'Everyone Is Constantly Waiting For Death': Horrific Accounts From Ukrainian City Mariupol

She writes that after her friend's grandmother's passing they were asked to leave the body on the balcony by the police since there is no burial during combat.

New Delhi: The port city of Mariupol is currently at the centre of conflict between Russia and Ukraine, it is constantly being bombed and people are living in makeshift shelters to survive. A woman from Mariupol shared an emotive account of the events, the sense of doom she & the people around her feel under the current crisis in a Facebook post. 

"I'm sure I'm going to die soon. That's a matter of days. In this city, everyone is constantly waiting for death. I just wish she wasn't so scary. Three days ago, a friend of my oldest nephew visited us and told us that it was a direct hit into the fire department. The rescuers have lost their lives," her translated Facebook post mentioned.

She wrote that after her friend's grandmother's passing they were asked to leave the body on the balcony by the police since there is no burial during combat.

"Our house on Mira Avenue is the only one without direct hits. It was hit by shells twice, glass flew out in some apartments, but it was hardly injured and looks lucky compared to other houses."

She wrote about the deathly silence that surrounds them whenever she takes her dog out, the park that was once lively with children playing and grandmothers sitting on benches is not there anymore. She wrote, "A few people on here though. They are lying on the side of the house and in the parking lot covered with upper clothes. I don't want to look at them. I'm afraid I'll see someone I know."

"My dog is starting to howl and I understand they are going to shoot again now".

Escape from Mariupol

A team of journalists from the Associated Press who were the only ones left in Mariupol shared their account of the siege since they were the only international journalist left the Russians had their details and were "hunting" them down. They did manage to escape with a horrific account of the current state of Mariupol. 

Associate Press' video journalist, Mstyslav Chernov, shared that Ukrainian soldiers were given orders to take the journalists with them.

They gave their accounts of the bombing of the maternity hospital which had struck a nerve all over the world. "On March 9, twin airstrikes shredded the plastic taped over our van’s windows. I saw the fireball just a heartbeat before pain pierced my inner ear, my skin, my face. We watched smoke rise from a maternity hospital. When we arrived, emergency workers were still pulling bloodied pregnant women from the ruins."

Two days later in a brief phone call, Chernov said, they were asked if any of the women or children from the maternity hospital survived, "We found them at a hospital on the front line, some with babies and others in labour. We also learned that one woman had lost her baby and then her own life."

It is crucial for the Russians about the information that got of Ukraine, which is why all international journalists are chased away.

According to Chernov, "Chaos is the first. People don’t know what’s going on, and they panic. At first, I couldn’t understand why Mariupol fell apart so quickly. Now I know it was because of the lack of communication.

Impunity is the second goal. With no information coming out of a city, no pictures of demolished buildings and dying children, the Russian forces could do whatever they wanted. If not for us, there would be nothing."

“If they catch you, they will get you on camera and they will make you say that everything you filmed is a lie,” a policeman who accompanied them told the journalists. “All your efforts and everything you have done in Mariupol will be in vain.” 

During the days they were in Mariupol, they filmed people suffering, children dying, people fighting for their lives and houses burned down by the shelling. 

In order to upload photos and videos, they had constantly tried looking for a spot that had a steady connection, "a looted grocery store on Budivel’nykiv Avenue. Once a day, we drove there and crouched beneath the stairs to upload photos and videos to the world. The stairs wouldn’t have done much to protect us, but it felt safer than being out in the open." But it was lost by March 3. They looked for various spots to send out videos. 

"For several days, the only link we had to the outside world was through a satellite phone. And the only spot where that phone worked was out in the open, right next to a shell crater. I would sit down, make myself small and try to catch the connection."

Finally, they packed themselves with a family of three, "We crossed 15 Russian checkpoints. At each, the mother sitting in the front of our car would pray furiously, loud enough for us to hear." All the checkpoints were manned by Russian soldiers with heavy weapons. 

"As we pulled up to the sixteenth checkpoint, we heard voices. Ukrainian voices. I felt overwhelming relief. The mother in the front of the car burst into tears. We were out."