the testimony of a family who escaped the hell of Mariupol

The scarred face, drawn features, a Ukrainian family returns from hell. She has just left Mariupol (Ukraine), and found refuge in a leisure center transformed into a dormitory. The couple have a seven-year-old daughter. “I want to say hello to all the children. I hope this war will end soon”, confides the young Vlada. For several weeks, the city has been pounded by Russian artillery. During the first days of the war, the family initially tried to stay put, filming their daily life in their barricaded house.

Then a bomb exploded a few meters from the supply point. “She hit three people in front of us. One man had lost his head, the other (…) was seriously injured, and the last one was dead. With my own eyes, I saw this scene of horror. We dug a grave for them”, says Dmytro, a Ukrainian refugee. To escape the Russian soldiers, he and his companion drove for more than 15 hours. They are now worried about their loved ones, who stayed behind. Like them, several thousand civilians managed to leave Mariupol. According to the Ukrainian authorities, hundreds of thousands of people are still there.