...Six-month-old great-granddaughter has had to drink melted snow because Russian bombardments have cut off the city’s water supply. There is no power supply or heat, either. The baby’s family has been huddling together for weeks in dark, freezing cellars, going above ground only occasionally to cook on bonfires of discarded furniture among wrecked buildings. They saw dead bodies strewn on the streets. “It was like life in the Middle Ages, only with bombs falling,” said Liubov Belichenko, 27, the baby’s mother.

One of the many surreal things about the situation in Mariupol is that most people had no idea of the scale of what had happened to the city or its residents until they got out. There were teary reunions at the aid-distribution centre as people found relatives and friends and hugged them fiercely. There’s still no way to contact people who remain in the city.

I check on everyone I care about constantly. They say that for Ukrainians “How are you” now basically means “I love you”.

How will this end? I keep imagining Volodymyr Zelensky releasing a video telling us that it’s all over, it’s all fine now, that we should go and get some food. But I don’t know if that will happen. We’re tired as hell. We’re seeing our city get destroyed building by building.