“We delivered babies and operated on the wounded. The hospital in the left-bank part of Mariupol did not stop providing medical aid to expectant mothers even during shelling attacks,” says a paediatrician-neonatologist Olena Shylova.

A hundred and eighty Mariupol residents lived there, all at the same time. In March, the soldiers of the so-called “DPR” (unrecognized Donetsk People’s Republic) came to the maternity hospital together with their journalists. Tanks appeared near the building. One of the soldiers admitted that he came from Dagestan “to save Mariupol residents”. Although, he told his mother that his brother and he worked in Moscow.

My name is Olena Shylova. I am a neonatologist at the municipal maternity hospital of Mariupol.

On 24 February, my whole family woke up early in the morning from very loud explosions, although there had already been heard some very strong strikes several days before that. But on 24 February, our children woke up in a panic saying that they would not stay at home and asking to take them to the bomb shelter. That day was my 24-hour work shift, so I got ready and went to work. And then the children, my daughter with her children, came over to our bomb shelter in the maternity hospital.

We tried our best to discharge as many mothers with babies as it was possible. We began to move our hospital equipment to a safer place because we realized that the aggression was escalating.

So that is basically how the active phase, active armed hostilities, began for us. In the first week of the war, we still worked in relatively calm conditions but not at full strength, as not all hospital staff members could come to work. Since shelling became more frequent, and as people lived in some remote districts, we had to ensure our operations with the limited number of staff we had. During that week, we received some humanitarian aid, such as some cereals, some sweet stuff, and pasta. Well, quite a lot of this was delivered to us.

Well, and we still had the opportunity to go home, go out. There were some shelling attacks but they were not that frequent. Windows were broken in all the rooms of the maternity hospital, and windows in our basement also shattered, while we had new-born babies... We boarded up the windows first with plywood sheets and plastic film, then with blankets, and then covered them up with mattresses.

On 2 March, power supply and telephone connection disappeared. Our problems snowballed every day, the panic in our ranks was also growing.

At night, when shelling was especially strong, people got up from their beds, started grabbing their bags and running somewhere, children began to panic, so we had to act not only as doctors but also as psychologists. Well, and sometimes as wardens in order to somehow keep the crowd, which began to panic, in check. On 2 March, our neighbours told us that our children’s house was hit by shelling.

The house was partially destroyed and a hunting dog was killed. The problem with water supply to the maternity hospital was growing. We started to use water very sparingly because there was no more water delivery. We used water from the fire water system, but people from nearby bomb shelters kept coming and so that water ran out very quickly. All water tanks, all containers with water in the departments, whatever water supplies we had, they all froze because strong frost came, and the heating system froze too. We hoped for this water; we began to limit the use of water by people, in toilets too.

After all, 180 people was not a small group. Men set up a toilet booth in the yard. Well, that was dangerous too because shelling was quite frequent. There was a shell strike near the oxygen ramp and a post fell. It was a very strong strike, we really felt it.

On 9 March, after an airstrike on maternity hospital no.3, four expectant mothers were brought to us. Two of them were in serious condition and had some injuries, and the other two were in a state of shock. Unfortunately, one woman lost her baby.

From that time on, we were virtually cut off from the rest of the city. There was no help for us anymore. We were not only without electricity and water, but also without bread. Although we still had some other foodstuffs, but the situation was escalating every day.

And on 22 March, Armageddon began. It was my son-in-law’s birthday. A shell hit near the foundation of the maternity hospital’s building. We felt how the whole building bounced up and then sank down again. At that time, we already cooked food on a fire outdoors because we had to save diesel fuel. We started up a diesel-fuelled power generator two or three times a day, and on 22 March, a shell hit the spot where we had a fireplace. A shepherd dog was killed and one man received a blunt abdominal injury. It turned at there were no surgeons in hospital no.4 and our colleague Svitlana Mykolaivna had to operate on this man. Oleksandr Mykolayovych assisted her.

