With up to 100,000 residents believed to be trapped inside the city, officials from Russia and Ukraine said on Thursday they had agreed on a temporary ceasefire that would allow civilians to evacuate and humanitarian aid to enter. The story goes on under the ad Those who have already escaped tell stories of hunger, fear and survival. Some trembled with emotion as they arrived safely in Zaporizhzhia, 140 miles northwest. Others were rushed to hospital for injuries sustained in the city or on insidious streets outside. Few have fled without a trace, and with reports of forced deportations to Russia, some have made their way back to try to save them. The Washington Post interviewed more than 50 people who survived the city’s horror. Here are some of their stories. “We are the flies and [the Russians] they are trying to erase us one by one “. – Galina Morokhovska As the Russian noose in Mariupol tightened, 59-year-old Galina Morokhovska focused on the 172 mouths she had to feed. Prepare batches of 60 liters of borscht, or soup from whatever he could find. He also put portions of boiled river water. “This war tasted like boiling water,” he said. The downtown hostel he ran had become a haven for people fleeing fighting on the outskirts of the city since the early days of the war: women, children and breastfeeding babies. But in Mariupol there was no shelter. “Immediately hit,” said Morohovska from a hospital bed in the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine. The right side of her face was exfoliated and covered with green antiseptic, her body full of shrapnel. “Everything fell apart as if it had never existed before,” he said of the hostel he ran for nine years. There were five people upstairs when the blast hit the building on March 15. everyone else was in the basement. “It’s like there are a lot of flies you try to hit,” he said. “We are the flies, and [the Russians] they try to erase us one by one, but we are human beings “. The story goes on under the ad A man who was delivering water and a 40-year-old woman who was helping to operate the hostel died. Morokhovska’s daughter, who is being treated for a head injury and lost an eye, was under the rubble. Her son-in-law dragged her out and took them all to the hospital in Mariupol, despite his own injuries. The three of them spent two nights there. The windows of the hospital had been blown up by nearby explosions. “It is so unhealthy, everything is covered in blood,” Morokhovska said. “People are lying on the floor.” Her daughter needed better treatment because she was diabetic and had no insulin. They heard that people had begun to be able to leave the city. They gathered her grandchildren, who waited two days in the basement of the hostel, not knowing if their mother was alive or dead, and set off for Zaporizhia. “Mariupol is no longer the same. “Dark, black,” he said. “I do not know when the light will come again.” “We decided we had to leave the city because we had nowhere to live.” – Anna For some, the fears of those left behind are enough to make them brave by returning to the city from which they left in terror. Anna, 21, escaped from Mariupol with her boyfriend and family after the apartment building where she was sheltered was hit by a Russian strike on March 13. “There was a feeling that it was a house of playing cards, that it could be demolished at any time,” he said. “After that, we decided we had to leave the city, because we had nowhere to live.” They grabbed their already full suitcases and spent the night in a neighbor’s basement before heading to Ukrainian-occupied territory. Grad missiles hit near their escort on the road. “It was incredibly scary,” he said. “Until the end of my life, I will not forget these moments.” The story goes on under the ad There was a system in Mariupol, he said, that spread word of mouth. If you saw a dead body on the street, it was customary to cover it with a blanket. If you knew who they were, you would have to write their name and put it in a bottle next to the corpse. He never saw anyone he knew. Nightmares are still coming at night. “And they touch the soul,” he said. But it is not enough to stop her from trying to get back inside. Her boyfriend’s grandmother has been left behind, and they had just heard that some of the remaining residents of Mariupol were being transferred to Russia against their will. They fear that if they do not save her, she will be driven out and resettled against her will. Her boyfriend’s mother is sitting on the bench next to her as they try to get permission from Ukraine to go back to Mariupol. She dips her head in her hands, too upset to speak. She has not heard from her mother since March 2, the day communications in the city were cut off. “I’m scared,” Anna said. “But I realize that if we do not, it will be very difficult to live with this guilt.” The story goes on under the ad “We feel lucky because all the houses in the neighborhood, people were injured or killed.” – Tania Tania and Dimitris moved to Mariupol with their 13-year-old daughter five years ago in search of more opportunities. The port city offered more opportunities. Tania, 34, opened a nail institute. After the interruption of communications on March 2, followed by gas and electricity, it took only a few days for the city to end in chaos. “As soon as people realized that the shops would not open, the looting began,” he said. After communications were cut off on March 2, followed by gas and electricity, Mariupol fell into chaos. