Help for Yuri from Marioupol

Hi there!

Yuri and Alina arrived in Warsaw on 18th May. 

They come from Mariupol. They have two children: Zhenya (6 years old) and Maxim (4 months). Maxim was born in Mariupol on 17th February.

Yuri and Alina had a house in Mariupol, and Yuri was renovating it. While waiting for the end of the work, they rented an apartment.

Yuri is a bricklayer and renovates flats. He had come to work for two months to Poland (in December and January) to finance the work on their house, a nursery for the baby, whose arrival was scheduled for the end of February. Yuri had just finished the baby's room when the war started.

Maxim was born in Mariupol on 17th February . Alina returned from the maternity ward with him on February 20th. Maxim spent 4 days in his new room. On February 24th, the whole family had to hide in the basement of their building, with the first shots, then bombardments. The cellar was very damp and cold, so they took refuge in the post office, with 80 other people. The cellar was not fireproof (basically, it was not a bunker). It was also very cold, but the cellar was divided into smaller rooms and the heat was retained a little better, and above all it was less humid. To keep warm, they cut wood outside. To get some electricity, they used a car battery. Of course, there was no running water. The family spent 25 days underground, with a newborn baby. Outside temperatures reached -10.

Maxim's natural breastfeeding stopped, because Alina had no more milk, due to stress and sudden deprivation. They found powdered milk in an abandoned pharmacy. Yuri heated the bottle water with a candle in the cellar (45 minutes per bottle).

The shelling intensified, everyone felt they had to leave. The family walked for two days to leave besieged Mariupol. 30 kilometers with a newborn, a 6-year-old child, between bombs. They are in the street with what people offered, and the food brought by the Ukrainian army in the stores, left at the disposal of the civilians. After two days of walking, they finally reached Yuri's mother's house, spared from the shelling. This walk, in normal times and without children, would have taken them 5 hours.

When civilians from Mariupol finally had the opportunity to be evacuated, the family tried to leave for Zaporozhye. Twice they were refused departure. They were finally evacuated via Russia (two days by bus with only one stop for a quick meal), then Latvia and Lithuania.