Air bombs, naval artillery and mortars. Serhiy experienced all the horrors of large-scale shelling attacks first-hand when he was hiding in the bomb shelter of Azovstal iron and steel works.
The rooms were damp, so things and food were soon covered with mould, and wounded people were rotting alive there. The only thing he dreamed about was to get out of the dungeon with his family and leave for a peaceful part of Ukraine. In two months of shelling, there was not a single day of silence.
Their evacuation became possible only in early May. They had to go through the so-called filtration and, finally, Serhiy and his family were able to get to Zaporizhzhia.
Interview transcript
I work as a converter shop supervisor at Azovstal Iron and Steel Works. Shortly after six o’clock, we received a call and were told, “Get ready; there will be a full-scale [invasion]…” And there it began.
I did not leave my workplace during the first working day. We were trying to figure it out how to suspend the plant’s operations and make it smoothly in order to be able to resume the production process later.
Without any delays, the plant’s administration decided that they would open all the security gate entrances and all the bomb shelters for the plant’s staff, for civilians, their families and for people from outside. There were supplies of water and food in the bomb shelters.
On 8 March, we settled in the bomb shelter joining other people in it. At that time, there were about 60 of them and five of us: me, my five and daughter, my wife’s sister and her mother.
We settled down there. It was hard, but what could we do? A day later, one more family joined us. The military helped them to relocate, and so there were 70 of us then. That is how we lived. Once a day, we cooked some soup. Fortunately, there was some firewood in the workshop. We had brought it to the workshop earlier and now had the possibility to cook on wood fire. Girls made some dough and cooked some flatbread that we ate.
There were 36 bomb shelters throughout the territory. Some of them were more of a permanent type, while others were just restored during the time when ours forces held Ilyich Iron and Steel Works. It was a little easier at Azovstal.
When they [the military] had to retreat from Ilyich Works, marines came to Azovstal, and very intense incoming shellfire began from all sides. The scale of destruction was catastrophic.
There was a situation when my wife stayed awake and we recorded the time – a strike was every five minutes: a bomb, an aircraft strike, naval artillery or mortars. We saw some fragments of cluster mines, which are banned worldwide. I saw the ruins; I saw some terrible things – the building of the workshop folded in, and new pipes delivered earlier for the planned retrofitting of the converter in the summer.
Then strikes kept coming in incessantly and a bomb shelter folded in. It collapsed not from the top, but from the side and [people] were killed there. There was a hospital in it.
Our survival fully relied on the Ukrainian military. They delivered us some food, once every three or four days, and some other things when it was necessary.
In the beginning, they helped us with medicines, but then things got tougher. Damp basements. People’s belongings got covered with mould. Everything was in mould and food products grew mouldy.
We tended to open the doors, to air the premises, but this did not help much. The military had many wounded men, and people were simply rotting there. As things rot, so do people’s wounds.
There was no full ceasefire, not a single time, that is, a humanitarian ceasefire [for a humanitarian convoy] – when you could go out, when the military would come and say that there was a humanitarian [convoy]. As soon as we go out and get together, incoming shelling begins.
The first ceasefire was on 30 April. On 1 May, we made up our minds and went out to Markokhim [Mariupol Coke and Chemical Plant]. We came out near the security gate entrances and were then put on a bus. A decision was made to take us all.
We went through a filtration and were treated like prisoners. We were sitting on the bus, when people from the Red Cross came, ‘Please, stay here and do not be afraid. Everything will be fine.”
We went to the toilet with an escort. We passed the filtration – some of our personal belongings were taken away. We went to a tent camp. There were people there who immediately checked our phones – the contact list, photos and history. We tried our best to immediately remove all messengers, no matter what correspondence we had. We did not know what they [could] pick on us for.
Men were asked to strip to their underwear – bruises, tattoos, any other signs. The same about women. They stripped to their underwear and were even asked to take off their bras/tops. Pardon the expression, but even their underpants were looked into. Women showed their heels.
They were treated even tougher than men were. Where, who, how, why, where were you, where are the military, what equipment do they have? Do you know the call signals?
Then those of us who passed it went to another tent where our fingerprints and palm prints were taken. After that, we were photographed and it was over.
Then the Emergency Service staff (rescuers) came up to us, registered us putting our names on some lists. That is, several more rounds of questioning. Do you know anyone from the military, from the police, from the SSU?
I had my glasses on, so they asked, “Are you a shooter?” I said, “These are my work glasses, just ordinary work glasses. We receive them at the plant.” For them, they were glasses for shooting. When I took out a tourniquet from my briefcase, they asked me, “What is it?” They offered us some options: to go to Zaporizhzhia, to stay in the so-called DPR (self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic) or go to Russia.
A large convoy of buses came from Zaporizhzhia, but we were taken out on Russian buses. Our buses were not allowed into Mariupol. As far as I understand, to reassure people, more than 50 buses and more than 20 ambulances were sent. In actual fact, there were only three buses of people and at about seven in the evening on 2 May, we got to Mangush. There they let us pick up some more people on two more buses.
Some civilian cars also joined us and we moved on. We spent the night in Dmytrivka and on 3 May, we headed off for Zaporizhzhia. We stopped in convoys, a crowd of people trying to leave. We moved under the auspices of the Red Cross and the UN. They tried to negotiate for people to be released.
We passed two or three locations where people wanted to be evacuated. People were standing and waiting with their things packed. We were not allowed to do this. They are simply being held hostage there. This is also done so that Russian propaganda could show a good picture to their audience. A large convoy of buses is moving, most of them empty, and people do not want to leave, while in fact, they were simply not allowed to leave.
Basically, on 3 May, we could make it to Zaporizhzhia, all the way that remained since we had left.
There were many people left behind. Some of them were afraid to go, some did not want to, others do not trust Russians. Civilians who remain there are now in the same terrible conditions.
Food supplies are running out gradually. The military deliver what they can, but we understand that their stocks are also running out. There are a large number of soldiers there who need help. There are a large number of wounded. They need to be taken out, evacuated.
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