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: The Washington Post) Dimitris, 46, and some of the men in the building would take turns guarding it. People broke into cash registers and stole televisions, but some of the loot was useless, said Tanya. A flat screen TV was the last thing anyone in their ruined city needed. Tania filmed the ATMs that were raided after the gas, electricity and communications were cut off in the besieged city of Mariupol. (Video: The Washington Post, Photo: The Washington Post) The family exchanged what they could. “We changed a liter of gasoline into flour,” said Dimitris. At first, people crowded around one of the town squares, as it was the only place where there was a faint signal from the cell phone. But then that too was bombed. “We feel lucky because all the houses in the neighborhood, people were injured or killed,” Tania said. Dimitris pulled out an injured woman and child. When they heard that the people were gone, they got organized and went out with an escort of 32 other cars from their neighborhood. Tanya and her partner Dmitri escaped from Mariupol accompanied by 32 other cars from their neighborhood. (Video: Courtesy of Tanya from Mariupol, Photo: Courtesy of Tanya from Mariupol) The car in front has the Russian world “PEOPLE” stuck in the rear window to show that they are citizens. As soon as they were expelled, they realized how completely their city had been destroyed. “A nightmare,” Dmitri murmured as Tanya filmed the disaster outside the window. They were driving next to a corpse covered with a blanket. But fleeing the city did not mean he was out of danger. They arrived at the first checkpoint held by Russian-backed separatists in the village of Poselok Moriakov, but at the second there was a line of about 300 cars. Then they started firing and released their vehicles. “We were all lying under the cars,” Tania said. “Some people were in the ditch.” The mortar shells fell about 10 meters away. Someone was injured. they saw the person being pulled into the back seat of a car before they piled up on their own and sped off. “We were lucky,” he said.
Oleksander and Katharina Chamin and Yarolslav “On the street we lived in, out of 10 houses, only two are standing.” – Alexander The Chamin family drove 140 miles from Mariupol to secure a car that had been half-destroyed by an explosion. In the second week of the Russian siege, they began to go more and more to the basement where there was a shelter with 14 neighbors, four cats and a dog. But last week they just left. “We went to the bathroom quickly, and that was it,” said Oleksander, 34. “Thank God we had food and water. we were prepared “. By March 10, the bombing was on the doorstep. “We felt the building tremble, as if it were right next to the house,” he said. “Then a bomb basically hit the yard.” The doors and windows in the house burst. “We went up the stairs and looked, there were five cars that were damaged.” It was one of the worst blows ever. “We knew it would be our only way out.” He changed the spare tire and borrowed another from a friend, who told him that people were able to escape the city. This is how the car started, even with all its side being pressed by the force of the explosion. “On the street we lived in, out of 10 houses, only two are standing,” he said. “Ours and our neighbors.” “I can not imagine seeing it with my own eyes.” – Anastasia Hrechkina By the time Anastasiya Hrechkina was found hitchhiking on the side of the road in her hometown of Mariupol, the 22-year-old project manager had spent three weeks in survival mode. He was glad he bought 44 pounds of potatoes from a man who sold them in the trunk of his car. He had cried when he cut the gas, because the dough he had prepared would be lost – and he could not save food. He had avoided the neighboring apartment building after a man who was killed in an air raid was buried in the front yard. By the end of the third week, her family was running out of water. It was very dangerous to walk to the makeshift well. He knew they had to leave – but they did not have a car.
