Artyom, 27, managed to leave Mariupol by piling others into the back of a van. Direction Zaporijia, a hundred kilometers away. His mother stayed behind him.
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The young Ukrainian tried, he says, to hold out as long as possible in the city besieged by the Russian army: “There is no more electricity, no more gas, no more water… When we were cut off from the electricity, then the water, we quickly found ourselves dry. When it rained, we recovered the rainwater. When it started to snow, we melted the snow, for the toilet, to wash our hands. On the spot, I did not see any humanitarian aid.“
War in Ukraine: evacuees from Mariupol testify at the microphone of Virginie Pironon
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The situation has deteriorated considerably in recent days in the port city in the south-east of the country. Sunday March 20, local authorities accused the Russian army of having bombed an art school serving as a refuge for several hundred people. According to Ukrainian opposition MP Lesia Vasylenko, civilians “are forced to cross the border with Russia” to go in “internment camps”.
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Since the beginning of the conflict, on February 24, humanitarian workers have still not managed to make their way to the population, explains the elected official: “They can’t access the city, they always get shot. There are ways where food is brought, but very, very small portions and clandestine things, it’s not centralized. And it’s really terrible not being able to have control over the situation.”
“There, in Mariupol, there are about 3,000 little babies, newborns who remain without drinking water, food and basic effects for the first days of their lives.”
Lesia Vasylenko, Ukrainian opposition MPat franceinfo
On Wednesday, Artyom witnessed the destruction of the Mariupol theater in the city center. The shootings are incessant there and not all the corpses can be buried. “With my eyes I saw three, he says. Three bodies that were lying in the street, and they were there for about five days.” Evgueni, he has no news of his mother and his five-year-old daughter, who must try to join him. But to go where? : “We understand that nothing will be the same anymore. Because there is no more city, there is nothing. How can I come back home when this place no longer exists? I have nowhere where to return.”
According to the Ukrainian authorities, 2,100 people have died in Mariupol since the start of the war.