The escape of a Ukrainian family from Mariupol: “I did not want to die on the road”

Twin sisters Hanna and Anastasiya Hrechkina needed two days of searching under heavy bombardment to find a means of transportation out of Mariupol.

”I lost all hope because people did not stop”, said Anastasiaa 22-year-old psychology student.

Along with their mother and aunt, a cousin and a friend, the sisters said they had decided to leave Mariupol after more than two weeks of siege by Russian forces that have laid waste to this eastern Ukrainian city.

The first day they tried to escape, the shelling was so intense that every 5-10 minutes they had to leave their belongings on the side of the road and run for cover, he said. Anastasia. Finally, they gave up their attempt and returned home.

On the second day, a man fleeing the city with his family in four vehicles agreed to give the group a ride. Although there was only seating for four more passengers, all six of them squeezed into the vehicles, in what Hanna said was the “happiest time of the day.”

Mariupol, once a city of 400,000, has been almost completely flattened by prolonged Russian bombardment aimed at breaking the resistance of the Ukrainian defenders.

Hundreds of thousands of people have been holed up in basements without running water, food, medicine or electricity, unable or unwilling to leave. the ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelensky, He has said that “there is nothing left” of the city.

The Hrechkina sisters and their family held out through the first weeks of the siege, even as conditions deteriorated and fighting drew closer. “We didn’t want to leave. We were hoping it would stop.”said Hanna, also a student.

SEPARATED

Anastasia he said they rationed food, eating only twice a day. With no gas supply, the sisters said residents lit fires outside to heat their food, some destroying benches or cutting down trees.

With mobile phone networks disrupted and no electricity to charge their devices, the sisters were cut off from the world. “We thought that if no one came to save us, maybe the world would not find out about the situation,” he said. Anastasia.

When the shelling became so intense that they could no longer get water from a nearby well, they knew they had to leave, the sister said.

When the four vehicles returned to the road, they did not ask where they were going. “I didn’t know where we were going, how long it would take, but I was glad to be in the car, we were all with our family,” Hanna said.

However, they then discovered that not all the vehicles went to the same destination, and realized with horror that they had been separated from their mother.

Their car took them to Berdyansk, from where they managed to catch a bus arranged by the Ukrainian Red Cross that was to take them to Zaporizhia, where they hoped to be reunited with their mother. However, heavy shelling forced the bus to stop some 50 kilometers from the city.

“There I had a panic attack, I thought that after escaping from Mariupol, I didn’t want to die on the road,” he said. Anastasia.

They were eventually reunited with their mother, and their relatives took the sisters from Zaporizhia to Krivoy Rog, 400 kilometers northwest of Mariupol.

“I want to be in Ukraine and I want to go back to Ukraine, but right now I feel the need to be in a safer place,” Hanna said.

“There is always the threat of being surrounded again. I don’t want to go through that,” he said. Anastasia.