The corpses of charred buildings stand against the low, rainy sky of the martyr city of Mariupol. As the last Ukrainian defenders surrender to the Russians, some bystanders mourn their lost future.
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Three months of fighting left an apocalyptic landscape in many parts of the city, driving hundreds of thousands of people to flee and an unknown but undoubtedly enormous death toll.
Here the avenues belong to the Russian military and their Separatist allies, who seized them at the cost of destroying a port city that had a population of more than half a million before the battle.
AFP journalists observed the extent of the damage during a press trip organized by the Russian Defense Ministry.
On this May 18, we no longer hear the incessant cannonades of the past few weeks, because the last Ukrainian soldiers are surrendering on the Azovstal steel compound. However, the Russian army did not allow the media to go near the huge steel plant that has become a symbol of bitter Ukrainian resistance.
The pro-Russian authorities promised to turn Mariupol into a health resort. A hard-to-imagine project in this tangle of sheet metal and rubble, building blocks torn open by rockets and grenades.
With the end of the fighting, the residents venture out in search of food. The speakers show their desperation at this city, which Moscow says it has “liberated” from a neo-Nazi yoke.
“I hope for nothing more”
Angela Kopytsa, bleached hair, rushes ahead of a military patrol. She then responds to AFP in Russian with the accent characteristic of Ukraine’s Donetsk region, which considers Russia an independent republic.
“What else can I hope for? What do you say when the house is destroyed, when life is destroyed?” says the 52-year-old former kindergarten teacher.
“There is no work, no food, no water. With the children, the grandson, we shared a spoonful” of food, she continues, crying for the newborns “who died of hunger during childbirth”.
“What future? I hope for nothing more,” she concludes, before shedding tears and running.
Elena Ilina, 55, worked as a professor at the Mariupol Technical University in the IT department. His apartment burned down, “there was nothing left”. She now lives with her daughter and son-in-law.
His only wish: to find his life beforehand.
“I wish I could live in my apartment in peacetime and talk to my kids,” she says. His voice breaks into a sob.
“Ukrainians”
The Russian army then takes the journalists to the city zoo. Lions, bears and other beasts stand there in gloomy cages, but appear healthy.
Oksana Krichtafovitch, who was a cook at a hotel in Mariupol, explains that she was recruited to take care of the animals. A new life at 41.
She feeds cattle, milks cows and knows that she is better off than others because she is being fed for her work.
“The left bank restaurant where I worked is destroyed. I used to cook there, now my customers, it’s them, she says while carrying a bowl into the raccoons’ cage.
She shows a little optimism, noting that when Mariupol “misses everything, you get used to it, you adapt, you survive”.
Sergei Pugatch, 60, works as a caretaker at the zoo.
Before the fighting, he worked on the railway lines of the Azovstal industrial complex, then the city’s main employer, which has now been largely destroyed.
When Russia launched its offensive in late February, he had just two months before retiring after 30 years of service. Now he doesn’t know if he will ever receive his pension.
But there’s no point in complaining.
“The Ukrainian people are not lazy people. As soon as the shooting stopped, people came out of the basements and looked for work. Some are already working,” Sergei announces proudly.