“The Russians were tracking us. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in.” In a long story published on the Associated Press website (link in English), Monday March 21, a journalist working for the American agency, Mstyslav Chernov, recounts his last days in the besieged port of Mariupol (Ukraine) with the photographer Evgeniy Maloletka, before their escape from the devastated city.
Mstyslav Chernov and Evgeniy Maloletka were the last remaining foreign journalists in the southeastern Ukrainian city, where “more than 80% of the infrastructures are damaged or destroyed”, according to Pavlo Kirelenko, an official of the Donetsk military administration. They fled after several weeks covering the siege of the city by Russian forces, feeling directly threatened, they report.
We were reporting inside the hospital when armed men started prowling the hallways. The surgeons gave us white coats to wear as camouflage. Suddenly, at dawn, a dozen soldiers burst in: Where the fuck are the journalists?
Mstyslav Chernovin an Associated Press article
In this account, Mstyslav Chernov also recounts the words of a policeman from Mariupol, confirming these Russian threats: “If they catch you, they will film you and they will make you say that everything you filmed is a lie”, the agent assured reporters. “All your efforts and everything you have done in Mariupol will be in vain.”
Arrived on February 23 in the port, on the eve of the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Associated Press reporters left the city on March 15. During these three weeks, they witnessed “died in hospital, corpses in the streets, dozens of bodies pushed into a mass grave”. “I saw death so much that I filmed almost without realizing it”, describes Mstyslav Chernov. The Associated Press team was also present during the bombing of a maternity hospital on March 9. “When we arrived, rescuers were still pulling bloody pregnant women out of the ruins.”
One bomb at a time, the Russians cut off electricity, water, food supplies and last but not least cellphone, radio and television towers.
Mstyslav Chernovin an Associated Press article
For the journalist, “the absence of information in a blockade accomplishes two purposes”. “Chaos is the first. People don’t know what is happening and they panic. (…) Impunity is the second objective”, continues the reporter. “In the absence of information from a city, images of demolished buildings and dying children, the Russian forces could do whatever they wanted. That’s why we took such risks to be able to send the world what we saw, and that’s what made Russia angry enough to hunt us down.”