The operation lasted a long time, four hours, and the patient lost a lot of blood. Thank God, everything was fine.

We used flashlights and any other sources of light we had. A woman in a neighbouring bed was in labour at the same time with the operation of the wounded man. Thank God, everything was fine with the babies. After the shell strike at our open-fire cooking spot, we decided to move it to a safer place. We chose a window opening on the ground floor (in the basement) to be such a safer place. We checked the draft and from that time on, we cooked food on a fire in that window opening. Since that time, we had not seen anyone from outside for about three weeks basically.

We did not receive any aid, no one came to us, and more and more often we heard children saying, “I don’t have a house anymore,” or “Our house burned down,” or “A shell hit our house”. More and more often, people from neighbouring bomb shelters came to us for medical aid, asking to put a bandage and help the wounded. More and more people came with a request to register the dead and asked to give them some COVID bags to bury their relatives and friends in them.

There was pain, despair, confusion, fear, hopelessness, and resentment in people’s eyes.

It’s beyond words, and it happened every day. All people literally scoured in search of food and water. Our men, who were the getters of water for us all, came under fire on numerous occasions. Cars and water tanks were riddled [with shell fragments]. It was getting more and more dangerous every day. And on the morning of 28 March, they found us, so to speak. They came inside by false pretence. They knocked on the door and told us that they came for a child birth. We opened the door and let them in. And literally about 25 armed men burst into our hall where everyone had been staying. There were many children there, about 26 kids, apart from newborns, and those kids got frightened certainly.

Those were our so-called “liberators” represented by the “DPR” war dogs. They took our men out, checked their documents, ordered them to undress, and checked their tattoos. From that day on, we had some uninvited guests every day, like the DPR press and TV, Oplot, and Zvezda [TV channels], and many more.

Not all of them behaved appropriately. To show a nice media picture, everyone came up to newborns and tried to interview women without asking if they wanted it.

With fear and anxiety mixed, children anticipated every next visit of the guests who, in exchange for a candy, strongly recommended them to pass thanks to Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] and Ramzan Kadyrov for our so-called “rescue”.

We were fed up with their “but we are saving you” phrase. We heard it many times a day, with every next visit of the uninvited guests. The only positive aspect of those press visits was that we could hand over some notes with the phone numbers of our relatives to let them know that we were alive. From the time they found out about us, “DPR” fighters lodged themselves in the non-working building of the maternity hospital, and a lot of cars appeared in the courtyard. As I understand, those cars with the letter Z drawn on the windows and on the hoods were stolen or commandeered cars. Tanks and infantry fighting vehicles drove past the maternity hospital more and more often. That is, they really settled in and made a foothold at our place.

On 30 [March] we went out. We wanted to go outside. We met a bearded soldier and asked him, “Who are you? – I don’t remember his name – “Where from?” He said, “From Dagestan.” “How old are you?” He replied, “Nineteen.” “What are you doing here?” He said, “I am saving you.” “Does your mother know it?” “My mother knows that my brother and I now work in Moscow.” “And why are you standing here behind the door in our room?” “I am scared. May I stay here for some time?”

You know, it is funny and tragic at the same time. It is laughter amid tears. What these children die for? What our kids die for?

If I can say so, I was thankful to him for just one thing. He gave us a SIM-card and we could have the telephone connection, such as it was. And on 1 April, on April Fool’s Day... There was another reason for laughter amid tears. A young couple came to register with the maternity hospital as they were expectant parents, while a future mother was only in the early stages of her pregnancy, and we no longer worked in our usual schedule-based mode. We had to refuse them and by the evening, the “DPR” people were short of one of their “Z” marked cars. Well, that was our April Fool’s Day. What gives me strength to live on? Children give me strength to live on. Hope for victory and hope for the restoration of Ukraine give me strength too. Hope that everything will be Ukraine and we will be re-building our country.