When Serhii woke up to the news that a bomb had leveled the Mariupol Theater, where hundreds of people had taken refuge, he couldn't breathe. His wife and their two daughters were inside.
The day before the attack, the 56-year-old publisher, who lives in Kiev, received a call from his 30-year-old panicked daughter.[/B] She had not heard from her since March 1, when Russian forces intensified their siege of Mariupol, the strategic port city, firing a relentless barrage of rockets and bombs from land, sky and sea.
Without electricity and internet, Mariupol was largely cut off from the outside world. Serhii, who asked that only his first name be used for security reasons, desperately awaited any updates from his girls. Lacking communication with his family, he had no choice but to rely on the grim picture of life and death broadcast by Mariupol officials:
Residents lived in "medieval conditions," forced to melt snow to get water and cook food outside on open hearths. Non-military targets, including apartment buildings, the maternity hospital and the main administrative building, were reduced to rubble. Ceasefires were ignored and humanitarian corridors were blocked.
It was a situation that would have been unthinkable a few weeks ago in the bustling industrial city, once known for its seaside resorts and large steel plant, and now the scene of fierce fighting between Russian and Ukrainian forces.
Serhii was worried about his 56-year-old wife and daughters - especially the eldest, 36, who lives with a disability and needs daily medication. But his relief when he finally heard them was quickly replaced by a fear that "gnawed" at his mind and heart.
In a hurried conversation, his youngest daughter told him she was able to charge her phone on a diesel generator, but that she only had a short time to talk. She explained that their apartment had been destroyed by the bombing and she wasn't sure where they would be safe. He told her to go to the Theatre, in the centre of town, where officials were organising buses to evacuate residents.
"I almost went crazy"
"When I advised them to move to the theater as an evacuation site and, the next morning, I learned that this place was bombed... I almost went crazy, crazy," Serhii told CNN in a phone call from Kiev. "Because I actually sent them under the bombs."
The March 16 bombing of the Mariupol theater, where Ukrainian officials say about 1.300 people had sought refuge, was one of Russia's most brazen attacks on civilians since its invasion of Ukraine began on February 24.
Painted on the ground outside the building - in giant Cyrillic letters - was the word "CHILDREN". The message - large enough to be seen from the sky - was written near a public square that, before the war, was filled in the summer with children playing in a "jungle" gym and running among the fountains.
Russia has denied that its forces hit the theater, claiming instead that the Azov battalion, what they call the Ukrainian army's main presence in Mariupol, blew up the building.
After nearly 24 hours of hysteria, during which he wondered if his family was still alive, Serhii's phone rang. His daughter said he had left the theater to check on an elderly relative shortly before the bomb dropped. She turned in haste to find the building cut in half, with the 600- to 800-seat main auditorium completely flattened and people covered in blood emerging from the rubble.
Among them were her sister, who had hidden in a section of the theater that did not collapse, and their mother, who was pulled from the shelter along with other survivors. The three women, carrying nothing but a backpack with their necessary documents, managed to get into a small car with six others, paying the driver all the money they had - 2,000 national coins, equivalent to about $68.
She said they got out at a checkpoint full of Russian soldiers and walked about 12 miles down the road to Melekino, where their neighbors have a dacha (p./p]
"Like the famine of the 1930s."
The small village on the Sea of Azov is overflowing with displaced people who have fled Mariupol, his daughter told him, adding that there is no food or fuel left.
"In Melekino there is a real famine, a holodomor."
"In Melekino there is a real famine, a holodomor."
"In Melekino there is a real famine, a holodomor. People in the villages have no supplies, all the shops are closed," Serhii said, speaking of the famine that struck the Soviet Republic of Ukraine in the early 1930s, killing millions. The term "holodomor" comes from the Ukrainian words "famine" (holod) and "extermination" (mor).
Unable to travel himself, Serhii is now frantically searching for a driver to make the perilous journey to pick up his wife and daughters from the dacha where they are camping. But no luck yet, as this is a terrifying proposition: any volunteer would run the risk of being caught in crossfire or captured by the Russians.
Source.gr
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