A man swimming from Russian terror

On March 16, Dimitri Yurin was at home when a rocket fired by the Russian army landed at the Mariupol Theater. His apartment was on Avenue Mira about 200 meters away, with a square fountain. The theater became a great refuge against air attacks. Hundreds of women and children were inside.

“It was a terrible, massive explosion, a huge explosion. I could hear screaming and crying, “Yurin explained. “I saw bodies, as well as body parts. I put out a woman, then a girl and then a boy. All of them were injured. The boy’s legs did not move. I was shouting. My hands were shaking. He was covered in blood. ”

There, the woman was lying motionless on the ground. His family tried to revive him by desperately pressing on his chest. “They tried to revive him. A child was standing next to him and telling him, mother, not to sleep. The woman was dead. ”

The exact number of people killed in the Russian airstrikes is still unknown. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky claimed that up to 300 civilians had been killed in the attack, but that figure could not be confirmed. Witnesses like Yurin claim that there were dozens of corpses. According to him, the continuous bombing of Russia made the rescue work dangerous.

Yurin says he returned to the garage, where he took refuge with his mother, Nadezhda, quit smoking and drank some pills. He decided he had to leave Mariupol, a city that had been ruthlessly attacked by Russian forces and besieged for two weeks. The city was completely isolated, under siege.

He devised an unusual plan: Yurin decided he could swim safely.

More than three kilometers in icy water

As a good fisherman, he spent hours in the Sea of ​​Azov fishing with his father on a local mullet known as the so-called Pelengas. He found his own fishing boots, which he had previously used to get rid of worms. He took two garbage bags to fasten the socks, a few threads and four five-liter plastic bottles to use as an aid.

Yurin explains that dressed in this improvised outfit, he walked to the beach. it was already dark. He went beyond the ruined buildings: “They were looking for water. Someone asked me for a cigarette. Otherwise, the city was empty. I took the path I knew on board. “Ioda”.

Yurin says he went through the sand and then into the dove. He swam 150 meters parallel to the shore and headed west. The water was as cold as ice. “His teeth were chattering. I hid behind one of the bottles so no one could see me. “Sometimes I relied on swimming,” he explained.

He swam for two and a half hours. The 3.5-kilometer route took him to Rybatske and the village of Melekina along the Russian position, which was a seaside resort town before the war. Fell out of the water. He found an old couple who were waiting for him, gave him vodka and borscht soup.

The city was controlled by Russian troops. With the help of a local, Yurin managed to board a minibus heading to the port of Berdyansk, which was also occupied by Russian forces. He said Russian soldiers at the checkpoint did not pay attention to him. “They were 17 or 18 years old,” he recalls. From Berdyansk he was able to cross into the territory administered by Ukraine.

A more desperate escape in the face of horror

Diana Berg, a Mariupol resident who fled the city, says one family made a trip similar to Yurin. “Because the beach was mined, they had to walk miles in cold water,” he wrote on Facebook. It was impossible to walk out of Russian positions now. “No one is allowed to enter or leave,” he wrote in his networks. He added: “The city is still blocked. Every day the Russians attack us with all kinds of weapons: air strikes, missiles, artillery, mines and tanks. Last Wednesday alone, they dropped 118 air bombs. We thought the city was already ruined. But with each passing day, they destroy it even more. ”

The Ukrainian Army and the ultra-nationalist Azov Battalion control an increasingly small area in central Mariupol. “Civilians are trying to survive in this hell. “This terrorist situation is unimaginable,” Diana wrote, calling for a ceasefire and an evacuation organized by the international community.

The Kiev government has accused Moscow of abducting thousands of Mariupol residents, including children. They were forcibly transferred from the city’s fourth hospital to pro-Russian separatist-controlled neighboring areas in Russia. A video appeared on Thursday showing soldiers deporting doctors and patients at gunpoint from a city hospital.

Mariupol City Council says separatists are inspecting the ruins in a white van, collecting corpses from the streets moving to a crematorium for cremation. His goal, according to the city council, was to avoid the infamous photos of Bucha showing Russian corpses of civilians shot in the middle of the street.

“What Russia did in the theater was terrorism”

Another Mariupol resident, Vika Dubovitskaya, managed to escape by car with her two children, six-year-old Artyom and two-year-old Nastia. They took refuge in the theater when the building was bombed. “Everything was calm. Then there was the explosion. “We have to run away,” he explained.

“I put my daughter on my shoulders and held her son. He told me, “I’m tired of jogging.” The blast hit me against the wall. A kind of page caught me, but I could not understand it. It was adrenaline. “My only thought was to get the kids out of there.”

Speaking from the city of Lviv, which is located in the extreme west of the country, Dubovitskaya said that about 1,500 people were in the theater at the time of the explosion. He and his children moved there on March 5, after Russian forces cut off gas, heat, water and electricity in the city. One of the actors, Damir Sukhov, showed the settlement on the first floor.

“We lived in the corridor between the classic columns. “It had thick walls,” he said. The other women and children were already asleep in the auditorium, as well as in the make-up room and in the two basements. As he recalls, the scene was the warmest but also the most vulnerable.

For the first three days the food was nothing. “You feel guilty when you can not feed your children,” he said. Vika explains that Ukrainian soldiers brought them food, including frozen fish, which they prepared on a wood fire outside the building. Only children were allowed to eat. Volunteers raided the store and brought warm clothes.

Dubovitskaya says the Russians knew the theater was full of women and children. They conquered the surrounding areas and overnight settled in the Pumb Bank branch, 250 meters away. The Ukrainian Armed Forces painted the word “children” in giant letters outside the theater.

He and his children moved to the second floor and were in the projection room when the bomb dropped. It is unknown at this time how many people were killed or what happened to Sukhov, an actor who also worked as a rescue worker. On March 23, Dubovitskaya met her husband, Dimitri, who had returned from Poland in search of her and found her in the Red Cross camp.

“There were no communications in the city. “I left my phone and backpack when we left the theater,” he said. Dima [el diminutivo de su marido] He came to the school on the outskirts of Mariupol where we lived. He saw our son at first, but he did not know him, because he lost a lot of weight. ” The family is now camped in the Lviv basement, along with 25 other IDPs.

Yurin, meanwhile, says her mother, who worked as a cleaner in the newspaper offices Priazovia worker He managed to escape from Mariupol in an epic swim of the Sea of ​​Azov in a few days. Now he is with his sister in the Russian-occupied town of Berdyansk.

What the Russians did in the theater was a terrorist act. “They knew there were peaceful people inside. They killed hundreds of people. It was the same story when the maternity ward was bombed … I am 31 years old, I am of fighting age. That I was caught, tortured and taken prisoner. Thank God he knew the coast of Mariupol well. That saved my life. ”

Translated by Emma Reverter