Mariupol, Ukraine, April 29 – Residents of Mariupol this week told the horrors of fighting around their now-ruined city as they sifted through the rubble for belongings, cooked roadside meals or just stared at the charred building shells around them hereabouts.
“It was awful… like movies showing the last days of the planet – the same thing happened here,” said Viktoria Nikolayeva, 54, who like many residents lived in a basement with her family while Russian and Ukrainian forces fought overhead.
“We were hungry, the child cried when the Grad grenades (multiple rocket launchers) hit near the house. We thought this is it, the end. It can’t be described… I can’t put it into words,” she tearfully told Reuters.
Rescue workers were seen on the streets collecting the bodies of those who did not survive the weeks of fighting.
Mariupol in south-eastern Ukraine saw some of the heaviest fighting of the war so far, and much of the port city now lies in ruins. Russia declared victory there last week, but hundreds of Ukrainian forces and civilians remain trapped in the city’s vast industrial complex at the Azovstal Steel Works.
The office of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said an operation to evacuate civilians from the plant was planned on Friday, but gave no details. Previous evacuation attempts have failed.
Local residents sit on a bench near an apartment building damaged during the Ukraine-Russia conflict in the southern port city of Mariupol, Ukraine, April 28, 2022. REUTERS/Alexander Ermochenko
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Russia has denied attacking civilians in a so-called “special operation” to disarm and protect Ukraine from fascists. Ukraine and the West say the fascist charge is unfounded and the war is an unprovoked act of aggression.
In the shadow of Mariupol’s devastated apartment blocks – many missing walls, as well as windows and balconies – a woman wearily cut an onion on a table set in the spring sun. A cyclist drove by. A man was loading furniture onto a truck.
A makeshift wooden cross – one of many in the city – marked the spot near a block of flats where someone had been hastily and temporarily buried during the fighting.
Mayor Vadym Boichenko said tens of thousands of civilians were killed in Mariupol. Organizations such as the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations estimate thousands have died.
“It was a massacre. The scariest thing was when the shells flew overhead. Shells, shells and all that, you couldn’t survive it. And yet we did it,” said Vitaliy Kudasov, 71.
“A grenade exploded eight meters away… I didn’t make it to the basement in time, I felt the heat on my face. But whatever, thank God everything will be fine,” he added.
Reporting by Reuters Television Writing by Gareth Jones Editing by Frances Kerry