“When a shell exploded, it was like an earthquake”, says a resident who was able to flee Mariupol

Svletlana and her daughter Olga lived palmost two months under the bombs, in a basement, without water, with rationed food. They lived in the Levo Berezhny district, just 300 meters from the Azovstal metallurgical complex. The industrial site today represents the last bastion of Ukrainian resistance in the martyr city of Mariupol.

While the rest of the port city has visibly fallen into Russian hands, around 2,000 Ukrainian soldiers and hundreds of civilians still live entrenched in the huge steel complex. “We were trapped between the Russian soldiers who were targeting the complex and the Ukrainians who were fighting back in the factorydescribes 75-year-old Svetlana. We were in the middle and the shells sent from both sides were falling on us. When a shell approached and then exploded, it was like an earthquake.”

The Russian military set up a siege and abandoned the idea of ​​an assault after weeks of heavy fighting. At the end of March, his daughter Olga was also injured by shrapnel. Since then, the two women have been able to flee the martyr city on Tuesday, April 19, but it is the Russians who have imposed their conditions. “Mariupol was surrounded and the Russians showed us a way out”continues Svetlana.