28 years of service, hundreds of lives saved, and the most terrifying March of 2022 in besieged Mariupol. Before the full-scale invasion, Colonel Oleksii Sharuda of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine headed the emergency and rescue unit of the Main Department of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Donetsk Region. When the usual command system effectively ceased to function, he took responsibility for coordinating rescue operations in the city.

As early as February 27, 2022, Oleksii and his driver set off for the almost completely destroyed Talakivka, from where few people were still willing to evacuate civilians. The following day, Oleksii gathered the officers and announced that he was taking responsibility for coordinating firefighting, rescue operations and rubble clearance in Mariupol. 

At that time, six fire stations were operating in the city, but constant shelling forced them to relocate repeatedly. By March 2022, all of them had been destroyed. Communications were down, and the repeaters had been destroyed. The rescuers did not know what was happening to their colleagues in other parts of the city. They went out to large-scale fires, evacuated civilians, pulled people from under the rubble and were often forced to suspend their work because of further strikes.

Around three hundred people were sheltering in the basement of the central fire station – rescuers, their wives, children and other civilians. 

When supplies of water, food and fuel were almost exhausted, russian troops surrounded the fire station. russian special forces entered the basement. 

Later, the occupiers offered Oleksii the opportunity to assemble a rescue unit and work under their command. He refused. Despite the danger, Oleksii did not leave immediately. He waited until rescuers from the other fire stations had made their way out of besieged Mariupol. On 4 April, he left the occupied territory with his family and reached Zaporizhzhia, and later Odesa. 

This is a candid account by a rescuer of fear and responsibility, the deaths of comrades, difficult decisions as a commander, and the duty to see things through to the end. 

After everything he experienced in Mariupol, Oleksii felt the value of his family even more deeply. During the most difficult moments, his wife was his constant source of support and strength. In 2024, the colonel retired in order to devote more time to her and their children – the people who had always been by his side and helped him persevere.