MONDAY, APRIL 25 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A
too late.”
Instead, he shivered with his
family inside their unheated
apartment. “Without any light,
we began to live from dawn to
dusk — going to bed at about 6
p.m. and waking up at 4 to 5 a.m.,”
he wrote. “But much more often
we woke up even earlier because
of the explosions.”
Eventually, the fighting came
so close that Kischik’s family
moved into the basement along
with other residents of the apart-
ment complex. Hunger was com-
pounded by cold. Elderly resi-
dents started to die, leading to a
macabre ritual.
“The cold prevented their bod-
ies from decomposing, so we took
them to their apartments where
they used to live,” he wrote. His
family subsisted on occasional
bowls of porridge, honey and
some cans of food. His brother
died during one shelling.
After the Russians bombed the
city’s waterworks, Nick Osychen-
ko, chief executive of TV Mari-
upol, said his family resorted to
ripping apart home radiators to
drain them of their chemical-in-
fused water to drink. He recalled
the relief of a winter storm that
sent residents into the streets to
fill buckets with snow to melt for
water.
Like many parts of Ukraine,
particularly in the south and east,
Mariupol is a largely Russian-
speaking city with deep tradition-
al and cultural ties to Russia and
complicated, overlapping loyal-
ties to Moscow and Kyiv. But the
sheer brutality of the assault has
turned the city decisively against
the Kremlin.
“I don’t think anyone but Putin
could have pushed Mariupol to
love Ukraine this much,”
Osychenko said.
On March 9, Russians bombed
Maternity Hospital No. 3, where
generations of Mariupol’s chil-
dren had been born. Pregnant
women wrapped in blankets fled
through the smoke and broken
glass. At least six people died.
“Kill me now!” one injured
pregnant woman shouted the day
after the attack as she realized she
was losing her baby, medics told
the Associated Press. Both mother
and child died.
A week later, an airstrike hit the
Mariupol Drama Theater — the
shelter that in the first days of the
MARIUPOL FROM A
“impractical.” Instead, he ordered
his men to seal it off “so that not
even a fly can get through.” Some
military analysts saw a measure of
Ukrainian victory in that an-
nouncement, saying that Putin
simply couldn’t risk further losses
ahead of a looming assault on
other parts of eastern Ukraine.
The steel plant continues to
come under fire from Russian
airstrikes. In the video from in-
side the facility, a little boy in a
gray hoodie sheltering there
spoke to the camera.
“We want to get out of here
alive.”David Stern in Mukachevo, Ukraine,
and Louisa Loveluck in Dnipro,
Ukraine, contributed to this report.So far, he said, Russia had failed
to agree to a negotiated resolu-
tion.
Volyna conveyed the grim
sense of a force cornered and
standing alone.
“While the world is asleep, in
Mariupol, the guys are dying,” he
said in his audio messages to The
Post. “They’re suffering losses.
They’re being bombed with heavy
bombs... torn up by artillery, and
they’re dying underground.”
The duration and ferocity of
Mariupol’s resistance against a
much larger military have been
inspiration for Ukrainians across
the country. Putin said that week
that Russian troops would refrain
from trying to clear the steel
plant, calling such an operationto never surrender. Others who
had placed their faith in Russian
promises of safe passage had paid
with their lives, he argued, as
Kremlin’s forces broke pledges
and opened fire.
“No one believes the Russians,”
he said.
In audio messages Wednesday,
he appealed for international
help, saying that 500 of his fight-
ers were wounded and that sol-
diers were “dying underground.”
President Volodymyr Zelensky
said at a news conference last
week that there were two poten-
tial ways to end the standoff —
either a diplomatic solution or
one in which the besieged Ukrai-
nian fighters are armed with “se-
rious and heavy weapons.”not go down to the basement,
walks badly, the whole building
burned down,” her daughter
wrote. “Any information please!”
In a city with a prewar popula-
tion of 450,000, the armed resis-
tance has come down to a last
stronghold inside in the Azovstal
steel plant. A video taken Thurs-
day and shared with The Post
showed women and children in
an underground basement with a
steel door. Ukrainian government
officials have said there could be
as many as 1,000 civilians hud-
dling there.
The commander of the Ukrai-
nian forces inside the plant, Maj.
Serhiy Volyna of the 36th Sepa-
rate Marine Brigade, vowed Tues-
day in an interview with The Postwar had seemed like a haven.
About 1,300 civilians were hiding
there ahead of the strike, authori-
ties said; about 300 people are
thought to have perished.
As the fighting continued, not
even dim basements were safe
anymore. As residents sought es-
cape, confusion and chaos en-
sued.
Cherepanov’s Mariupol Life
website is now one of several digi-
tal bulletin boards where desper-
ate family members search for the
missing. On the site, Tatyana Lo-
makivskaya’s child wrote: “Look-
ing for mother... born in 1939 in
Mariupol... very thin, height 155-
160cm.” In a posted picture, Lo-
makivskaya wears a floral green
dress. “On March 15 was alive, didCHINGIS KONDAROV/REUTERS
Pro-Russian troops in Mariupol stand in front of the destroyed administration building at the Azovstal Iron and Steel Works on Thursday.war in ukraineTina BrownAuthor, “The Palace Papers: Inside the House of Windsor- the Truth and the Turmoil”
Tuesday, April 26 at 11:00 a.m.Brown discusses her new book, which revealshow the royal family continues to reinventitself even after the shock of Princess Diana’sexplosive celebrity and the crisis of “Megxit”in an exclusive interview with veteran mediaexecutive Joanna Coles.To register to watch, visit:wapo.st/brownapril20 22 orscan code below witha smartphone camera:Listen wherever podcasts are available.@POSTLIVE #POSTLIVE