By Dmitry Steshin
[KP] Cooks out of the Environment
After a series of unsuccessful attempts to get out of Mariupol , I, the “Azov” and Vushniks (Ukrainian Armed Forces) retreated back to the industrial zones and to their borders in urban areas. Their room for maneuver is shrinking every day - the industrial zone of the Ilyich Plant is practically cleared, fighting is still going on in the port, but the outcome is clear.
Only the industrial metropolis - Azovstal - is holding on - the military from Russia and the DPR left it "for dessert", collecting all the reptiles in a heap - in one place. But, not all militants want to die in Mariupol...
Yesterday, at the location of our battalion (the location of the DPR battalion "Vostok"), business executives drove a medical van based on the American "Hummer". Two dozen "Azov" people crowded into it, trying to get out of the encirclement, hiding behind a red cross:
- We pierced his wheel, he flew into a ditch, almost turned over, - the Vostok fighter tells me:
- And then they rushed into the loose. But, you see, they were clearly divided into two groups of ten! One immediately went to the industrial zone, back. And the second, we later found out, broke into a house in the private sector. The owner was almost beaten to death, his wife was made a nightmare.
- What for?
- And so that if anything, she said that there was no one in the house. We sat there for several hours, dropped our backpacks, chargers for walkie-talkies, batteries, rations and left for Zaporozhye. We tried to leave.
The city is now blocked for civilians to enter - too many Nazis tried to break out of Mariupol in civilian cars with pieces of sheets on the antennas and door handles. Therefore, the standard question at every checkpoint, to people sitting in such cars: "Is everyone all right?."
The fighter checking the car at the same time carefully peers into the faces of women, trying to read the signal for help. You can only leave after many hours of checking. Illegal "Taxi service" taking people out of Mariupol for a lot of money, withered by itself.
Already at the entrance to Mariupol , we are stopped by a commandant's office patrol. We talked with a young military policeman, who told how THEY leave the almost killed city:
- Do you see, over there, a field with hills? Watching this morning, four bodies are coming. Barely dragging legs ...
It's raining in the Sea of Azov now, and every step on the virgin soil is three kilos of mud on your boots, you can't run. The fighter continues:
- We are also barely crawling through the mud to intercept them. Three, in camouflage, with guns, immediately started running and ran into the abandoned house, left. And the third remained standing, he was a civilian. He says: "Guys, don’t drive in, there is no weapon, I dropped it in Marik, there are no documents, I’m a vushnik, a cook."
The Komendach laughs contagiously, and so do we. The abundance of captured cooks, drivers and signalers is simply amazing! This is the joke of the week. With whom they fought in Mariupol for a month is a mystery. We say goodbye, we wish each other caution and Victory, as is now customary in recent times.
On the Zaporozhye highway, already a few kilometers from Mariupol, there were more cars that “cut down” our secrets. The highway is empty, straight as an arrow, and for some reason the encircled people think that this path from the city is open to them. I was struck by an old "Japanese woman" with a shot windshield. She was decorated with the letters Z from all sides, while losing a sense of proportion. On the hood there is a clumsy inscription from a balloon: “Work brothers!”.
The brothers did their job, no offense. The fighters didn't leave ...
Impact to the Soul
At the Hypermarket at the entrance, there is a familiar picture - thousands of citizens receive humanitarian aid, eat, collect water from watering machines.
People immediately hang on us, they have two questions: “When will all this end?” and “What is there at the front?”. Everything else is strung on the second question: “Is it possible to drive to Zaporozhye?”, “And to Kherson?”, “And to the Crimea?”
We with my friend, military correspondent Vlad Yevtushenko,who is a fighter of the "East," patiently explained. I frown inwardly at a simple thought: “Well, what do you, dear local authorities, hang out in such places on plain paper the daily report of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and the People's Militia of the DPR?
Even print and distribute, people will pass from hand to hand! Read aloud! Yes, I'll deliver it myself! I hope they hear me. Because in recent days, in Mariupol , due to electronic warfare (electronic warfare systems), not only cellular communications and television, but even radios do not work: people complained to me, “one hiss, they made antennas, it doesn’t help.”
