The young Galyna Balabanova has spent the last three weeks of siege in her hometown of Mariupol, in southeastern Ukraine, where her neighbors have come to collect rain water and cook pigeons they found on the streets to survive the encirclement of Russian troops in the face of lack of basic supplies.
“The neighbors united and enabled the basements as shelters. Now they collect rainwater and cook pigeons and other animals at bonfires in order to survive. There are hardly any medicines in the city,” Balabanova tells Efe in a telephone conversation.
Mariupol, a city of half a million inhabitants, is one of the hardest hit in this conflict and nearly 70 per cent of the city's houses have been damaged by the bombing, according to the municipal authorities.
LEAVE Mariupol
Balabanova managed to leave Mariupol on March 16, the same day that Ukrainian authorities accused the Russian authorities of attacking the city's Drama Theater, where hundreds of people were hiding in the building's bomb shelter.
“At the time of the bombing of the theater I was just leaving town and I just heard it. On the outskirts of the city, from the (humanitarian) corridor. You could see perfectly how the city was being attacked from all directions and by all possible means,” he says.
The young woman used one of the humanitarian corridors set up to evacuate the city, but these steps were attacked.
“Miraculously we didn't get shot. From that moment on we continue on our private transport and do not use the official corridor, at our own risk. Along the way there were more than 20 checkpoints for men in Russian uniforms who inspected the car every 500 meters. We wanted to cry with helplessness, because we were leaving family and friends behind in the city,” he says.
Ukrainian authorities have been opening humanitarian corridors to evacuate civilians from some of the country's most important cities attacked by Russians, but Mariupol is virtually blocked, something that world leaders and international organizations are asking to be solved to let their neighbors flee.
As Ukraine's Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said yesterday, “not all humanitarian corridors are working”, noting that at least 4,100 people have already managed to leave Mariupol, including nearly 1,200 children.
“In the city I saw the Russians, but only from afar, since at the time of my departure the city center had not yet been occupied. I saw their cars, combat vehicles and tanks. I also saw them at checkpoints outside the city, where they tried to psychologically torture those who left the city, showing their pseudo-strength,” he says.
THE WORST MOMENTS
Balabanova is one of thousands of people who have managed to flee Mariupol, where water and food supplies are running out and humanitarian aid has been practically not allowed in during this time, according to the UN World Food Programme.
” Mariupol has been subjected to hourly artillery, aviation and tank attacks. All the streets, without exception, and most of the houses are destroyed (...) Factories, where more than 15 shelters were located, were attacked every day,” he says.
And not only those buildings, but also schools and hospitals, as the Ukrainian authorities accused Moscow of bombing a children's hospital more than a week ago, resulting in three deaths, two of them minors.
However, Russia denied that it was behind this action in a city where more than 1,200 people have already died since the invasion began, according to municipal authorities.
“The worst moments were when there were six planes at once circling the city and carrying out continuous attacks. I'm afraid to think about what the situation will be like there today,” he explains.
Among her tragic experiences in the town, Balabanova says that people came to her and her family from the farthest neighborhoods to ask for help.
“They wondered where the authorities, the mayor and even the funeral home had gotten into. They wondered why they now had to bury their loved ones in their own gardens,” he says.
But, for her, the hardest moments are now, as she lives helplessly in the situation: “Now that I am out of danger and I cannot help those who write to me asking that I take their loved ones out of besieged Mariupol or even bring them water and bread”.
“They have not merely besieged the city, but decided to wipe it off the face of the earth,” he concludes.
(with information from EFE)
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