“All that Russia has brought to my life and my city is death. I don’t have a home anymore, the same as 500,000 Mariupol citizens, I don’t have my city, some people don’t have relatives, friends, memories,” Helga Ignatieva told The Daily Beast
DNIPRO, Ukraine—Helga Ignatieva, a 23-year-old hotel administrator, will never forget her last weeks in the southeastern“My friend and her sister were standing close to the window when a shell hit their house,” on the ninth day of the war, Helga told The Daily Beast. “A piece of shrapnel hit her 1-year-old son in the head and he started bleeding. They drove to the hospital under the bombing, where the doctors tried to save the child, but he died after 10 minutes.
Helga is just one of the thousands of traumatized civilians who have fled the port city, which has come under the mostof any European city since World War II. Authorities estimate 90 percent of buildings in the city have suffered damage.
Before the Russian invasion started last month, Mariupol was the fastest growing city in eastern Ukraine. Its port is an important export hub on the Sea of Azov. Now, what former residents describe is more like an apocalyptic scene from the Book of Revelations. Above ground, they face relentless Russian bombardments from the sky. And underground—in shelters throughout the city—the situation is almost just as grim, with civilians fighting over the meager amounts of supplies they were given.
Eva, a 34-year-old actress who didn’t want to give her last name, was the stage director at the theater until this January. She had left Mariupol in the early days of the war—and believes many of her colleagues are still buried in the theater.“When I saw that, it was still a part of me, something inside me had died. It sounds so silly, but the theater itself was a sign of the city’s life.