‘Hell on Earth’: survivors recount Mariupol’s destruction under Russian bombs | Free to read
In the besieged city of Mariupol, the site of the fiercest fighting in Russia’s three-week war with Ukraine, people are now so hungry that they kill feral dogs for food.
Dmytro, a businessman who left the city on Tuesday, said friends told him they had been using the desperate measure for the past few days after their supply dried up.
“You hear the words but can’t really understand them, to believe this is happening,” he said. “It’s hell on earth.”
Once one of Ukraine’s most important ports, Mariupol is now a tomb, a city of ghosts. For more than two weeks, it was Russian bombardment was so intense that it turned entire residential areas into smoldering ruins.
After days of punishing aerial and artillery attacks that broke through Mariupol’s three defenses, Russian troops have now entered the city center, with fierce fighting reported on several main shopping street and close to Theater Square, an important landmark.
On Sunday night, Russia gave Ukraine until 5 a.m. local time to decide whether to surrender to Mariupol. Ukraine’s Defense Ministry said it would allow Ukrainian troops to leave the city, but only if they lay down their weapons.
Russian forces controlled Livoberezhnyi Raion, or left bank district, to the east of the city, as well as Mikroraiony 17-23, a string of residential areas to the northeast, said Anna Romanenko, a Ukrainian journalist with close ties to Ukrainian forces there. “The front line runs right through Mariupol,” she said.
Dmytro, who declined to give his last name, was among Mariupol residents the Financial Times contacted by phone after they were evacuated over the past week to the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, some 230 kilometers away. West. All depict an attack so brutal that it destroyed the city, killing and slaughtering countless civilians and leaving deep scars for the survivors.
Mykola Osichenko, chief executive officer of Mariupol TV, said his permanent memory of the past three weeks is a feeling of utter helplessness. “When bombs fell, I used to cover my son with my body,” he said. “But I knew I couldn’t really protect him, it was an act of desperation.”
Strategically located on the Sea of Azov, the gateway to the Black Sea, Mariupol has been in the sights of Russia since the beginning of the war. Just a few days later, their forces began launching missiles at the city in a ferocious attack that cut off the city’s electricity, gas and water supplies and shriveled up its 400,000 inhabitants. in cold shelters, embracing warmth. Mariupol authorities say 2,400 residents of the city have been killed since Russia launched the invasion.
Survivors describe desperate attempts to stock up on supplies while bombs exploded all around them. Dmytro said he visited the central market last Sunday after it was flattened by a Russian artillery attack.
“Everything was on fire, there were dead bodies everywhere, and I was just passing by, picking up cabbages here, carrots there, knowing it meant my family would live another day or two. more,” he said. “You become completely emotionless.”
Witnesses described post-apocalyptic scenes of stray dogs eating the remains of bomb victims lying unburied in the streets. Civilian casualties were buried in mass graves or buried in courtyards of houses: proper funerals were too dangerous.
Russia’s medieval-style siege of Mariupol also faced severe shortages of food and water for its inhabitants. With no gas, they cook food on a campfire made from broken furniture in the yard of their house.
Osichenko said people in his home were so thirsty that they drained their radiators, collected and melted snow, and also scoured local parks for freshwater streams. “But queues will form there and that’s the perfect target for Russian missiles,” he said. Springs also fell out of favor as they were quickly contaminated with dead bodies.
Images posted on social media captured the extent of the devastation – giant apartment complexes turned into hell after being hit by a head-on, flames sending huge columns of black smoke into the sky. the sky, the streets were littered with the burnt remains of wrecked buses and cars. turned into a pile of withered metal, 10m crater by a bomb dropped on one of the Mariupol’s Children’s Hospital.
Authorities sounded the alarm after a Russian plane bombed the city’s main theater last Wednesday, causing concern for hundreds of women and children who were using its bunker as a shelter. shelter from air raids. It is not yet clear how many people were killed or injured in the attack. Russia denies targeting civilians and accuses Ukrainian authorities of using them as human shields.
Now the inhabitants face a new danger: evacuation to parts of Russia, where an uncertain fate awaits them. Romanenko said potential evacuees would first be questioned by Russian officials, who “check them to see if they can be trusted”. “They check their social media feeds for anything against Russian.”
She said Russian forces had sent a friend of hers from the Livoberezhnyi district to Novoazovsk, a small town east of Mariupol controlled by pro-Russian separatists. “They interrogated him, took his Ukrainian passport and took him to Rostov, across the border in Russia,” she said. She hasn’t heard from him since.
Many other residents took advantage of rare moments of peace between the shelling to leave Mariupol for Ukrainian-controlled territory, forming convoys of dozens of personal cars that were forced to pass through dozens of streets. Russian checkpoint. A journey that in peacetime could take about two and a half hours now takes 16 hours.
Romanenko, who was born and raised in Mariupol and has lived there all his life, is now in Zaporizhzhia, a refugee. She says she is heartbroken about the fate of her city – but remains determined to return, one day, “and do everything I can to rebuild it”.
“I’ll be back when the Russians are gone,” she said. “That is where all my ancestors are buried. I couldn’t be happy anywhere else.”
