3 years ago, fighting for Mariupol continued during these days. Mariupol residents who survived the blockade tell how they lost loved ones, saved others and continue to live without a home

1

Anastasia, 29 years old.

She is a wife of soldier Andriy and a mother of 7-year-old Ivan. She spent 86 days in Mariupol. She was one of the last to leave the “Azovstal” bunker with her son.

I was the head of a pharmacy in Mariupol.

From February 24 to March 3, two other employees and I sold people medicine — the line stretched along the entire street, people took everything, especially for children — food, diapers, medicine for fever. At that time, a lot of people were sick. On March 3, the pharmacy was hit. When we got there, the pharmacy was destroyed: the windows had been blown out by the shock waves, and looters had also walked over [it].

We hid in an apartment as a whole family from the shelling: me, my mother, my 4-year-old son, my uncle and his wife, and their two children — a 7-year-old daughter and a 15-year-old son.

Water, gas, and electricity disappeared almost immediately. We had to go outside to cook food. My husband would come every other day and bring board games. I still wonder where he found them. We slept in our clothes. We took turns on duty at night in the living room when the shelling was the heaviest. Our apartment was near “Azovstal” — we could see how they were shelling there. The person on duty looked out the window, and when the glow appeared, we had less than a minute to grab the children and run into the common vestibule. Sometimes we literally held the apartment door with our hands because it was shaking from the shock waves.

On March 10, the Russians entered the outskirts of the city, and my husband took us all to the “Azovstal” bunker, where he had fought.

Within a month, our house was bombed and it simply collapsed. There were 42 of us in the bunker, 11 of them were children. We were helped with equipment something like beds, they covered us with sweatshirts, and made pillows out of them. Dark, cold, damp — these are the words that best describe that bunker.

My son was the youngest there and constantly asked for food.

There was only one room in the bunker with food, and the husband and wife who prepared the meals had the keys to it. When my son woke up one night and said, “Mommy, I want to eat,” the woman with the keys heard him, went to the pantry, took out a handful of cookies, and brought them to our bed under her shirt. If anyone found out, it would be bad — everyone wanted to eat, and many had children.

Once a day, the couple went outside and cooked soup.

It was a nine-liter saucepan with a handful of pasta, and at best case — with a can of stew or canned fish, for flavor. Sometimes Andriy brought flour, biscuits, sugar. All this was put in a common stock. When someone had two already dried apples in their pocket, they cut them into thin slices and distributed them to the children.

We never talked about politics in the bunker.

We believed that everything would be fine. Andriy said that they were about to be promised weapons, they just had to wait a little longer. The soldiers believed that Mariupol would remain ours. There were conflicts only over food, when someone found something and didnʼt share it.

Sometimes I took my son outside so that he couldnʼt forget what sunlight was like.

Shelling often started when we went outside. We knew how long it was to hide after the artillery went off, and we knew the sounds of different shells. There were moments when I grabbed my son in my arms and run so fast that my shoes flew off my feet.

When the shelling of “Azovstal” began, all 42 people gathered together and waited.

It felt like the bunker was shaking in waves, like the door might burst open. At those moments, I held my son tighter so that if something happened, he would be there.

Then my husband disappeared.

He simply did not come for a day, two, a week. I did not hear anything about him for about a month. And then I met his warmate and gave him a note that our son and I had written together: “Dad, we love you very much and miss you. Your son Ivan.” Three days later, this warmate returned with an answer. My husband was seriously wounded and was lying in the factory hospital. We did not see each other again at the factory — he was taken as a prisoner.

A letter that Anastasia and her son wrote to Andriy.

Personal archives of heroes / «Бабель»

Andriyʼs reply letter.

Personal archives of heroes / «Бабель»

We evacuated in mid-May, when we no longer hoped to survive — there was no food left at all.

The evacuation was disrupted three or four times due to shelling. Our bunker was the last to be evacuated. The Velcro on my son’s boots, in which he had been wearing the entire blockade, came off, so I simply wrapped his feet with tape. And so we walked for over an hour on the road, covered by shellsʼ holes.

When we left “Azovstal”, I was met by Denys Prokopenko.

