in Dnipro, memories of Mariupol haunt those who managed to flee

“We left with our vehicle at our own risk”, says Tatiana, from the largest refugee center in Dnipro, eastern Ukraine, where 80% of the volunteers and half of the 3,000 daily beneficiaries are from Mariupol. She fled the martyred city with her husband and her two daughters, aged one and nine, a month ago.

“We were following the humanitarian corridor with our own means, but our column was bombarded with Grad missiles, she relates. The cries of the children, at that time, we will never forget them. The way they cry, the way they scream… That’s a fear you carry all your life.” Even today, worried, she scans the sky constantly to check that nothing falls.

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Like her, many civilians fled on their own, as humanitarian corridors never really saw the light of day in a very organized way. There are still 100,000 people in the city to be evacuated, according to the mayor of Mariupol.

Irina left a week before Tatiana, on March 15. She stopped at Osipenko, near Berdiansk, where she learned that at checkpoints the Russians forced men to undress to check their tattoos. They hope to flush out the most patriotic. However, the son of Irina carries on the arm an immense trident, symbol of the Ukrainian nation. “If he had passed, he would have been stripped naked and killed, for sure. So we looked for people to change his tattoo. They made a cross out of it”, says Irina. She continues: “When we left at the last checkpoint, there were soldiers. One of them noticed that the tattoo hadn’t completely healed. We started lying, explaining that the tattoo had been done just before the war and therefore not completely healed. We paid them with cigarettes and we passed.”

“If they had found this trident tattoo, it was for my son at least death directly at the checkpoint, and at worst, torture in cellars in Donietsk.”

Irina, who was able to flee Mariupol

at franceinfo

Irina’s blue eyes mist when she talks about leaving home. In Dnipro, as elsewhere, she can no longer bear the sound of sirens. But she also fears having to take the road again, to get a little further away from Mariupol.