• About
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms
  • Contact
Friday, January 27, 2023
Financial Eye News
  • Home
  • Markets
    • Stock Market News
    • Commodities
    • Forex
    • Renewables
  • Cryptocurrency
    • Ultimate Guide to Crypto
  • Business
    • News
    • Companies
    • Technology
    • Climate
    • Politics
  • Reports
    • Ultimate Guide to Crypto
  • VideosNew
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Markets
    • Stock Market News
    • Commodities
    • Forex
    • Renewables
  • Cryptocurrency
    • Ultimate Guide to Crypto
  • Business
    • News
    • Companies
    • Technology
    • Climate
    • Politics
  • Reports
    • Ultimate Guide to Crypto
  • VideosNew
No Result
View All Result
Financial Eye News
No Result
View All Result

‘Hell on earth’: survivors recount Mariupol’s annihilation under Russian bombs

March 20, 2022
in News
Reading Time: 4 mins read
50 1
ADVERTISEMENT

In the besieged city of Mariupol, scene of the heaviest fighting in Russia’s three-week war on Ukraine, people are now so hungry they are killing stray dogs for food.

Dmytro, a businessman who left the city on Tuesday, said friends told him they resorted to this desperate measure in the past few days after their supplies ran out.

“You hear the words but it’s impossible to really take them in, to believe this is happening,” he said. “It is hell on earth.”

Once one of Ukraine’s most important ports, Mariupol is now a charnel house, a city of ghosts. For more than two weeks it has been subjected to a Russian bombardment of such intensity that it has turned whole neighbourhoods into piles of smouldering rubble.

Everything was burning, there were corpses everywhere, and I was just walking through, picking up a cabbage here, a carrot there, knowing it meant my family would live another day or two

After days of punishing aerial and artillery assaults that broke Mariupol’s three lines of defensive fortifications, Russian troops have now entered the city centre, with heavy fighting reported on some of its main shopping streets and near Theatre Square, a key landmark.

Russian forces are already in control of Livoberezhnyi Raion, or left-bank district, in the east of the city, as well as Mikroraiony 17-23, a string of residential neighbourhoods in the north-east, said Anna Romanenko, a Ukrainian journalist who is in close contact with Ukrainian forces there. “The front line runs right through Mariupol now,” she said.

Dmytro, who declined to give his surname, was one of a number of Mariupol residents the Financial Times contacted by phone after they had been evacuated over the past week to the Ukrainian-controlled city of Zaporizhzhia, about 230km to the west. All described an assault so brutal it has destroyed the city, killed and maimed countless civilians and left deep scars on the survivors.

Mykola Osichenko, chief executive of Mariupol TV, said his abiding memory of the past three weeks was the feeling of utter powerlessness. “When the bombs fell, I would routinely cover my son with my body,” he said. “But I knew that I couldn’t really protect him, that it was an act of desperation.”

Strategically located on the Sea of Azov, the gateway to the Black Sea, Mariupol was in Russia’s crosshairs from the start of the war. From just a few days in, its forces started launching missiles at the city in an onslaught that severed its electricity, gas and water supplies and left its 400,000 residents cowering in freezing shelters, hugging for warmth. Mariupol authorities said 2,400 residents of the city had been killed since Russia launched its invasion.

Survivors described desperate attempts to stock up on supplies while bombs exploded around them. Dmytro said he visited the central market last Sunday after it had been flattened by a Russian artillery attack.

“Everything was burning, there were corpses everywhere, and I was just walking through, picking up a cabbage here, a carrot there, knowing it meant my family would live another day or two,” he said. “You become completely desensitised.”

ADVERTISEMENT

Witnesses depicted post-apocalyptic scenes of stray dogs eating the remains of bombing victims who lay unburied on the street. Civilian casualties have been placed in mass graves or buried in the courtyards of houses: proper funerals are too dangerous.

Russia’s medieval-style siege of Mariupol also left its residents facing an acute shortage of both food and water. With no gas, they cook food on camp fires made from broken furniture in the courtyards of their houses.

Osichenko said people in his house, desperately thirsty, drained water from radiators, collected and melted snow and also scoured local parks for freshwater streams. “But queues would form there and that was a perfect target for Russian missiles,” he said. The streams also fell out of favour because they quickly became contaminated by corpses.

Images posted on social media have chronicled the extent of the devastation — huge apartment blocks turned into infernos after suffering a direct hit, the flames sending vast columns of black smoke into the sky, roads strewn with the burnt-out hulks of ruined buses and cars reduced to mangled heaps of metal, the 10m crater left by a bomb dropped on one of Mariupol’s children’s hospitals.

