WEBVTT - Made with VTT Creator 00:05.940 --> 00:21.472 position:50% align:middle My brother called me, I was asleep. They lived in Sartana. If you know, it's a village near Mariupol. It started there even earlier, there was shelling there from 1am. 00:21.472 --> 00:37.286 position:50% align:middle You could hear it, and at 5 o'clock it started more actively. My brother called me, woke me up and told me that the war had started. I was worried. I was alone. 00:37.286 --> 00:50.913 position:50% align:middle My wife was at work, she's a doctor too. I called my wife (it was still my girlfriend then), she said they were awake, it was very scary there too. I got ready. 00:50.913 --> 01:12.066 position:50% align:middle I was on duty that day, I had to go on daily duty. I packed up and went to the hospital. I'm a urologist. In fact, my day started on duty, and on the same day the wounded started arriving. 01:12.066 --> 01:26.626 position:50% align:middle They were military. There was an arrival in Nikolskoye, guys were already being brought in with wounds. The first, because the hospital was the first in location. 01:26.626 --> 01:45.684 position:50% align:middle That's how the day started. It all intensified. The first 24 hours were scary. From the eighth floor you could see military vehicles driving around. The curfew started. 01:45.684 --> 02:01.387 position:50% align:middle There was no one on the street anymore, only military vehicles. There were few patients in terms of urological problems. There were some civilians, no traumatised patients. 02:01.387 --> 02:18.170 position:50% align:middle Then a few days of just routine work until they started to get closer to the city. Then I left the hospital, because my relatives lived in Sartana, 02:18.170 --> 02:29.798 position:50% align:middle and there was just active fighting there, we had to do something with them, evacuate them, of course, to Mariupol. They gathered all of them. They came to Mariupol. 02:29.798 --> 02:48.845 position:50% align:middle We settled them there with relatives, as we were on duty. My wife was on duty, her perinatal centre was transferred to the Third Hospital. We went with her. 02:48.845 --> 03:00.192 position:50% align:middle There were newborn babies there that we had to look after. We went with her because we were close to each other. We went to the Third Hospital, 03:00.192 --> 03:15.507 position:50% align:middle we were on duty there from the first to the second day, and we were still there on the second day. There were children there from the perinatal centre, which was located in Ukraine. 03:15.507 --> 03:29.926 position:50% align:middle Then we had some questions with relatives, we tried to find each other. At that time communication was already cut off, we went to some people, 03:29.926 --> 03:44.323 position:50% align:middle to some other people in order to understand what was happening to people, to make sure that everything was OK with everyone. The fighting was already active, 03:44.323 --> 03:58.604 position:50% align:middle there were serious flights into the city, and there were a lot of sick people. I remember a few situations when they brought a boy from a neighbouring house, he was 2 years old. 03:58.604 --> 04:21.812 position:50% align:middle He is in the film "20 Days in Mariupol", there are these shots of his parents bringing him in. There were a lot of patients, both military and civilian. I remember one girl. 04:21.812 --> 04:39.003 position:50% align:middle She was about 18 years old. She lived in Cheremushky. A tank shell or some kind of artillery shell hit the house. And it hit her kidney. 04:39.003 --> 04:53.123 position:50% align:middle They sat for about 8 hours at home, because they could not get to the hospital because of shelling. She lost a lot of blood. We had to remove her kidney, 04:53.123 --> 05:08.463 position:50% align:middle but she survived because women are better able to tolerate blood loss. And we didn't have the opportunity to transfuse blood and we didn't have enough medication. 05:08.463 --> 05:32.061 position:50% align:middle But we saved her. She survived. On the seventh day I left the hospital [to] find, contact and come to where my relatives were. I took, my parents, my mum to my flat. 05:32.061 --> 05:50.133 position:50% align:middle We lived near the Third Hospital. My wife's stepfather worked as a driver at the UN Office in Ukraine. United Nations headquarters. We were there for some time. 05:50.133 --> 06:05.753 position:50% align:middle They had a satellite link, they were contacting the Red Cross and the United Nations Headquarters in Switzerland, trying to negotiate some kind of possible evacuation. 