“Days of Terror”. This is the definition of Brazilian Silvana Vicente, 53, for the period in which she lived in a region of Ukraine that was badly affected by the numerous attacks suffered by the country since the beginning of the Russian invasion, at the end of February.
“All that we are experiencing is the terror caused by the war. We woke up and, suddenly, everything was upside down, unstable, demolished, with bombs everywhere and no one knew which direction to go, nor when it would all end”, says Silvana to BBC News Brazil.
She remained without contact with her family for about 25 days, due to the lack of electricity and internet in the city of Mariupol.
The Brazilian, her husband, the Ukrainian Vasil Pilipenko, and her mother-in-law lived in the important Ukrainian port city that has been heavily attacked since the beginning of the conflict with Russia.
Since the beginning of the war, Silvana’s life has changed completely in the eastern European country. She had part of the apartment hit by a bomb and had to improvise a window to protect herself from the intense cold along with her family. In addition, basic items such as food and even water were lacking.
The period was marked by a routine of uncertainty about the future. “Everything was difficult, but survival was our biggest concern,” she says.
In the midst of the tragedy, the Brazilian wanted to record some moments through her cell phone to show the difficulties faced in the region. “I was looking for ways to charge my cell phone, on my computer or on my husband’s. I would take pictures and turn it off completely to save money,” she says. She shared some of these photographs with BBC News Brazil.
The beginning of the ‘Days of Terror’
Silvana heard the first impacts of the war right at the beginning of the Russian attacks, on 24 February. “I remember that until the night of February 23 there was nothing, but early the next morning we received a call from a cousin of my husband’s, who is Ukrainian, and she warned: the war has arrived”, says the Brazilian.
“As soon as she warned us, we started noticing the noise of cannon fire. My husband and I got up scared, because until the day before we thought the [presidente russo] Vladimir Putin would not carry the war forward,” adds Silvana.
The attacks began in an area far from Silvana’s apartment. “The initial bombings took place in a factory area in the city,” he says. From then on, the Brazilian woman and her family began to live with the constant noise of explosions.
Mariupol has become one of Russia’s main targets due to its strategic position on the Ukraine map. If dominated, the city will help the Russians form a kind of corridor linking the two breakaway areas of the Donbass region to the Crimean peninsula, annexed by Russia in 2014. With that degree of control, the Russians would also have easier access to both the Sea of Azov on the Black Sea.
In a few days, Silvana began to face the impacts of the conflict. In the markets, the shelves became increasingly empty and it was difficult even to find clean water. The city also began to experience problems in the supply of gas, electricity and there were difficulties in accessing the region’s telephone network.
Even with the difficulties, the Brazilian and her husband chose to remain in Ukraine to protect her mother-in-law, Iulia Pilipenko, who is elderly and has fragile health. “It would be nearly impossible to try to venture out of town with her,” he explains.
At the beginning of March, Silvana made the last contact with the family through the internet. Shortly after, she couldn’t find any kind of connection anymore. For weeks she was incommunicado.
“On day 2 [de março], I spoke with my family and I made a video telling how the situation was. Shortly after, the region’s electricity was cut off completely,” she says.
The next day, says Silvana, the gas was also cut off and the water supply became increasingly precarious. “The water that arrived was very cold and started to turn black, we couldn’t drink or cook, we only used it to flush”, he details.
Difficulties in the struggle for survival
In the apartment in Mariupol, the situation became increasingly difficult. Silvana and her husband were mainly concerned about her mother-in-law, who needs several medicines to take care of her health problems. “She started to ration medicines to last longer, because the pharmacies in the region had been looted”, details the Brazilian.
Days after losing communication with her family, Silvana experienced one of the most difficult moments in Ukraine: an explosion near her building.
“About the 6th [de março], a mine explosion hit our building. Until then, the attacks were still in the area of ​​the factories, but as these mines are very strong, they ended up reaching the area of ​​the building as well”, he says.
The impact of the explosion, says Silvana, shattered the windows of many apartments in the building, including her own. “The whole building was damaged,” she says.
Without the window glass, she had to improvise to ease the cold, around -5°C. “I put construction plastic in the window. While there was the bombing outside, I adjusted the plastic. My husband said: get out of there, otherwise you’ll get hit. But if I didn’t do that, we wouldn’t stand the cold”, she says. . Later, she used nails to secure the plastic to the window.