Stop. And, actually, where are the city authorities? Searching unsuccessfully. We find a few more distribution points for humanitarian aid, which is good. At school No. 53, where a new mayor was elected a week ago, the yard is covered with smoke from bonfires. People have made field kitchens in garbage bins - they have roofs and some sort of walls.
A middle-aged man loosens the ground on the lawn with a rake, will there really be a garden? No, here Death mowed down - crosses are scattered across the lawn. The man does not turn to us, it seems he sees us with his back, says through sobs:
- My wife is dead. Because of you. We ran here with weapons, now you are shooting, what happened? Say hello to your parents.
We are turning around. Vlad's face just tipped over, he says that he hasn't been so nasty in his soul for a long time. For understanding: Vlad from Poltava, went to fight in 2014, was wounded by a tank shell near the Donetsk airport, shrapnel to the temple, eyesight goes down, poor motor skills. Disability was transferred from the 2nd group to the 3rd, not because Vlad got better, so there are fewer problems with the bureaucracy. I didn't see my mother for 8 years. She, as we were advised in our hearts, can’t even say “hello”, her Security Service of Ukraine grazes ...
On Metallurgov Avenue we find the Employment Center. Men in overalls are inserting glass, tomorrow the city administration will start working here - it's almost the Center. On the other side of the avenue, a military excavator roars, a crane hauling broken slabs and dumping them into a truck. A whole block of apartments in a sooty high-rise building collapsed, along with the entrance, from the roof to the very bottom.
I ask the Ministry of Emergency Situations, they say, is everyone preparing the house for reconstruction? Indeed, good news! The rescuer hits me in the very soul, the second time in 15 minutes, so it turns out:
- Brother, what a reconstruction. Two weeks ago, twenty of our Donetsk reservists ran into this house, on the first floor. And the dill (Ukrainian) tank laid down the entrance... So they lie there like that... We'll be poking around for a long time, come tomorrow, we'll get it.
Snipers and God's Work
In the Drama Theater of Mariupol, according to rumors, crushed people are also lying under the rubble. I can't get into it for the second week. Others get in - I don't. I always come at the moment when the battle begins at the theater.
The quarters around are considered a "gray zone," they have long been passed by sappers. And I myself was here - in the neighboring building of the SBU. And then a day passes and in dilapidated houses, suddenly Nazi “troikas” start working: a sniper, a grenade launcher, and a submachine gunner, for cover.
And this time, too, it was not possible to get to the place of the monstrous provocation (the Azovites blew up the Drama Theater, gathering hundreds of people here, and announcing that it had been bombed by Russian aircraft). If we consider everything that is happening in Mariupol as God's providence, then everything was predetermined so that we would save the girl Tatyana, wounded by a sniper. Too many coincidences, they clung to each other.
Prospekt Mira, the architectural axis of the city, rests against this unfortunate Drama Theatre . I drove carefully, the car wobbling between unimaginable iron rubbish from roofs and facades, cut down by fragments of lanterns and hanging wires. The last intersection, the intersection with Nielsen Street, a little lower down this street - the SBU from my last report (on the website kp.ru and in the issue of "KP" for April 11). And then, my grandmother, another heroine of that text, throws herself under the wheels. The one to whom I gave the loaf of bread hidden in the car “in the most extreme case”. She still held my sleeve with a bird's paw, so that I would not run away, would not change my mind about giving her bread. Grandma lives! I lower the window, she screams:
- Rather, the girl is injured! Take me to the hospital, please!
Vlad, a former ambulance paramedic, starts fiddling in a cramped car, unbuttoning the medical package and also shouting:
- Faster! Show the way!
Grandmother runs to the corner of Nielsen Street and freezes, pressed against the wall, does not go further. Everything is clear, the street is being shot through. Waving hand:
- There! There!
He points to the entrance to the courtyard, 20 meters from it, and immediately the end of the house will close us. Trying to get through in one throw, the engine roars, we don't hear the whistle of a bullet, but we can clearly hear the screech of a ricochet from the metal, on the other side of the avenue, already behind us.