06:05.753 --> 06:15.379 position:50% align:middle There were armoured cars, there was a possibility to theoretically leave even in armoured cars, but nobody gave anything. 06:15.379 --> 06:28.707 position:50% align:middle They said we could only go to Rostov for some reason. There was a connection, we could find out something, but nobody gave us any information. 06:28.707 --> 06:42.466 position:50% align:middle Then the military took these cars away. Our guys have arrived to bring us the cars. We had a radio in the basement. The basement was next to the house, to my flat, 06:42.466 --> 06:59.562 position:50% align:middle someone brought a radio on batteries, we found Ukrainian radio on AM waves. On March 14 in the evening Iryna Vereshchuk, I think [gave] an interview, 06:59.562 --> 07:13.777 position:50% align:middle they said that 140 cars left Mariupol towards Berdiansk. The people who were in our basement, there were many children, they said, "Tomorrow we leave." We sat down, 07:13.777 --> 07:34.870 position:50% align:middle forgot about everything, took nothing, no belongings, nothing and left. We could not cross Vasilievka on the 15th (our first checkpoint there) until 6 o'clock, as we were advised to do. 07:34.870 --> 07:45.837 position:50% align:middle We received an SMS that we were supposed to pass, but we passed this point later. We stopped for the night in the "grey zone", somewhere there between Vasilievka 07:45.837 --> 08:06.684 position:50% align:middle and Zaporizhzhya, we stayed there overnight. Fighting nearby was visible. And in the morning we left, drove to Zaporizhzhya. My brother and his family were leaving the next day. 08:06.684 --> 08:21.771 position:50% align:middle We [left them one car], we had two cars, my wife's and mine. Mine was also wrecked, but it was still running. They lived near the Drama Theatre, there was an arrival. 08:21.771 --> 08:29.164 position:50% align:middle My [car] was just hit by the blast wave, the windows were blown out, [the second car] also had wheels. They took it off the burnt cars, 08:29.164 --> 08:41.542 position:50% align:middle screwed it on and drove out. They were travelling later, they got in touch on the sixteenth, it was in the morning. He said: "We are travelling near Berdiansk". 08:41.542 --> 09:01.945 position:50% align:middle They had already arrived on Ukrainian territory. There is a settlement near Zaporozhye called Stepnohorsk, I think it's called. And they started shelling the convoy. 09:01.945 --> 09:15.965 position:50% align:middle A shell hit the car, they were badly wounded. There were six of them. My brother was very badly wounded because a shell came under the driver's seat. 09:15.965 --> 09:29.410 position:50% align:middle The child was 2 years old and his wife. They were unlucky. But they were lucky that they were on Ukrainian territory and managed to get to Zaporizhzhya. 09:29.410 --> 09:40.820 position:50% align:middle I studied there, I have a lot of friends there. We found them quickly, they were taken to different hospitals and operated on. 09:40.820 --> 09:52.262 position:50% align:middle Tania's cousin's brother was there too, his skull was wounded, he had been trepanised, in general, it was a terrible story. We survived. We had just arrived in Zaporizhzhya, 09:52.262 --> 10:04.079 position:50% align:middle we had been in Zaporizhzhya for 2 hours, and then my mother called me to say that they had all been wounded. We didn't know what happened to them until they were found. 10:04.079 --> 10:17.319 position:50% align:middle I thought it was all over. It's all right, we saved them. I thank all my colleagues who performed such a complicated operation on my brother and saved his kidney. He had a specific wound. 10:17.319 --> 10:34.282 position:50% align:middle - How do you think the war will end? - I don't know. I can't say how the war will end. I want victory, I want to go home, 10:34.282 --> 10:51.153 position:50% align:middle because everyone wants to go home - parents, relatives. They're not young anymore, they want to go home. It's hard to be here, to rent flats and not be in your own home. 10:51.153 --> 11:04.580 position:50% align:middle When people have lived there for 50 years, now they have to move around. It's good that at least we are close to each other, but otherwise I don't know.