Authorities raised the alarm after Russian planes bombed the city’s main municipal theatre last Wednesday, raising fears for the hundreds of women and children who had been using its cellar as an air-raid shelter. It’s still unclear how many people were killed or injured in the attack. Russia denies targeting civilians and has accused the Ukrainian authorities of using them as human shields.

Now residents face a new danger: evacuation to parts of Russia, where an uncertain fate awaits them. Potential evacuees are first questioned by Russian officials, who “test them to see if they are trustworthy”, said Romanenko. “They check their social media feeds for anything anti-Russian.”

She said Russian forces sent a friend of hers from the Livoberezhnyi district to Novoazovsk, a small town to the east of Mariupol that is controlled by pro-Russian separatists. “They interrogated him, took away his Ukrainian passport and sent him to Rostov, across the border in Russia,” she said. She hasn’t heard from him since.

Many other residents have taken advantage of the rare moments of calm between bouts of shelling to leave Mariupol for Ukrainian-controlled territory, forming long convoys of private cars that are forced to pass a gauntlet of dozens of Russian checkpoints.

Romanenko, who was born and grew up in Mariupol and has lived there all her life, is now in Zaporizhzhia, a refugee. She said she was heartbroken over the fate of her city — but is determined to return, one day, “and do everything I can to rebuild it”.

“I will go back once the Russians have gone,” she said. “It’s where all my ancestors are buried. I can’t be happy anywhere else.”



Source: Financial Times

Share6Tweet4Share1SendShareSend

Related Posts

News

Felipe Valls, 89, Whose Cuban Restaurant Became a Political Hub, Dies

December 5, 2022
News

Hertz settles lawsuits over hundreds of alleged false arrests | CNN Business

December 5, 2022
News

Russian Cruise Missiles Were Made Just Months Ago Despite Sanctions

December 5, 2022
News

Sunak dilutes housebuilding pledge in face of Tory revolt

December 5, 2022
News

US rail industry: ESG investors on track with better worker deal

December 5, 2022
News

Arizona Certifies Midterm Results After G.O.P. Resistance

December 5, 2022

Popular Stories

  • AIG to launch cut-price IPO of life and asset management unit

    48 shares
    Share 19 Tweet 12
  • EY boss targets $10bn boost from Silicon Valley tie-ups after break-up

    32 shares
    Share 13 Tweet 8
  • Tesla delays plan to restore Shanghai output to pre-lockdown levels -memo

    32 shares
    Share 13 Tweet 8
  • TV production giant Banijay to go public via Arnault-backed Spac

    30 shares
    Share 12 Tweet 8
  • Nio to Invest $32.8M Building R&D Labs in Shanghai By Financial Eye

    30 shares
    Share 12 Tweet 8
ADVERTISEMENT

Latest News

Taylor Swift Fans Sue Ticketmaster’s Parent Company

December 5, 2022

Fisker trades down following price cut at Citi By Financial Eye

December 5, 2022

UAW president faces run-off election as reformers make gains

December 5, 2022

Felipe Valls, 89, Whose Cuban Restaurant Became a Political Hub, Dies

December 5, 2022

Longroad buys 98-MW solar farm in California

December 5, 2022
Facebook Twitter LinkedIn

Financial Eye is one of the most trusted news sources for Financial News, global news and local USA news, we provide the news from the most trusted sources.

LEARN MORE »

Recent News

  • Taylor Swift Fans Sue Ticketmaster’s Parent Company
  • Fisker trades down following price cut at Citi By Financial Eye
  • UAW president faces run-off election as reformers make gains

Sections

  • Business
  • Climate
  • Commodities
  • Companies
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Cryptocurrency
  • Forex
  • Green Energy
  • Latest Financial News
  • News
  • Politics
  • Stock Market News
  • Technology
  • Videos

© 2022 Financial Eye News Media

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Markets
    • Stock Market News
    • Commodities
    • Forex
    • Renewables
  • Cryptocurrency
    • Ultimate Guide to Crypto
  • Business
    • News
    • Companies
    • Technology
    • Climate
    • Politics
  • Reports
    • Ultimate Guide to Crypto
  • Videos

© 2022 Financial Eye News Media

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In

Subscribe To Our Daily News Round-Up.

The top ten most-read stories direct to your inbox

You have Successfully Subscribed!

You have Successfully Subscribed!

This website uses cookies. By continuing to use this website you are giving consent to cookies being used. Visit our Privacy and Cookie Policy.