VIDEO
EXCLUSIVE
[Klitina] Good morning, Dariya. Thank you for kindly agreeing to this interview. I understand that this isn’t easy. What did you have to live through? What did you and your family witness in Mariupol? When did you leave the city?
[Dariya] We only left the city on April 4. Before that, from the very beginning of the war, we were in Mariupol. We saw how things developed with our own eyes. The city has had no electricity or light since March 3; there has been no gas since March 4. It was freezing. It was tough to get water. We had to walk and get water from various springs emerging from the ground. We cooked food on a fire next to our house since there was no other way to do it. A lot of trees in Mariupol were cut down as a result. All our beautiful parks turned into firewood for cooking food. Many people remained in the city. Because of constant shelling, there was no possibility of evacuating the vast majority of the population. We had to save food because no shops worked, and no-one brought food to the city.
[Klitina] Did you stay in a basement? Do I understand you correctly? Were you hiding from the shelling?
[Dariya] Yes, we stayed in a basement, like many others. However, we know that many elderly people could not go down to the cellars when the shelling started. Some of them were killed in their apartments, because they could not physically go down and hide from the air raids, bombs and mines.
The shelling is carried out intentionally only at residents and their homes with the help of spotters, waiting for the deceptive stop of shelling and at the very moment when people go out in the hope of having time to cook food and replenish water supplies, even more, massive bombardment begins.
Many people died right next to the exit to the shelter.
[Klitina] We have seen pictures from Mariupol where graves were in the yards and all the horrible scenes. Have you witnessed anything of this kind? Also, as far as I understand, there was not enough medicine in the city, and people suffered because of that.
[Dariya] Yes, we buried one of our mothers. She died in March. We buried her between our house and the pharmacy. There were two people already buried there. One of them was a five-year-old girl who died because she had no insulin. Next to her was her father’s grave. I think he was 37. He just could not live through all this horror. And we buried our mother next to them. You could see people burring other people in parks, next to houses, on lawns, as there was no other possibility. The bodies of some people, which their relatives did not pick up after massive shelling, were collected from the streets and brought to some shops and other premises. Some people not buried.
[Klitina] My God, what a nightmare. Please accept my apologies. How did you manage to escape from this nightmare?
[Dariya] Approximately for the last week, the shelling was unimaginable. It continued day and night, around the clock. We could not get out of our basement to cook food or bring water. We and some people from our street decided to flee because we realized we would either die in the city or on our way out of the town, but the chances of saving our lives were higher if we fled. On the morning of April 4, we drove from the city in five cars. We moved from a district next to Mariupol port, where the fiercest fighting took place. Once we started to move, a mortar attack on us started. Mines and bombs were falling around us. As a result, only three cars managed to get out of Mariupol. Two cars were left behind. We do not know their fate and what happened to them. We could hardly get out of Mariupol because all the roads were full of holes from missiles, fallen posts, wire. Many roads are simply blocked. We struggled to find a way out of Mariupol and managed to find a way in the direction of Manhush. On our way, we saw many people walking on foot, walking with children, walking with the elderly, walking with bags. A terrible view. We made it to Manhush and wanted to continue driving to Zaporizhzhia, but we were told that we should first go through filtration [Russian forces] . We waited in the car for four days, we waited in the car, we slept in the car, at temperatures below zero, waiting for filtration, this humiliating procedure.
The first check was right outside the city; it was “turned inside out,” all of us and our things.
Immediately on the side of the road there were mortars that did not stop firing towards the area where we lived and from where we got out. At some point, it seemed like we were going to be shot. Probably because of the very hostile attitude towards us from the military of the Donetsk people’s republic and Russia. All vehicles marked with “Z.” We also came across vehicles marked with the letters “V” and “O.”
All cars were checked. All our belongings were checked. All our phones were checked. They asked for explanations about specific contacts. They looked through absolutely everything on our phones. They opened our laptop. They took the hard drive out. We also had memory sticks with our photos. They took them too. They undressed men looking for tattoos or abrasions from wearing body armor or weapons. They treated us very rudely. They took prints of all our fingers and palms. They took photos of us from three sides. They saved all this data in a database and issued a card we passed through the filtration. As we went through the filtration, this was a Thursday, and we found out that humanitarian corridors in the direction of Zaporizhzhia had been shot at. Hence, we decided to drive via Russia. We went out through the currently occupied Ukrainian checkpoint of Uspenka, entering Rostov Region. We then moved to the north of Russia in the direction of Latvia. We crossed the border with Europe in Latvia. We then drove to Warsaw by car. We changed to a train and came here to Switzerland. We drove 5,000 kilometers in total.
[Klitina] This is astonishing. Can you tell us about your life in Switzerland? Are you receiving the necessary support? Did you manage to recover after all the shocks that you have lived through?
[Dariya] We are now at a migration center. There is a disabled mother with us. We got settled in a migration center. We went through registration. We have been here since last Friday, April 15. We are being taken care of. We received the required medical aid and the necessary medicines. We have food. We have a separate room and are waiting for a place for permanent settlement. All the memories are still fresh. I have nightmares every night of not being able to get out of Mariupol. [Cries.] Excuse me. We have the phone number of a psychologist. I feel I will not be able to manage without the support of a psychologist.
[Klitina] OK, clear. Thank you very much for this interview. Stay strong. It’s good that you are alive. Good luck to you and your family.
[Dariya] Thank you.