Dirty, plague-ridden people in the cellars are waiting for us in the yard. I put a blanket on the back seat, Tatyana is dragged out of the basement, she screams at every step. Above the knee on the thigh is a bloodstain, but the artery and veins are not affected, lucky. Tatyana's manicure is striking, on gray, almost black hands. Another sign of underground life, the only consolation of Mariupol women. Tatyana spent 52 days in this cellar. It began to rain, she went out of the yard, to pick up pieces of metal torn from the roofs - to close the windows ... I ask who will accompany? Tatyana's husband, Igor:
- I have no documents!
The family's documents burned down along with the apartment, and few people understand what a disaster it is in the warring Mariupol. I promise that I will agree with the roadblocks and bring them back - another problem of the city without transport. I still try not to think about the fact that I will have to skip this corner of Prospekt Mira three more times. On the way to the infamous Regional Hospital, Tatyana says that she had a small shop. Father - a retired lieutenant colonel, lives in Rostov. Husband, Igor, a pensioner, a former judge, and he was afraid of document checks in vain. At checkpoints, it is enough to shout “Wounded!” and they wave their hands to us: “Drive faster!”.
"Enemies" and "Ours"
In that same unfortunate hospital, where a month ago, the living were lying in the corridors mixed with the dead , and the corpses were piled in heaps in empty wards, something subtly changed. For the better. Because it doesn't get any worse.
A minute and volunteers in white suits appear. Body armor is hidden underneath. They bring a bloody stretcher, and a couple of minutes later Tatyana is on the operating table. We are all taking a breath. I'm talking to volunteer Alexei. He is from Mariupol, he came to the hospital himself, he brought friends. With the future, he decided:
- I have all hopes only for Russia.
Already without a camera, Aleksey briefly, obscenely, characterizes the current Ukraine and what it has done to his hometown. Tatyana appears, jumps on one leg, but does not cry out, she was anesthetized. He shows a bag with a 7.62 bullet, and Vlad, for comparison, clicks a 5.45 cartridge out of the magazine. She says: “I was at the end of my life, so I kept up, went down and didn’t have the strength to break a bone.”
We do not leave Tatyana in this hospital, we tell her that "it will be better in the basement." We promise to bring to the dressing on Monday. Perhaps there will be no more snipers in the area. Hope.
We return back. We are greeted by the whole yard, thanked, vying with each other to tell how we lived in recent months. I remember the phrase: "Bread is now more expensive than gold, and only smoke is even more expensive." They show how a sniper and a grenade launcher hit their yard - they waited until everyone gathered with bowls near a common pan. Vitaly, a blacksmith from Azovstal, says:
- I then ran to the militia, crawled through. They came, put the DShK (Degtyarev-Shpagin heavy machine gun), hit it so hard that the sniper hung upside down through the window sill!
Then we are led to look at a small courtyard cemetery near the Ukrainian propaganda monument to the “Victims of the Holodomor”. After 2014, they were sculpted in all Russian-speaking cities of Ukraine, as a warning to Muscovites, cotton wool and separatists. After what happened in Mariupol, this symbol of the "new Ukraine" causes only righteous malice. On the way back,
I notice that the corner of the yard has been cleared, and the flower beds have been dug up and the first sprouts are already breaking through on them. And at the sight of these beds, no words are needed to understand how they want peace here.
Tatyana's neighbors, old-timers of the city, explain to us where these sniper groups come from deep in the rear:
- The center of Mariupol stands on the catacombs. According to legend, the Cossacks dug them, and they were also used during the Crimean War. Just stone was mined for construction. Everyone who grew up in the center knows where the exits are. One is just on our street, two more are also nearby, on Kuindzhi street and in the City Garden. But there are more of them, of course, in the spring the passages usually open in the beams.
Of course, the “Azovites”, who had been preparing Mariupol for defense for eight years, could not help but know about these catacombs. And we, unfortunately, heard about them only now. And it cost a lot of blood.
In parting, Tatyana tells us: “God sent me today both enemies and his own,” the most precious words of the day, we did not expect them, did not count on them ... A little later, in the car, my friend, Vlad from Poltava , notices that "black longing" let him go. It also made me feel a little better.