It has been nearly three months since Ania has seen her father, one of the last diehards who left the Azovstal factory, a stronghold of the resistance of the Ukrainian forces now under Russian control. Colonel in the Ukrainian army, several times decorated, Hermann entrenched himself in the site of obstacles from the first days of the occupation of Mariupol, his native city.
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“My father fought many wars, she explains. He did his military service in Iraq, then he went to Donbass in 2014. When he found himself in Azovstal, he found it terrifying.”
Ania follows in the footsteps of her parents, both soldiers, and she joined the Ukrainian armed forces. An honor for the 19-year-old young woman who has boundless admiration for her father: “He is always ready to go all the way”, she says proudly. From the basements of the Azovstal factory, while he lived under the incessant shelling of the Russian army, his father managed to send him some photos. “He lost a lot of weight and he only ate once a day, Ana sighs. It was porridge with water. I deleted some photos because I can’t look at them, it hurts me too much.”
“He was a tall, majestic man… Now he’s just skin and bones.”
Ania took the surrender of Azovstal’s last fighters as a relief, but worries about what will happen to them after they are transferred by Russian forces to Novoazovsk in occupied Donbass. “I would like the situation to be resolved as soon as possible, she hopes. And that we exchange them for other prisoners. They have already suffered too much, without anything to eat, without their loved one.”
Like this young woman of reserved appearance, it is a whole generation that wants to make its neighbor pay the price for his aggression. “I am ready for the next generation: there is no possible forgiveness for those who are on the other side, in Russia, and we cannot forgive them for what they have done to women and children”concludes Ania in her uniform, determined to defend her land.
Mariupol: Ania’s testimony collected by Valérie Crova and Laurent Macchietti
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