After nearly two months trapped inside the strategic Ukrainian port city of Mariupol, a woman named Yuliia and her three daughters finally escaped with stories almost too horrific to tell.
Yuliia, who shared her video diary with a friend in the U.K. who gave it to the BBC, says she and her kids were excited every time it rained because it meant they would have water to drink. “When it started to rain, first of all, they were able to drink from the puddle and that water was so, so tasty,” she said in the video diary. “Then they found some pans to fill with water.”
Yuliia, who hid with her children in a makeshift bomb shelter in the bottom of her destroyed apartment block, said she fed her children their one meal a day at bedtime so they could sleep on a full stomach. “I had money but I couldn’t buy anything because there was nothing anywhere, everything was broken, everything was looted and destroyed.”
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She and her kids, ages 11, 6, and 3, finally made it to relative safety in Zaporizhzhia. They are being joined by hundreds of other Ukrainian civilians, including some who are finally being evacuated out of the Azovstal steel mill—along with the dead bodies the survivors had to pile up in one of the underground tunnels. Drone images over the mill show trucks reportedly carrying the bodies to mass graves. It is unclear who is managing the burials.
Most of the 1,000 civilians who are hiding in the mill have some affiliation with it, such as employees like Natalia Usmanova, who told Reuters about her experience. “The shelling was so strong and it kept hitting near us. At the exit of the bomb shelter, on the top few steps one could breathe, as there was not enough oxygen. I was afraid to even walk out and breathe some fresh air,” she said. “We did not see any sunlight. We were scared.”
She described the lack of hygiene, including having to use a bag for a toilet at night and eating only one meal a day. “I feared that the bunker would not withstand it—I had terrible fear,” Usmanova told Reuters. “When the bunker started to shake, I was hysterical, my husband can vouch for that. I was so worried the bunker would cave in.”
Evacuation efforts were hampered Sunday and Monday because of sporadic shelling and reports from inside, including from Ukrainian forces holed up with civilians, say the situation is increasingly dire.
Some of those evacuated were taken to a Russian “filtration center” set up in Bezimenne about 15 miles away, according to CNN. Once registered, they are taken farther into Russia.
Meanwhile, Ukraine said it sank two Russian military vessels in the Black Sea with drone strikes, showing video of Bayraktar TB-2 armed drones hitting two Raptor-class patrol boats. Outside sources have not confirmed the strike.
