People wrote “deti”, Russian for “children”, in huge letters outside Mariupol’s theatre. Russian forces bombed it anyway
mytro Velychko, 34, was taking a breather after helping out in the theatre’s field kitchen when the bomb fell. The blast, he says, sounded like a champagne cork popping, a spring knocking you off balance. “We became enveloped in a thick cloud of glass, stones and dust. Then the shrieking began, the cries for help, the panic.” People were running. Those on upper floors groped their way down whatever remained of the stairs, desperate to leave.
“It was a terrifying experience,” says Velychko. “You never knew where they would strike next.” As his own desperation grew, he heard rumours that “humanitarian corridors” were going to be set up for people to leave Mariupol without coming under fire: they were meant to depart from the theatre on the other side of the city. He decided he had little to lose. On March 4th he risked a journey under artillery fire from his apartment to the theatre.
He spent a lot of time helping out in the kitchen and made friends with others who were working there. There was Misha the chef, “a great bloke from the Caucasus”, his lovely assistant Yelena, who “chopped and scrubbed with a smile on her face”, and teenage volunteers who were having to grow up fast. Had any of them survived? “We heard cries from in the rubble,” he says. “But of course that part of the building was silent. No, those in the kitchen fell under the full force of the bomb.
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