War diary: “My city has been tormented. It has turned into Stalingrad. It is gone”

Bread in Mariupol city under blockade

16 March 2022

Bread is handed out rarely and in few places. Several days ago, we were lucky to get two loafs of bread (brick-bread). We shared those with our neighbours who have children too.

All these days I remembered my great-grandmother Hanna Fedorivna Shmeliova (nee Klymukha), who happened to be staying in the besieged Leningrad. My great-grandfather Anatoliy Chibizov managed to take her out with the first special train and save her from starvation.

Even in her old age, she still kept making some dried rye bread crackers. I thought about her when I was cutting our bread into slices.

No, we had some food, but we used it very sparingly too. If you feel hungry in the morning, you take a piece and you don’t torment yourself anymore...

In those days, I learned that it was enough to give my body a spoon or two of something, and this could keep me up till the time when a pot of meatless soup was cooked on an outdoors grill. Is this our reality indeed?

Mariupol. BOMB SHELTERS

20 March 2022

The situation with bomb shelters in Mariupol has its own special development. Not everyone is let inside them or people do not want to share their safe and quiet corner.

Many of the bomb shelters were overcrowded by the beginning of March.

«We have everything occupied. You can come only in the worst case scenario,” we were told in one Stalin-era building near the Drama Theatre. “Excuse me, but what other sort of worst case scenario is possible, if not the ongoing war?

 “Do you live here?” my husband was asked when a plane carrying a bomb was flying above and he was hiding, having picked some water from a stream.

“You may come. There are a lot of people already, but come anyway!” this time we did not get a refusal.

“Where are you from? Left bank? What district? Oh, I studied at school no. 51 there. Well, you may come,” we were told by some distrustful men with cigarettes near PSTU (Pryazovskyi State Technical University), after they checked my husband’s passport.

However, we did not go there and a few days later a shell smashed just everything on the road crossing near Syto-Pyano cafe, the university, and Gipromez building...

We were sheltered by the neighbours from the house where we temporarily lived. And this shelter was the most duly arranged of all we have seen.

Mariupol. COMMUNICATIONS AND NEWS

20 March 2022

“The so-called DPR announced an urgent blood donation campaign,” Oleh, a resident of one of the neighbouring flats, said in the evening in the bomb shelter, listening to the occupiers’ radio. It was the only opportunity to understand what was happening in the world and in the city under the conditions of its isolation and blockade. The source was not up to much, but there was no choice as the enemy persistently jammed everything: radio, telephone communications, and the Internet.

Very soon, Mariupol residents found some spots where they could still catch a mobile phone signal. These were very touristy places in Mariupol along Myru [avenue]. A week later, we learned that we could go up to the fifth floor of a neighbouring building and make a phone call in roaming mode. Other people talked about calling from top floors of 14-storey buildings.

“The last time I was available by phone was on 5 March. The signal of mobile phone operators was not stable, but even the mobile Internet seeped through to us sometimes. The upper floors of some buildings turned into public call offices.”

– If you want to talk over the telephone, stand near the stairs to the attic or here, in the corner, near the handrail. I know where you can catch a good signal,” said a young mother from the N-th flat on the fifth floor.

The next day, she was bloody drunk when we were looking for fellow travellers to leave together.

I got a message from my friends in Telegram messenger, “Stay alive! How is our Marichek [an affectionate diminutive form for Mariupol]? Have you got any physical injuries? How much food do you have left?” But very soon, I could no longer read their messages.

...According to the forecasts of the so-called DPR, the “liberation” of Mariupol will take another two days. The Ukrainian Armed Forces have left the city, Azov [regiment] can hold out for another two days. Skhidnyi micro-district is already occupied. The Russian forces are running out, Grad MLRSs for attacks on the city have been used up. All these rumours and real facts about shelling were passed from mouth to mouth in queues for food and water, and in talks with passers-by.

There was usually only one question. What’s the news? Is there good news?

Endless days without phone calls and news. Complete vacuum, disorientation and lack of information. We plainly lost count of days and dates. Even now, I hardly know the day of the week and today’s date. I can neither talk enough, nor read enough of the news feeds in social networks, nor rejoice sufficiently of my messaging.

Mariupol. FEELINGS

22 March 2022

Shock, horror, fear, inexplicable pain...

In early days, nothing was really clear. We were in a stupor and could not decide to leave by trains, while they were still running. How bitterly we regretted it later!

Every morning we thought, “If only we could survive this day.” And every evening, "If only we could stay alive until the morning.

