Irina Govorukha’s heartbreaking text about Mariupol is impossible to read without tears

The Ukrainian city of Mariupol is now under siege. For several weeks, local civilians have no gas, no light, no water. Humanitarian aid is unable to reach people, as enemy troops simply do not let vehicles pass. The lucky ones who managed to get out of this hell, talk about what they had to go through. One of these stories we will share today.



Every day more and more heartbreaking stories from Mariupol appear on the Internet. People who managed to save themselves and their loved ones share traumatic experiences. Recently we came across one of these stories written by Irina Govorukha. We simply could not share this story.



“The town once smelled of iodine, fish and fruit trees with Malaya Sadova. Amateur buildings, kerosene lanterns and old Crimean granite from paved pavements. A little later - Pokrovskaya fair, selling galoshes, Donetsk coal loaded on the ship "Bear", factories and baths.

A year ago - half-enclosed sea, pears and jasmine. Summer vacation, sugar beach sand and Cambridge geranium from Kuindzhi Street. Today - gunpowder, smoke, burnt iron, concrete, brick. Grief and despair. Rusty battery water. Gray ash. A handful of buckwheat, steamed with cold water. Unguided rockets and piercing messages, “Don’t cry.” Hide. The Mariupols hid for weeks. Many are still hiding.

On March 8, her husband made a gift of coffee from melted snow. He brought it solemnly in an iron mug directly into the "bed", consisting of one railway mattress.

Nadezhda Sukhorukova on his Facebook page told about the neighbor Anna. She walked several blocks daily to see her elderly parents. He hobbled on fragile legs, and deadly fragments flew to the right and left. They did not hurt her, apparently preserving the remnants of mercy. Anna brought her parents food, hugged gray heads and promised peace by tomorrow. But tomorrow the shelling intensified, food stocks melted, and peace was postponed indefinitely.



GettyImages Photographer Evgeny Maloletka forever remembered the frame, shot on February 27. It was the body of a little girl affected by shrapnel. Then there was a flood of mutilated children. Only before my eyes continued to loom that first bloody crown.

The young man, carrying 8 preschoolers in his car, always remembered the parental order: “If something happens to us, all your children.” Moms and dads walked out of town and didn’t know if they would get there alive.



GettyImages In October 1941, the city was taken by the Germans. They came at him with greed and fury. Bombed industry, railways and houses of peace. They were under occupation for 23 months. 85% of the infrastructure was destroyed: 1,500 houses, 100 libraries, an elevator, a theater and the Palace of Pioneers. The Russian scumbags outdid the fascists and accomplished their abominable task in thirty days.

Now on the site of the sunny, smelling of iodine, fish and the Pokrovsky Fair of Mariupol is a charred ghost. He is still breathing, but breathing is intermittent, and large and small hearts continue to beat in the basements. The city is no longer surrounded by a smooth sea.



GettyImages No girls dressed in blue blouse, written by Tatiana Yablonskaya. A drama theater in which Tolstoy, Chekhov and Shukshin were given. Kindergartens, singing in every way “Clapping, clap on the New Year”, and the stadium, in the olden way called “Ilyichevets”. Only exhausted people, numb children and beasts pouncing from heaven, sea and earth remain.”

What is happening now in Mariupol and other cities of Ukraine does not fit into my head. It is simply impossible to describe in words the pain that Ukrainians feel every day. It remains to believe in the power of Ukrainian soldiers fighting for the freedom of their homeland. Sooner or later, good will prevail over evil.



Peels Photo in the article