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«I dread to think how many inhabitants of a city of half a million will still die in this hell.
My cousin remained there forever. His death caught him at the bread stall. He went for the water. His little son wanted to drink and eat. The shelling began, and my brother’s acquaintance shouted: «Fall.» They fell in different directions. Roma’s side turned out to be unhappy. A projectile has landed there. My brother, or rather, what was left of him, was taken to the garage.
His wife and young son left Mariupol in a panic in someone else’s car. Now, Roma’s son is writing messages to his dad. Roma’s wife couldn’t tell the boy that dad was gone. The kid is a small copy of him. The same calm, solid and reliable.
Roma’s father found out about his son’s death recently. He came to the garage and took the watch. I’m scared to even think how he saw his son in this damn garage. The watch must be handed over to little Savva. I think, Uncle Vitya will survive now. And he will leave Mariupol. Otherwise, how would he give his grandson the only memory of his father?
My cousin Lyubasha lives in Cheryomushki. Her Lysenka street was heavily shelled and bombed. We called her in rare moments of the connection while we were in Mariupol, we are calling her now from Chornomorsk. She is unavailable. I believe that she, her son, her husband, her neighbors, and her friends will survive.
May all who now continue to resist death in this hell survive. To whom it seems that there is no more strength left, that it is pointless to fight, and that help is taking too long. I know, I feel how scared they are, how hopelessly lonely and dark in the cold basement. How painfully the sounds of shelling hit the heart, how doomed they count explosions and wait for the bomb to hit on them.
Read also: Friendly atmosphere near the hearth and death under the rubbles. Notes of the Mariupol journalist
Bright spring and muddy-black sky because of the smoke. Mangled by shells and burnt trees, on which there will be not a single bud. A strange woman on the playground and the sound of an empty swing, which she pushed. March 15 is my son’s birthday. My penultimate day in hell.
The trembling tail of my dog and his frightened eyes. Our walks with Angie were very short. Less than two minutes. She got everything done quickly. We ran to the entrance, we were shaking. Me and my dog. They shot everywhere. And the strange woman on the playground didn’t leave. She continued to rock the empty swing seat.
My friend’s mother, the one who took my dog out of the burning house, saw what I was writing and asked about what. I answered that about everything that is happening now. She asked: «And call it – those who came out of hell.» I objected to her: «We haven’t left yet, Aunt Sasha.» She was sure that we would leave. Me not.
Read also: The woman who lost her home twice. A story of Iryna from Mariupol, published by «Azov»
Liosha, who was wandering around the city and getting the news, once told me that there are a lot of videos of our streets on his mobile. «There are such shots. Very scary.» I didn’t want to look, but I asked him to give them to me when we got out. I also joked: «You still have nowhere to work, you will be a journalist.» Liosha worked for «Azovstal», and when he went to Left [coast] to visit his children, he discovered that the building where his department was located had been destroyed and looted.
«Just in case, the code on my phone is four eights.» I thought: «For what case?»
Strange half-life, half-death, and today without tomorrow. Always only one day. One day of life. No future, no money, no hope. In all twenty days, we never once felt safe. Not one minute. We were kind of lifeless. We forbade ourselves to say the word «tomorrow» because we weren’t sure it would come.
We needed very little to live. The main thing is that they don’t shoot, don’t bomb, there is water and something to eat. No matter what. We ate to have strength. We saved food. Carefully set aside, cut portions, and mixed a large amount of porridge with a meager amount of canned food or stew. And then a shell flew into the roof of the house and all our supplies, which were on the second floor, burned down.
But even that didn’t make us cry. We had been frozen inside.
Our emotions have been bombarded. Our souls were shot with missiles. We didn’t believe in reality. It seemed to us that everything around us was not real. Life stopped and every day was like the previous one. Only there were more shelling and more sophisticated weapons.»
Nadiya calls the atrocities of the Russians not other way than a genocide. Their cynicism in terms of civilians is impossible to forget.
She remembers as they left Mariupol, at the checkpoints the orcs stopped cars – without glass, shelled with shells and asked them: «Are your children not cold? Maybe close the windows so as not to catch a cold for the children.»
«They are bombing Mariupol, thousands of children are sitting in basements, they are hungry and scared, some of them are injured, it is impossible to help them, and the occupiers pretend that they care about Ukrainian children. This is very cruel and cynical,» says Nadiya.
She continues to yell in her stories – there are hundreds of thousands of people, who are waiting for salvation in Mariupol!
By Nadiya Sukhorukova, translated by Kateryna Bortniak
Published on the Medium page of «Azov»
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