It even seemed to me that I did not feel anything, but then it broke through. We wept on each other’s shoulders both in the first days, and after the shelling on Italyanska [street]. We escaped only because we were at a five-minute walk away from it [the bomb shelter].

When I said that I was not scared by a bomb that fell within a radius of 250 meters and shook the whole house, my mother said, “I can hear from your voice that you are scared.”

My city has been tormented. It has turned into Stalingrad. It is gone. There is no that Mariupol we cherished, loved and made comfortable for living, Mariupol where we won grants for festivals and mini-sculptures, and where artists painted the sea.

I will never see those hundreds of irises and tulips that I planted near my house in the spring. And I never had time to paint the garage door going into the yard.

There are no those avenues, buildings, squares and modern centres anymore... Lord, there is nothing left!

We lost count of days and sense of time. We broke down and yelled. We were just shaking from the obscurity and constant stress.

My sister grew older ahead of time just when she walked along Myru Avenue and saw the destroyed “Budynok Zvyazku” building (Communications Centre), hospitals and houses – the city in pieces of broken glass and rubble. This used to be her favourite part of the city.

From the first days of the war in Mariupol, I did not pick up my mascara and eye shadow.

The woman in me seemed to have died. I felt so bad that I didn’t even want to have a nice look.

Obscurity. This feeling was the most nerve-racking thing. While the pain and fear from bombing attacks could somehow be hidden by clenching your teeth, the uncertainty and obscurity about our own fate and the fate of our beloved city were gnawing.

Waiting. Every day we waited for the evacuation. Every day we waited for the “green corridor” and the humanitarian aid. And we hoped that after all, they would finally come to an agreement, or the Russians would start feeling pangs of remorse, would grow a bit wiser and stop bombing.

Hunger. We did not eat enough and gradually got used to it. My child now agreed to any sort of porridge, soup or a piece of raw carrots that were in our “menu”, and were gradually running out. And then he heard about Barni [biscuit] from kids and asked for it for several evenings in a row. But we said that the shop was closed and we could not buy yet.

We felt left to the whims of our fate. We, the city, and everyone around us...

Heaps of garbage, dead bodies on the roadsides, dangling electricity lines, no any signs of repairs, and sidewalks covered with pieces of broken glass. At some point, I wanted to go out with a broom to Peremoga cinema and sweep all the fragments in front of the building into a corner so as not to bring pieces of glass into the house on shoes.

Nobody cleaned anything. There were no signs of any activity and the life of any [municipal utility] services. Or there was one, but it was about the burial of the dead.

And the last thing.

At some point, I felt ashamed that my native language is Russian.

Mariupol. CODE WORDS

26 March 2022

Water

This was probably the first vital thing that Mariupol residents began to look for. Very soon, it became impossible to buy tap water for bottling. It was in the early days of March. And then tap water was cut off completely.

This was when scouting for water from water wells and springs began, despite the shelling. Every morning.

Candle

The most relevant item in a bomb shelter or flat, while it was still possible to stay in the latter.

All available candles are in use, from ordinary ones to aroma candles and decorative candles. They tend to burn out and run out soon.

Torch

A much-needed thing during night hours and early in the morning. To get to the entrance door when you need to walk the dog, for example, or when moving through the bomb shelter.

Batteries for it are of quite a high value.

Matches

They mean guaranteed lighting and hot food. Those matches that are in the photo were once bought by my relatives in Canada. “We thought that we would keep this box of matches as a souvenir,” my uncle said when he gave us this small box in besieged Mariupol.

The gift was really valuable.

Charger/power bank

They give you hope for staying in touch with your loved ones if you go out to those places where you can still catch the phone signal from the antennas of the mobile phone operators.

There again, if the volume of the power bank is enough for more than one round of charging.

Bomb shelter

Everything is clear here. Being in a bomb shelter or basement means staying alive longer. The lists of bomb shelters in Mariupol were published on 24 February and the following days. Many of the addresses could be called bomb shelters just relatively – it became clear that they were not at all suitable for long staying. These were premises with utility lines in buildings, and in this regard, sewer pipes were not the most pleasant neighbourhood.

On the second day of the war, my husband and I cleared out the entrance to the basement/cellar of our private house, but we quickly realized that we risked ending up under the rubble. In addition, dampness and a limited space factored in.

As I already wrote, when the situation in the city became very dangerous, people began to fill the bomb shelters. Blankets, pillows, candles, some cooked food, toys, armchairs – all this was taken to the basements where possible.

People hid there together with their pets, slept on the floor right in their outer clothes, talked to each other... and listened to the hell that had broken loose on the city.