“Still, it was very cold. The cold was one of the hardest parts of it all, but we decided to stay in the apartment because there was no other choice. If we left there, the bombings would continue the same way. safe for us”, declares the Brazilian.
The intervention on the window was just one of the adaptations Silvana made to survive.
Without water, she had to resort to a river in an area close to her home, where dozens of people also suffered from a lack of water and accumulated in queues.
“We were looking for water every other day. We only had two gallons of five liters and three of three liters. The biggest fear was the way to the river, because along the way there were some areas that had already been hit by attacks and we were afraid that there were new attacks there”, says Silvana.
And faced with the lack of gas, she and the neighbors started cooking with firewood, which they were looking for in the region, in an improvised stove in front of the building where she lived.
While making the food, they needed to be aware of any explosion noise nearby.
Silvana and her family had a small meal a day, in addition to drinking plain coffee in the morning. “When there was bread, we ate little by little,” she says. According to her, her husband lost 13 kilos in less than a month.
To face the difficulties, the residents of the Mariupol building tried to help each other by exchanging food or water. “We shared things, according to the needs of the other. They are a very strong people and hopeful that the war will soon end”, he says.
Russian troops advanced further and further into Mariupol. Gradually, says Silvana, the horror of war became part of their lives. “Our biggest fear was the attack by the planes, because the impact was very big. Our building was shaking with the impact of the bombs. A house exploded a few meters from our building”, she details.
On the streets, the war scene scared everyone. It was possible to see destroyed cars and houses or even the bodies of people hit by the attacks. “I’ve never seen a body and I was very afraid of seeing one, but my husband saw some. If I saw it, I would be very shaken and collapsed”, she says.
Silvana says that the most shocking scenes she witnessed were the makeshift graves. “People had no way of burying the family member in the cemetery, so they opened a hole in the sidewalk of the house, put the body, the cross and that was it. They did this to not leave the dead exposed on the street with so many people passing by”, he details.
Amidst the destruction scenario, Silvana prepared for the worst. “I learned to be strong and to control fear. I was no longer so afraid, let alone panic about death. I prepared myself emotionally to die and prayed that God would comfort my son and my family. get out of here, so be it”, he recalls.
The rescue
At the end of March, a Ukrainian who lived in Mariupol went to Silvana’s building and announced that he would take her family out of the country in his car. “He arrived and said: you have 15 minutes to get the essentials and documents. And we had to leave in a hurry”, recalls the Brazilian.
The man, who lived in the region and also wanted to leave the country, was paid by Silvana and Vasil’s son, merchant sailor Gabriel Pilipenko, 26.
Gabriel, like other relatives of his, lived the anguish of the lack of information about Silvana, Vasil and Iulia. With each new news about the attacks on Mariupol, the despair of the boy and his relatives increased more.
In order to dedicate himself to the search for his parents, Gabriel left his job on a boat in Taiwan and went to Germany. He even considered going to Ukraine, but gave up due to the risks.
Upon being rescued, Silvana, Vasil and Iulia were taken by the Ukrainian having to pass through the territory dominated by the Russians, where they had the vehicle searched several times. Afterwards, they arrived in Crimea, where they stayed for a few days while waiting for an emergency passport for Iulia. Afterwards, they went to Moscow, received support from the Brazilian embassy and obtained air tickets.
First, they took a flight to Dubai and then went to Brazil. Finally, they landed on Sunday (10) in João Pessoa (PB), Silvana’s hometown and where her family lives.
Silvana and Vasil still haven’t found their son, who got a job in Germany and remains in the European country.
On Brazilian soil, Silvana is thinking about starting over, but now she faces other difficulties. “We are in my apartment, which had been closed for years. We left everything behind, so our main difficulty is financial. We came here only with the clothes on our backs”, says Silvana.
She and her husband are unemployed and rely on the help of Silvana’s relatives to feed themselves. “my husband [que é marinheiro mercante] he has a great resume, but unfortunately that makes it difficult for him to find a job easily. But I believe that soon he will be employed”, says Silvana.
“The government of ParaÃba is providing medical support and exams, and is trying to find work for my husband. We have our expenses, like food, and we don’t have support for that, and that has been the hardest part right now”, she adds.
The future is still completely uncertain for Silvana. Over the next few months, she claims that her main wish is an end to the Ukrainian War. “I feel guilty that I left behind so many people who shared the terror of war with us,” she laments.
When the conflict ends, she intends to fulfill her promise to her mother-in-law and they, along with Vasil, will return to Ukraine.