He knew that we were a military family, and the only thing he asked was not to tell anyone during the filtration that my husband was serving. He told us to come up with some kind of story. We made up that Andriy was a sailor and went on a voyage. We told my son that his father was fishing at sea, and he believed it.

At the filtration, they searched us and forced us to write that the Ukrainian military almost shot us.

I refused. I didn’t have a single photo of my husband on my phone, I told everyone that he was on a voyage. But a Russian soldier found a photo of my husband in military uniform somewhere and asked: “Is this your husband?”. I said “no”. He showed me another photo, where the three of us are together and Andriy is holding his son in his arms. After that, they silently sent all the relatives to one of the tents, and they left me and my son alone. We sat like that until the evening, until I asked to send my son to my mother. Before that, I gave her Vanya’s birth certificate, because I didn’t know what would happen next.

Six people interrogated me for six hours, showed me videos of torture, and promised to do the same.

In the video, peopleʼs ears and fingers were cut off. They told me that my husband had betrayed me and was already holding a high position in Russia. They said that I had to go to Donetsk and meet him there. We were in the filtration for three days. The Red Cross gave me a phone to call my mother in Kyiv. The first thing I told her was: "Just donʼt cry."

I went to my mother to fight for my husbandʼs return from captivity.

In the fall, Andriy was exchanged, and after rehabilitation, he returned to service. He says he will stand until the last prisoner is home. Me, Vanya, and my mother are now in Germany. My son studies at a local school and remotely at a Kyiv school — we do not abandon the idea of returning home. My uncle, his wife, and children left for the Czech Republic.

Grandma went to visit relatives in Russia.

They supposedly maintained neutrality, but when grandma started telling us who was shooting at us in Mariupol and how, conflicts began. They didn’t believe her. Grandma returned to Mariupol to her uncle’s surviving apartment. Then, instead of the destroyed two-room apartment, she was given a one-room apartment.

Not only those who are for Russia live in Mariupol.

There are people who simply have nowhere to go. Especially if they are pensioners. In Ukraine, they have no money to rent an apartment. My grandmother never supported Russia — a person simply lives her life.

Our Mariupol is now completely “foreign”.

There are many immigrants from Russia there.

2

Yanina, 27 years old.

In 2022, she evacuated part of her family from Mariupol. Her grandmother died under shelling.

My whole family lived in Mariupol — my mother, sister, father, and two grandmothers.

My parents have been divorced for many years. My father lived with his mother on Svobody Avenue. Their neighborhood was the most heavily shelled since the first days of the invasion. My mother, sister, and another grandmother all lived in the same apartment on Morsky Boulevard. This is all in the Left Bank district.

On March 2, I lost contact with the entire family.

Dad was bedridden, had two strokes, and had diabetes. Grandma turned 88 on March 8, 2022. I knew they wouldnʼt take care of themselves. On March 10, my mom called me — she was making something to eat outside, asking if they could be evacuated. It was impossible — evacuation was only possible from the right bank. All roads to the left bank were blocked.

In March, in one of the Mariupol chats, I saw a photo of my fatherʼs house — Something burned down [instead of the house] only left on its place.

Through acquaintances, I found my fatherʼs neighbour. She said that my grandmother died from the blast wave on the night of March 13. And on March 20, it had already reached the house itself. There were no windows or doors then. My father called for help and they heard him, carried him out of the burning entrance, but no one knew where exactly. My mother and sister went to the house more than once, risking their lives, to look for him. Each time, we walked kilometers among the destroyed houses, among the corpses and graves in the yards.

Personal archives of heroes / «Бабель»

The house and apartment where Yaninaʼs father and grandmother lived.

Personal archives of heroes / «Бабель»

They found him in another entrance, half-naked on the cold floor.

His limbs were frozen. There was no medicine. He was dying. My mother handed him over to volunteers of the so-called "DPR", who evacuated him from Mariupol. And just in case, I wrote my phone number on a copy of his passport. We didnʼt know where they took him.

On April 19, my dadʼs birthday, I received a text message that he was in the hospital in Novoazovsk.

It was written by an another patient. He was later transferred to Makiivka. There I managed to find people who agreed to visit him and through whom he and I sometimes exchanged voice messages.

