Gabriela Gómez, a young Cuban who moved to Mariúpol a few years ago in search of a quiet life, is among the many foreigners affected by the presence of the Ukrainian army in the city’s residential areas.
Gabriela, rescued by a Chechen patrol and evacuated to Russia, tells of her fear when soldiers from the nationalist Azov battalion occupied the top three floors of the building where she lived and used them as a trench.
«I was living a nightmare I never thought I could leave. Today I only remember the horror I could feel in Mariupol,” said Gomez, who arrived in Ukraine in 2019.
Gabriela worked at the MSC cruise line, where she met her partner Igor Ivanovich, who suggested that she marry her and move to Mariupol.
When he heard about the military operation in Ukraine on the news, Gómez thought that the authorities would protect them at the beginning of the conflict, but that didn’t happen.
“I couldn’t believe that the Ukrainians were afraid of the Ukrainians themselves, I didn’t know it was the Azov army, I didn’t know it was the DNR, they had to explain it to me,” he detailed that once the building was taken, you took away all the services.
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“We had nothing. On March 1, the Ukrainians turned off the electricity; They turned off the power and turned it back on at 10:00 p.m. at night, and on March 2, they took it off and it never came back.
Gómez says there was a time when it was very dangerous to go out on the streets. “I stopped going into the building where I was cooking and my neighbors came to my house to see me because they thought something had happened to me,” he said.
The Russian army was the one that helped
«I waited for Ukraine to help me and I kept waiting until the building burned down, they left us without communication; If you’re supposed to be looking after your people in a war, how do you keep them incommunicado?
Amid the tense situation, the young Cuban realized that the Russian army was the one helping the populace while she watched the Ukrainians destroy her city.
“In the end we opened the door because the part where we had to get out was on fire and We realized that the Russian soldiers would not shoot us“, he mentioned.
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The Russians told them where they could be safe, so they ran to a basement and took refuge there. Days later, they were evacuated from the area and taken to Russia.
«By the time I was in Russia I felt calm because what I really wanted was to go out, I didn’t want to hear ‘Samaliot’ as they say anymore, I didn’t want to hear any more bombs, I didn’t want to hear any more guns«.
Once safe, her first call was to her mother, who desperately didn’t want to hear from her. “She was hysterical, she didn’t tell me, but then when I spoke to my family, they told me, ‘Your mother wouldn’t eat, she had trouble sleeping.’ Pretty difficult for any mother who has a child in danger.
Now the couple wants to stay in Russia. “I feel at home in Russia. I am often asked: why don’t you want to live in Spain or somewhere else? I don’t feel at home there,” said Ivanovich. (RT News)