what he said to me on the phone? “Katia? Which Katia? I don’t know you, little girl. what war? Which Katya?”. Then he sent me a message from another number: “Katia, don’t text me. It is dangerous for me and my family. We can’t bring your mother back to life.” I hate her, she was his sister, how do you do that?
I think I will return to Mariupol. And I will live in the same place. And I’ll go down to bring flowers to the basement of the new house.
Another scary thing is when babies cry, but you can’t. It was dangerous for her to hear them. So these orcs found people hiding in basements and killed them.
Survivors say Russian soldiers were able to rape children, old women, and even corpses.
If God exists, why does he allow it? I do not want to live anymore. I think they will separate us, maybe I’ll never see my brother again. Because? Why did Putin want to save us? We lived so well that we even bought the car. Mr. Kolya promised to teach me to drive. They also burned the car. Our house is gone. I want to die but I can’t.
hug your children Otherwise they won’t remember your smell when you’re gone. If I can resist and have children, I will hug them all day.