In Mariupol, the “DPR” militants and “Kadyrovites” were mocking people.

For fun, they would pour out boxes of cookies and watch people almost fight over them. Or they could just throw food from cars into the crowd. My mother once got a bucket of rotten chicken hearts. She marinated them in vinegar, cooked porridge on the fire, and said that it was a feast for the stomach. There was almost no food left. Some of our neighbours went over to the Russian side.

In May, things got quieter on the left bank — every shelling was on “Azovstal”.

I decided to take my mother, sister, and grandmother through Donetsk to Russia and Europe. After several attempts, a carrier was found. They came up with a legend that my mother was going to teach Russian at a school. Our only adequate Russian relative agreed to let them give her address at the border. There was an interrogation at the Russian border, but everything worked out.

We met in Riga and from there we returned to Ukraine.

Dad was brought to us from Makiivka on August 16, 2022. He was not cared for there, the conditions were terrible. A year later he died. It happened suddenly.

Our relatives remain in Mariupol, but I donʼt consider them as relatives anymore — they chose Russia.

There are friends of my father in the city who sometimes keep in touch with us, they are pro-Ukrainian. Young people, my former classmates, have left the city. I now live in two countries. And my mother, sister and grandmother are in Ukraine.

3

Maksym, an entrepreneur from Mariupol.

Until the end of March 2022, he was taking people out of the city and bringing in food at his own expense.

On February 24th, my family and I woke up in Mariupol, the city where I had lived my whole life.

I had a business and a home there. The first thing I did was take my wife and daughter to a safe place.

Many of my relatives and friends remained in the city — I wanted to get them out.

My makeshift base was in our summer house in Melekyne — a village 20 kilometers from Mariupol. Many people were evacuated there, and from there I made my way to Mariupol.

I managed to make a maximum of three trips in my car per day.

At first I drove acquaintances, then the “word of mouth” started working and acquaintances of acquaintances started contacting me. I took everyone to the nearest villages: Melekyne, Manhush, and Nikolske. Then people decided for themselves where to go.

All the roads were controlled by the Russians.

If you turn “the wrong way”, you’ll be met by a horde of soldiers: they’ll wring your hands, search you, and give you “warnings”. Sometimes I walked so as not to attract attention and puncture my tires — the roads were broken and strewn with debris.

People were starving in Mariupol.

I asked everyone who went to the city to pick up relatives to bring food. I myself first looked for it in Zaporizhia. When the shelves there became empty, I went to Dnipro. I brought food from there. There were cases when people evacuated from Mariupol and took food with them. I had to argue and convince them to leave it for those who could not leave.

The streets were covered with bodies, not just bodies, but body parts also.

People quickly got used to it. There was always a shovel at hand to bury the dead. Once a mine fell right next to the car when I was delivering aid. Two people were injured, and I only had a concussion. I saw part of the house collapse. People were trapped, I heard their screams and couldnʼt help. And then everything went quiet.

I didnʼt have time to save my father.

I found him already dead — he died from the shock wave.

The local authorities left in the first days and there was no help with evacuation or food supplies.

Some people behaved unworthily.

Someone took money for evacuation, left themselves, and other people [who paid] were left trapped. Someone asked to bring gasoline to leave, and when I brought it, they asked me to leave them the canister, and they seemed to think about it [leaving or not]. Although this gasoline could save someoneʼs life.

At the end of March, I stopped going to Mariupol.

The Russians didnʼt let me in, even though I tried and stood in lines to enter. In April, people found themselves in a blockade.

When my family and I went to the west of the country, I became disappointed in people.

We had no money, no business, but people rented us housing for three times the usual price. They rented it out to people who had left for Germany themselves. Everyone took the maximum from us. I sold my car for a pittance so that there would be at least some money.

At the end of 2022, my wife and daughter and I moved to Canada.

For these two years, I did everything I could to give my daughter a chance at a secure future.

I donʼt know if Iʼll return to Mariupol.

It will be hard for me to walk my native streets, to drive past the house where my father lived. Those who waited out the blockade in the basements are not so traumatized. But I saw things I will never forget.

So that the people of Mariupol can return home, support the Armed Forces of Ukraine, donate to the "Come Back Alive" Fund.