Mariupol - Blog Posts

The first terrorist attack on Mariupol by russians was the 24 of January 2015

russian "soldiers" did it by multiple launch rocket system GRAD

One year ago we thought that day was the scariest that could happened with civilians...

We was so wrong

2 years since Mariupol defenders started to leave Azovstal in Mariupol and were captured by russians. Around 2000 Mariupol defenders are still in russian captivity.

Photo from Azovstal by Dmytro "Orest" Kozatskyi

20 Days In Mariupol (2023), dir. Mstyslav Chernov

20 Days in Mariupol (Mstyslav Chernov, 2023)

"An emotionally devastating account of the inhumanity of war."

"Documentary film-making rarely gets more impactful and devastating than this personalised account of life inside the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol at the start of last year’s Russian invasion."

I'm writing this post because I don't want people in other countries to imagine an ever-present warzone when they think of Ukraine.

Think of your ordinary life. You go to work, go out with friends, build plans for a summer holiday. You have neighbours, maybe you don't know all of them well but they live next to you and you say hello when you see them. You live in a good apartment, with all amenities, modern appliances and stylish furniture. You pay bills for heating, water and electricity. Maybe you're renting out or it's your own place. You are a part of a globalized world although you don't think about it on such a scale.

And then one day there are explosions in your city. At first it seems shocking and unusual. But you hope it'll end soon. But they don't stop. They become more frequent. You witness your hometown get demolished. The places where you spent your free time or ran errands - the windows get shattered and the walls begin to crumble. It looks weird in the middle of a modern city.

Soon the explosions happen so often that you have to go and live in the basement. You, a person, who has a modern home, must move to a basement, with other people like you, where you don't get enough light or fresh air, let alone enough tap water or a decent place to sleep.

And then you witness death. In fact, many deaths, not just one. You get the news of people you knew, maybe your neighbours or relatives, getting killed. They are just gone. At some point you become so desensitized, the news of a dead body lying outside doesn't shock you. Sometimes you have to go outside and help other people dig out the bodies from under debris or bury them. Sometimes you see other apartments being on fire and you can't do anything. Nobody can and there's no point.

The shops are closed and you become so desparate that you start hunting pigeons for food. You share tiny portions with other people because, even though the conditions are terrible, you remain a human.

You lose everything that you owned and cherished. And it all happens in three months. You basically lose any sense of belonging to a modern society in three fucking months. That's what happened in Mariupol. When you see the photos and videos of people in dirty ragged clothes, looking like they came straight from the middle ages, in front of a ruined street - it's easy to think of them only like this. But they never lived like that before. They lived just like you. They had everything you had - TVs, computers, cars, internet, medical care, shops with stylish clothes. And then just in three months russia made them turn into dejected shadows of themselves who forgot what normal life feels like. That's a real tragedy and that's what russians have done and are still doing to us. They are ruining our normal life which isn't much different from your normal life.