By: Anastasiia Tkachuk
Being an exchange student is an amazing opportunity that I can experience. One of the important parts of my program is to share my culture with people here. I enjoy doing it a lot, as Ukrainian culture is very rich and interesting. Especially now, during wartime, I’m glad that I can talk more about it.
I want to share with you a story of one of the famous Ukrainian cities that was violently destroyed by Russia. In a city with many lives destroyed, around one hundred thousand civilians died.
I decided to talk about something that my life is tightly connected with and that concerns me a lot – war in Ukraine. It’s the most terrible thing that can happen, and it’s very hard to understand what war is, without actually experiencing it. There is nothing, that causes more pain and struggles, anger and hatred, ruins every single part of your life. In my experience I can tell that it makes you fully reconsider everything and makes you a whole different person in a short period of time.
Mariupol is a Ukrainian city, located on the northern coast of the sea of Azov. It used to be very famous because of its popular attractions, such as Sultan Suleiman Mosque, Regional Drama Theater, numerous museums, and parks. Located there was also one of the biggest metallurgical facilities in Europe called Azovstal.
In the beginning of the war, the city was attacked by Russia and now most of the city is fully destroyed. It includes residential buildings, schools, kindergartens and hospitals. Mariupol is a city-hero, and people all over the world know about things that had happened there.
Mariupol was founded by Ukrainian Cossacks Warriors—Ukrainian army at those times—in the 16th century as a guard post.
At first the city was called Domaha, after it was renamed as Pavlovsk, and in the 1900s the name was changed to Zhdanov. At the end of the 20th century, it finally became Mariupol, which means “Maria’s city”. There are two legends about this name – one of them says that it was named after Saint Mary, and the other one that it was named after Maria Feodorovna, who was the second wife of Paul I.
This city is located very close to the border with Russia, the distance is only about 15 kilometers. In 2014, when Russia occupied Ukrainian island Crimea, Mariupol also was occupied for a month, but after Ukrainian soldiers repelled it.
Throughout the next eight years, Mariupol developed very fast, and became a cultural and economic center, which was supported with a lot of international programs.
On February 24, 2022, it was brutally attacked with bombings in the first few hours of the war. Russia planned a massive bombing attack and destroyed all the most important infrastructure in the city.
The first few days of the war were the most stressful and hard, as nobody knew anything exactly about what was going on. Nobody was prepared to face something like this either. In the morning on February 24, lines in all of the grocery stores in the country were huge, and by the evening, the stores were empty. People everywhere were in a panic and shock.
From February 25th to the 27th, Russians occupied all the cities that were located between the border with Russia and Mariupol, while the city itself was being bombed all the time.
On March 1st, the Russian army for the first time was trying to occupy Mariupol, but all the attempts were successfully repulsed. On that same day, Russia bombed a lot of residential areas, and killed many civilians; people couldn’t escape or even leave their homes because of the bombings.
The scariest thing was to read all this news and know, that it’s happening only a few hours away from me and there is nothing we could do to prevent future events or change something.
On March 2nd, after bombings that weren’t stopping, all the connection and mobile communication disappeared. It was impossible to restore electricity, water and heating. The amount of food also was decreasing very fast.
From now it was hard to find out what was actually happening in the city, but for people inside the city it was even harder, because they didn’t know what was happening in other places of the country.
The following week was much more terrifying: drinking water was delivered in tanks to different streets, so there were a lot of lines to those tanks. Russians continued to shell everything and especially those lines, or any other rural places with food, so they would leave people without any food and resources.
At the beginning of March, the temperature fell, and it was freezing; a lot of people had frozen to death. To cook food, people would light fires near their houses. People were collecting rainwater, as there was no drinking water left.
On March 8th, it was snowing, and it saved a lot of lives, as people could melt the snow and get some water. They were very exhausted and starved. To make a fire, people would use furniture from destroyed houses as wood.
Airstrikes were happening very often; people would hide in basements in order to try to survive. Firefighters and doctors couldn’t help everybody, as all the city was burning and the number of dead or injured people was increasing too fast.
Some citizens were lucky to get out of the city by using humanitarian corridors that were working rarely. A lot of people committed suicide by jumping out of the windows, as they didn’t have any hope to be saved anymore.
On March 6th, when the government of Mariupol was trying to evacuate some people – there were 30 buses with 5,000 people, a big number of which were hardly injured. Russia ruined an evacuation and shelled 21 of those 30 buses.
The next day the Ukrainian army successfully discarded a part of the Russian army from the city. The most violent battles started later. The bombings started when Ukrainian soldiers were trying to evacuate citizens, also at that time the International Red Cross Committee was bombed.
Russians occupied the main hospital and took hostage all the stuff there. They made civilians go inside and would hide behind them so Ukrainian soldiers couldn’t do anything as they wouldn’t risk people’s lives.
On March 15th, 20 thousand civilians were evacuated. Some of them would go by their own cars, if they were lucky to still have them, others would just walk. In some distance, there was a lot of transportation that would take them to safe territories. In three days, about 40 thousand people escaped.
During the war, Russians destroyed a lot of historical sites and stole cultural belongings of Ukraine.
Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theatre was a theater in Mariupol in southern Ukraine. The modern theater was constructed in 1960 in the approximate location of the former Church of Mary Magdalene.
In that theater were hiding more than a thousand civilians, especially a lot of women with kids from a maternity hospital.
The theater was largely destroyed by Russian airstrikes on March 16th, 2022, resulting in the deaths of around 600 people, all others were hardly injured.
On March 19th, Ukrainian soldiers successfully won the battle and killed a big part of Russian soldiers in Mariupol. Battalion Azov attacked the enemy’s command post, destroying technique, commanders and around 500 soldiers.
Next month Russians continued bombing historical sights, places where people would hide and a lot of streets. After some time, as people couldn’t reach any information resources, Russian soldiers started telling them that all the territory around was already occupied—it was not true— and they didn’t have any choice either to be deported to Russia. Many people forcibly were made to go to Russia.
In April few more groups of people were able to escape. Russians were not very successful and lost a lot of their people, but they had a privilege, as Ukrainian soldiers couldn’t leave the city, replenish supplies or get some rest, and had to fight all that time.
One of the battalions that were fighting in Mariupol against Russia was the Azov Battalion, which was created in 2014 by Ukrainian people. They all were fighting terroristic Russian groups, who were trying to overthrow the government when the Crimea Island was taken away.
In 2022, Azov Battalion bravely fought in the Ukrainian army, a lot of them were captured by Russian soldiers after a siege for 3 months.
For now, 98% of Mariupol city is destroyed, the city consists of ruins, death and blood.
This is one of the stories that happened in one place in Ukraine during the war and is still happening now. The crimes committed by Russia will never be forgotten or forgiven.
Glory to Ukraine!
Works Cited
“Хронологія подій у Маріуполі під час російсько-української війни. 1 березня 2022 року – Українська Гельсінська спілка з прав людини.” Www.helsinki.org.ua, www.helsinki.org.ua/articles/khronolohiia-podiy-u-mariupoli-pid-chas-rosiysko-ukrainskoi-viyny-1-bereznia-2022-roku/. Accessed 4 May 2023.
“Mariupol.” Wikipedia, 7 Apr. 2023, en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mariupol. Accessed 3 May 2023.
Шурхало, Дмитро. “Історія Маріуполя: від заснування до “Азовсталі.”” Радіо Свобода, 11 May 2022, www.radiosvoboda.org/a/istoriya-mariupol/31842579.html. Accessed 4 May 2023.
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