Many soldiers in Mariupol thought they’d never leave alive. Some sent messages to their loved ones: prepare yourselves for our deaths, they wrote. From 1843 magazine
he 27-year-old volunteer fighter was walking to his car in the grounds of the Azovstal iron- and steelworks in the city of Mariupol when the strike hit. Molfar, as he is known to his fellow fighters, had taken a calculated risk: he and a few other men had gone out to collect supplies from the factory and were about to head back. An explosive detonated near them, strafing Molfar’s stomach with hot shrapnel and shattering his pelvis. Three more explosions followed.
The plant had been a prize in battle before. In the second world war, the Nazis took control of it when they occupied the city. Then, in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists briefly took control of Mariupol, steelworkers from Azovstal and another local mill helped seize the city back. Without natural light, days and nights merged into one for Molfar. The nebulous stretch of time was broken only when the Azov regiment’s charismatic commander, Denys Prokopenko, came to Molfar with a proposition. A university graduate trained as a translator, Prokopenko had become the head of the entire joint-forces operation to defend Mariupol.
In the weeks after Molfar’s evacuation, the situation in Mariupol deteriorated rapidly. By early April the city’s mayor said that 90% of its infrastructure had been destroyed and that more than 10,000 people had been killed. Negotiators failed to secure agreement on a humanitarian corridor for civilians to leave.
A quote from Harry Potter kept circulating in his mind: “What’s comin’ will come, an’ we’ll meet it when it does” Wikipedia moved among bunkers, including one named Concrete and another called Postal Three, each crowded beyond capacity. People often had to sleep in shifts, despite the addition in some shelters of triple bunk beds. In at least one shelter some slept on fire-extinguisher boxes laid side by side, to give them distance from the cold floor.
Amputations of arms and legs took place in corridors; medics, running low on essentials, had to be sparing in their use of anaesthetic. Water allowances dropped from 1.5 litres each a day to half that. Much of it was boiled or filtered “technical water” – from boilers, circulation systems and so on – that wasn’t meant for consumption. Russian airstrikes kept hitting supply bunkers, leading defenders to believe they had the co-ordinates for them. With no fresh fruit or vegetables, vitamin deficiency started to set in. Some people lost hair and teeth to scurvy.
By May 7th all the civilian women and children had left Azovstal, transported either to Russian-held areas or to Ukrainian-held Zaporizhzhia. The day after their departure, a huge explosion killed more than 50 people; the following day another strike hit the hospital bunker. The factory was reported to have been pummelled by phosphorous bombs. Videos released by the Ukrainian authorities showed streaks of fire raining down on the factory.
, ending more than 80 days of siege. He was in the middle of a mission to rescue an injured grenade-gun operator, and wasn’t sure whether to believe what he was hearing. Not long after, a Russian anti-tank rocket hit the group. The injured gunner was killed and one of the men with Wikipedia mangled his leg below the knee.
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