Surviving Mariupol

"The stuff that you're hearing about chemical weapons, this is straight out of their playbook."

"They start saying that there are chemical weapons that have been stored by their opponents or by the Americans, and so when they themselves deploy chemical weapons, as I fear they may, they have a sort of ... fake story, ready to go."

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson

 

"In Russia, we are already considered dead. I was given the opportunity to call my parents and they told me that a funeral for me had already been arranged."

"If we are exchanged [as prisoners of war between Ukraine and Russia], then we will be shot by our own people."

Captured Russian soldier, begging Ukraine not to return him to Russia 

"[The two Ukrainian de-bombers showed] mind-boggling bravery."

"This Russia-dropped bomb would flatten a building -- and yet these Ukraine EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] technicians defuse it with two hands and a bottle of water, while shells audibly land nearby."

Charles Lister, senior fellow, Middle East Institute think-tank, Washington

"Some people will have food but I'm not sure for how long it will last. Many people report having no food for children."

"People started to attack each other for food."

"People started to ruin someone's car to take the gasoline out."

Sasha Volkov, deputy head, International Committee of the Red Cross delegation to Mariupol

"Because my mother is a midwife and my father owns a car, they are helping people and they can't just leave them."

"There are a lot of people who, for example, are too old or who have babies and they are scared to leave under the bombing and falling rockets."

"There is a humanitarian catastrophe happening in Ukraine and they need the world to help them."

Mariia Moskalenko, internally displaced

 

"Airstrikes started from the early morning. Airstrike after airstrike."

"All the historic centre is under bombardment."

"They want to absolutely delete our city, delete our people."

Petro Andrushenko, adviser to the mayor of Mariupol, East Ukraine

A number of civilians were killed and dozens injured after a Russian attack on a maternity hospital in Mariupol

 

Russian expectations -- for the time being in any event -- appear to have been dashed. Their lightning-strike invasion of Ukraine with the intention of swiftly bringing matters to a head by decapitating the government of the population's democratic choice has quite evidently not gone quite according to plan. Despite superior fighting numbers and a decided advantage in up-to-the-moment technical machinery of modern warfare, the Kremlin appears to have vastly under-rated Ukraine's indomitable spirit of resistance.

 

The Russian military has been given orders of priority; Mariupol and Kyiv. Kyiv is encircled and the Russian convoys have been bogged down, quite literally. Mariupol's fate has been far more immediate, bombarded from the sky, ground artillery aiming at the city's infrastructure -- hospitals not excluded -- it is in the process of being completely destroyed. A plight seen by other towns and villages in the northeastern part of the country, closer to Kyiv.

 

The bombing of Mariupol's children's and maternity hospital saw three people killed, with another 17 injured. Citizens of the city unable to flee the bombardment since evacuation routes are also targeted are running perilously low of the most basic requirements to prolong life. A situation which has resulted in people turning against one another to acquire for themselves what others too must have to exist; water, food, warmth, medication.

 

The people living in Mariupol this winter have been denied heat for days in -9C overnight temperatures and they are steadily running out of food. Which has led to events quite removed from normal life in the eastern city, where people have been breaking into shops and supermarkets hoping to garner food for their families. The deputy head of the International Committee of the Red Cross delegation has reported that some people had taken to attacking others.

It is believed that over 1,200 civilians have been killed in the city of 430,000. The city's cemeteries no longer dig single graves for individual corpses and conduct ordinary funerals. Instead a 25-metre-long trench has been prepared to receive the overwhelming numbers of casualties that the city's morgues are unable to deal with. In every metric of human existence, this situation really merits the description of "humanitarian catastrophe".

 

A deep trench - some 25 metres long - has been dug in a cemetery in the heart of the city

 

"We do not have the opportunity to bury them in private graves", explained Vadym Boichenko, Mariupol's embattled mayor. At the opposite end of the spectrum, Russia's foreign minister Sergey Lavrov saw fit to dismiss concerns surrounding civilian casualties, characterizing them as "pathetic shrieks", insisting the hospital was being used as a base by 'far-right fighters'. 

Residents of the city were advised to prepare dead bodies by tying their hands and legs together, to cover them and leave them outside their homes. Others drag bodies to the mass graves rolled into carpets or plastic bags. There is no count being taken of the numbers that have been buried in mass graves, nor are there records being kept of names and other identifying features.

For the most part the endless shelling by Russian forces is responsible for the dead, while some have died from natural causes at their homes, but because of full morgues, authorities are unable to arrange for their collection. Family and friends are not permitted to gather at the cemetery where those they know and love are being rolled into the trenches.

Tanya, a six-year-old, was among those killed in the shelling. She died of dehydration, trapped under the rubble of her home. Her burial too was among those other countless, unnamed corpses.

 

Dead bodies are placed into a mass grave on the outskirts of Mariupol, Ukraine, Wednesday, March 9, 2022, as people cannot bury their dead because of the heavy shelling by Russian forces.

AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka