This is how life is lived in Mariupol, the city besieged by Russian troops where the humanitarian corridor failed

A pale, bloodied girl, her pajama bottoms gaily adorned with unicorns, is rushed to a hospital, while her mother screams in terror. New mothers huddle their children in makeshift bomb shelters in basements. A father breaks down in grief over the death of his teenage son when shelling rips through a soccer field near a school.

These scenes took place in the port of Mariupolon the Sea of ​​Azov, in the south of Ukraine, among so many other images of pain that document the Russian invasion. Despite the agreement between the parties, Ukrainian authorities on Saturday postponed the evacuation of the city, after accusing Russian forces of violating the ceasefire that was supposed to allow civilians to escape from one of the harshest combat zones of the conflict.

Russia made significant gains on the ground in the south, in an apparent attempt to cut off Ukraine’s access to the sea. The capture of Mariupol could allow him to build a corridor to Crimea, which he seized in 2014.

With night temperatures just above freezing, the battle plunged the city into darkness, knocked out most telephones, and raised the prospect of food and water shortages. Without phone connections, doctors don’t know where to take the wounded.

A mother knows the worst

“We can do it!” shouts the hospital worker, urging his colleagues as they rush an injured six-year-old girl, already pale, out of the ambulancewith their bloody pajama bottoms adorned with cheerful unicorns.

His mother seems to know. The woman, wearing a knitted winter hat also stained with blood, cries in terror and disbelief as the medical team tries first to revive the girl in the ambulance and then in the hospital, where her efforts are as desperate as they are futile.

As the mother waits alone in a hallway, a nurse cries as the trauma team tests a defibrillator, an injection and pumps in oxygen. A doctor looks directly into the camera of an AP video journalist who is allowed to enter. He has a message: “Show this to Putin.”

Death comes to a soccer field

The flashes of the bombings illuminate the doctors as they wait in a parking lot for the next emergency call. At the nearby hospital, a father buries his face in the lifeless head of his dead 16-year-old son. The boy, wrapped in a blood-stained sheet, has succumbed to injuries caused by bombings on the soccer field where he played.

Hospital staff wipe blood off a stretcher. Others tend to a man whose face is hidden by blood-soaked bandages.

The medics prepare to leave, putting on their helmets. An injured woman is found in a parking lot and put into an ambulance for treatment, her hand shaking rapidly from apparent shock. She screams in pain as the doctors take her to the hospital. On the darkening horizon, an orange light flickers at the edge of the sky and loud rumblings echo through the air.

The children continue to play

The resting child, perhaps responding instinctively to the sight of a camera, raises an arm and waves. But the mother below her has tears in her eyes. They are lying together on the floor of a converted gymnasium, waiting out the fighting outside.

Many families have young children. And as children would do anywhere else, some laugh and run across the blanket-covered ground.

“God grant that no rocket falls. That is why we have all gathered here”, says local volunteer Ervand Tovmasyan, accompanied by his young son. He says the locals brought supplies. But as the Russian siege continues, the shelter lacks enough drinking water, food and fuel for generators.

Many remember the bombings of 2014, when Russian-backed separatists briefly took over the city. “Now the same thing happens… but now we are with children,” says Anna Delina, who fled Donetsk in 2014.

tanks in a row

In a field in Volnovakha, outside Mariupol, a row of four green tanks hold their guns at about 45 degrees. Two of them fire, rocking the machines back slightly and sending clouds of white smoke skyward.

The tanks are painted with the letter “Z” in white, a tactical sign intended to quickly identify military units and help troops distinguish friend from foe in combat.

Tanks with the “Z” are moving within Russian-controlled territory and are believed to be used by Russian forces.

In the midst of death, the joy of birth

A nurse puts a T-shirt on a newborn who fidgets at first, then cries loudly. It’s a happy sound. Babies born in a Mariupol hospital are carried up flights of stairs to a makeshift nursery that also serves as a shelter during the shelling.

Sitting in the dimly lit shelter, new mother Kateryna Suharokova struggles to control her emotions as she holds her son, Makar. “I was anxious, anxious to deliver the baby right now,” says the 30-year-old, her voice trembling. “I am grateful to the doctors who helped this baby to be born in these conditions. I think everything will be fine.”

Upstairs in the basement, hospital staff work to save the wounded from the bombing. A woman with bleeding from her mouth screams in pain. A young man’s face is ashen as he is wheeled into the hospital. Another, who did not survive, is covered by a thin blue sheet. “Need I say more?” says Oleksandr Balash, head of the anesthesiology department. “He’s just a kid.”

By Mstylsav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka

_________________________________