On 28 March 2022, we went to Mariupol to assess the evolution of the situation. On the spot we found civilians who had stayed in their cellars for a month, and who explained to us how the municipal authorities, including the mayor, had fled Marioupol as soon as the Russian special military operation began and abandoned the inhabitants to their fate.
At the eastern entrance to Marioupol, we discover a church destroyed by the bombardments that hit this area. A checkpoint has been set up there by soldiers of the DPR (Donetsk People’s Republic) people’s militia, to check the vehicles of civilians evacuating the town, and especially to check whether the men evacuating are not Ukrainian soldiers disguised as civilians.
To do this, men have to show their torso, back, arms and calves, in order to show if they have any traces related to the carrying and use of weapons (such as bruises on the shoulder), or tattoos of the Nazi type.
We continue west towards the area where fighting is still going on to finish clearing the area of Azov fighters. We find a building where the top floors have burnt down and many civilians are still living in the cellars.
Some refuse to evacuate because they do not want to leave their homes, others because they are waiting to hear from their relatives who are closer to the city centre before evacuating together.
We discovered six graves at the foot of the building, the inhabitants explained to us that they had buried seven people who had died during the fighting, and that they could not bring them to the cemetery.
Several inhabitants tell us of their anger at having been abandoned by the municipal authorities who fled Mariupol as soon as the Russian special military operation began, and left the inhabitants without a mayor, and without anyone to organise aid to the population.
Worse, while these municipal authorities knew that there would be fighting in Mariupol, they chose not to evacuate civilians as long as it was possible and the city was not totally surrounded, and simply told people to go down to the bomb shelters and wait it out!
See the report filmed on the spot, with French subtitles:
Off-camera, some people told us that they only received initial humanitarian aid when Russian soldiers and DPR people’s militia arrived. The soldiers gave their rations, water, and bread to the people of Mariupol, who had received nothing from the Ukrainian soldiers except an order to leave their flats and move in.
Confirming other testimonies, Dima explains that the large buildings were destroyed more than other houses, because the Ukrainian soldiers were sitting there to shoot, or to correct their shots. The Russian army spotted them thanks to their radio frequencies, and fired at the flats where their signals came from.
We were able to talk to DPR soldiers and the Kadyrov battalion on the spot, who explained why it is taking so long to complete the clearance of Mariupol. The bomb shelters at the Azovstal and Ilich factories run for kilometres, on several levels, and the fighters of the Azov regiment have taken care to murder the engineers and workers who have been working in these factories for decades, because they know where all the entrances to the bomb shelters are. So there is no alternative but to destroy the buildings above these shelters to expose the entrances and then launch the assault in the underground itself!
The inhabitants lacked everything, so we decided to return the next day to bring them help. But when we arrived on 29 March 2022, we learned that the soldiers of the 9th regiment of the DPR People’s Militia had discovered around 100 civilians in the basement of Mariupol’s maternity ward No. 2, which is located right in the combat zone. Shots were fired all around the maternity ward, preventing ambulances from approaching to evacuate five people from there: two wounded, an infant, an invalid and his wife. So we decide to change our plans and go there with the food we bought, to help the remaining civilians and empty our cars, before loading the five people in.
As my car has the largest flat space, we put in a man who had his leg broken by a shell explosion four days ago. The car of a DPR deputy accompanying us will accommodate an old invalid man in a wheelchair and his wife, and the car of the 9th Regiment commander will carry a woman who was wounded by shrapnel while still pregnant and who has just given birth in the basement of the maternity hospital.
We stop in Vinogradnoye so that the commander of the health centre can tell us where each person should be sent. The young woman and her baby are sent immediately to Novoazovsk, to the hospital, as her thigh injury is serious and requires an emergency operation. We take the man with the leg injury and the elderly invalid to Bezymennoye, the tented camp set up by the Ministry of Emergency Situations (MSU) to accommodate the refugees. There, an ambulance picked them up and took them to hospital.
Watch the video:
INTERNATIONALIST 360° 