Defenders put Mariupol dead at 20,000 after four weeks of siege

Rooted to the spot in fear, Elena Mitieva watched from her seventh-floor flat as her Mariupol neighbourhood disintegrated under Russian bombardment.

It began as she observed a family huddled around a fire for warmth in sub-zero temperatures in the courtyard of a block opposite where heating, water and electricity had been cut a fortnight earlier. The mother tried to cook borscht — a beetroot soup — for her children on the open flames.

The first bomb hit the building, smashing the façade and setting it alight. The second and third hit the yard, and the family disappeared.

“Later we went to check on my son’s girlfriend and her family, to give them food,” Mitieva told The Times, after escaping to the Russian-occupied territory three days ago. “We spent half an hour there with them. On the way back we came across the four bodies. We had to climb over them and wade through a river of blood to get home.”

Some 20,000 people have been killed in Russia’s ruthless assault on the port city, according to Ukrainian estimates. Yesterday municipal authorities said they believed that on March 16 a further 300 people, mostly women and children, had been killed in a Russian airstrike on a theatre with the word “children” painted on the ground outside.

The exact number of dead in the city, once home to 450,000 people, is impossible to determine. It has been under constant Russian artillery attacks and airstrikes since February 24, hampering the collection and burial of bodies. Survivors told The Times they had tried to bury bodies in their courtyards, but the number was overwhelming. Yesterday UN monitors said that they had received information about several mass graves in the city, one of which appeared to hold 200 bodies.

In districts that have been captured by Kremlin forces, there have been reports of abductions and civilians forcibly relocated to Russia.

“The invaders confiscate people’s passports and other identity documents,” Ukraine’s foreign ministry said in a statement. “The Russian army has forcibly deported about 6,000 Mariupol residents to Russian filtration camps in order to use them as hostages.” Moscow denied the claims, saying Ukrainians had travelled voluntarily.

Hiding out in a nearby Russian-occupied village, Mitieva, 50, said she was terrified she would be caught and sent across the border. But the psychologist refused to leave for Ukrainian held-territory, hoping she would be able to return to collect her parents, who are still in the occupied part of the city.

All essential services were cut off during street fighting on February 28, plunging homes and underground bomb shelters into dark and freezing conditions. Refugees say hundreds of thousands still trapped risked exposure to the cold, dehydration or starvation.

“No heating, no light, no food, no connection to the outside world,” Vadim Starodub said. “We lived in the basement of our building with 23 other people, two sacks of porridge and ten litres of drinking water between us.

 “When our apartment was hit, the ceiling in the bathroom collapsed into our bath where we had been storing water. Then we knew we had to take our chances and leave.”

Even a relatively minor wound could turn into a death sentence, Alevtina Shvetskova, a 32-year-old resident, said. “Most of the cars in our neighbourhood are destroyed. There was a huge risk of dying if you were walking on the street,” she said. “Nobody would be able to help if you were injured, as it’s impossible to call an ambulance, the fire brigade or drive to a hospital.”

Separated from friends and family by anti-tank defences and gun battles in the streets, Mariupol residents spoke of taking the agonising decision to flee and leave others behind.

“On March 16 we were cooking food in our yard and a bomb fell,” Shvetskova said. “Everything turned into a huge pile of soil and rubble. Our neighbours were killed. My husband and I, with some other people from our building, were trying to get these people out from the pile.

“When I saw their bodies I understood that it is not safe here, we need to rescue our children and ourselves. We decided to walk out of the town. We understood that we could be shot and die.”

Her grandmother stayed behind. “My mum came to me yesterday, hugged me and we started crying. She had a dream that Grandma came to her to say goodbye,” she added as she struggled to control her tears.

With no internet, those who escaped have no way of knowing if their loved ones are alive or dead. “I have a new daily ritual,” Starodub said. “To call everyone I know in Mariupol and hope that they will be able to answer the phone. Even when there is no answer, I still hope that people are alive and sitting in a basement.”

Those who did get out had to struggle to find a safe route, with Russian forces turning back vehicles or firing on evacuation convoys, survivors said.

“There were so many cars trying to leave that we were moving ten metres in ten minutes, with the sound of explosions in our ears,” Starodub said. “My mother was crying all the time. We were praying all the time. Ten times, 100 times, 1,000 times. The only thing you can do in this situation is sit and pray, pray, pray. Only after driving five to ten kilometres from Mariupol could we breathe.”

Survivors, many with friends and relatives in Russia, were struggling to understand the destruction and death they had witnessed. “We couldn’t understand until we reached Zaporizhzhya,” Shvetskova said. “Mariupol is an execution, an example for the rest of Ukraine, the rest of the world. To show that if you don’t surrender, if you don’t give up, this might happen to any of you.”