An eyewitness account of Ukraine: How I survived escaping ‘hell on earth'

On the floor of the hotel room where we talked sat the back pack that ­contained the few meagre belongings that ­Victoria “Vika” Liepina, had pulled together ­before that heartbreaking moment when the decision was made to flee her home city of Mariupol. There was simply no other choice, because to stay was to die.

It had taken three days to get here to the comparative safety of the western ­Ukrainian city of Lviv, a place about 1000km from Mariupol but barely 100km from Ukraine’s border with Poland.

But even here in Lviv only the night ­before we talked, a Russian airstrike on an oil facility on the city’s outskirts had set the air raids sirens whining, leaving 38-year-old Vika with the feeling that this too was an unsafe place and only by crossing into neighbouring Poland could she feel truly out of harm's way.

Vika’s ordeal and that of the parents she left behind in Mariupol had begun weeks before in the southern city that has been hit by the heaviest fighting since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Was there a particular day or moment, I asked, when she realised that the situation was beginning to spiral out of control?

“I think it was a Thursday. I don’t ­remember the date, but I had an ­appointment with my surgeon following a recent operation,” Vika recalls.

“I called him and he said told me that all appointments were cancelled and that the hospital will be used only for those wounded, it was then that I thought the situation is getting serious,” says Vika.

But even back then she could have no idea just how bad things would become for her family and most of the pre-war population of more than 400,000 people who inhabited this, the biggest Ukrainian city on the Sea of Azov.

What followed for Vika, her ­mother ­Valentina and father Rostislar, like most of Mariupol’s citizens, was a slow ­agonising descent into a subterranean existence as the city was pulverised by Russian shells and rockets. Their own five storey block of flats was increasingly hit in the fighting.

“In the space of one week things changed so much,” Vika remembers, as first electricity then water and gas ­supplies were cut off.

“We had some food probably enough for three weeks but were unable to cook much of it, and people would gather at certain places for water and wait the whole day from eight in the morning till six at night.”

But as the bombardment intensified such forays outside became increasingly dangerous and ultimately almost impossible. Without any reliable information and cut off from news reports it was only the sound and proximity of explosions that became the measure of how bad things were becoming and as Vika herself ­admits they were “lucky” that their block of flats had thick walls that at the beginning at least offered a measure of protection.

“At first it seemed that the Russians only bombed, important ­infrastructure and official buildings, but then the ­civilian neighbourhoods began being hit,” she explains.

As things became increasingly ­desperate, and with people in need of warm food, increasing numbers began to make fires outside in courtyards or entrance ways to their homes in order to cook.

It was a decision says Vika everyone took based on how loud and close the ­explosions were. The morning that Vika’s father was wounded it was “not very loud outside” and he along with four or five men from the neighbourhood ventured outdoors to begin cooking. At first Vika and her mother pleaded with him not to go as the sound of explosions nearby grew in intensity.

Both were in the kitchen when they heard the first explosion, later Vika was told how the men initially dropped to the ground before getting to their feet again and running. Rostislar was the last to run and just at that moment another shell landed.

“It’s your father,” one neighbour called out to her as Vika made her way outside to check on him.

“I rushed down and he was lying on the ground and there was blood all around him and this big hole in his back,” Vika remembers of that terrible day along with the feeling of helplessness knowing there were no emergency services to call on by that stage.

Fortunately living as they did in ­Mariupol city centre they were close to a police station and a neighbour ran to seek assistance before some officers and others picked up Rostislar and got him to hospital.

What Vika encountered there she will never forget. There were no supplies of blood, no fresh drinking water or food and patients were housed in the ­corridors because of both overcrowding and as ­protection from the bombardment which had blown in the hospital windows.

In the days that followed with the help of the army Vika and Valentina would bring clothes, blankets and bedsheets to the hospital for Rostislar as none were available.

Things though in the city would only ­become worse and cooking ­outside ­became almost impossible even though warm food was vital given that ­temperatures at his time had plummeted to minus eight degrees below freezing.

Vika by now was alone in the flat as Valentina stayed at the hospital for a full week to be near her husband and because it was dangerous to run the gauntlet of bombs and bullets between the hospital and home.

When she did return both mother and daughter eventually had no choice but to move into a basement such was the ­intensity of the bombardment that had now blown out every window in the five storey block.

“People from neighbouring houses also joined us in the basement but you must understand that it’s dark and dusty there with little air and no water and you ­cannot spend all the day inside as you must go outside to cook,” says Vika.

The sense of being trapped grew as all around them they watched their ­neighbours’ homes destroyed and ­burning. Having been trained in first aid Vika was often asked to attend to ­neighbours. On one occasion there was a fire in their block and a neighbour had been wounded. One of his family ­members knowing of Vika’s medical training made the perilous run to their basement to ask her to come to their own underground shelter and do what she could for the ­injured man.

Such though was the ferocity of the subsequent bombardment even to make the move of 20 yards to their neighbour’s basement was not possible.

All Vika could do was pass on ­instructions to the family on how to give the man a painkilling injection and treat the multiple laceration injuries across his body that had been caused by flying glass from the explosions. By now even the entrance to Vika’s basement had been destroyed.

“Every day I would repeat to myself that I would do everything I could to survive.” Vika tells me. “It was like a game between me and them (Russian army) they want to kill me and I want to survive, so I do my best to survive.”

Eventually becoming so weak and ­malnourished, existence in the basement no longer became feasible for Vika and Valentina and along with a few other neighbours they made the desperate ­decision to try and leave the neighbourhood.

“We did not want to die there, and we were becoming worried that soon we would not have the strength to leave,” said Vika, who along with Valentina and two other women with a child made their way out under fire. We decide to go and not look back, but came across Russian soldiers in the next neighbourhood,” Vika continues her story and I ask what the­ ­soldiers response to them was.

“Many people might think we saw them as monsters, but the thing was when I saw the Russian officer in charge of the soldiers he just looked pretty normal and just like us,” says Vika, clearly still ­puzzled by the encounter.

“He’s from Donetsk. He’s got a ­university education, he had a job, he has a family. He looks normal. If you change his clothes, he’s just like us,” Vika ­explains.

“This is the worst thing, he is the enemy that kills us, but you cannot believe he looks so normal.”

After making their way to the hospital where Rostislar was still a patient, Vika only had minutes to hug him and her mother before on their insistence she agreed to leave Mariupol. At that time there was no evacuation procedure or “humanitarian corridors” in place in the city, so Vika tried to find someone with transport to help her escape.

In the end with enormous luck she ­encountered an old friend from her ­university days when she had studied ­engineering and he too had decided to flee and gave her a lift out of Mariupol.

After parting company with him she then made the hungry and exhausting journey by whatever means she could to the western city of Lviv.

This ­beautiful city is where many Ukrainians like Vika come during their escape from the more war torn parts of the country. Some like Vika aim to move on again over the ­border into Poland and further afield. ­Already the city is teeming with displaced people the vast majority arriving at the city’s railway station as their first ­stopping off point.

Alina Ryumshina and her nephew Matvey had fled the southeastern city of Melitopol and made it as far as Lviv

It was at Lviv railway station a few days before meeting Vika, that I came across 19-year-old, Alina Ryumshina and her two year old nephew Matvey sitting with their baggage. They along with other family members had fled another major south eastern city, Melitopol and were now en-route to Bulgaria where they hoped to live with relations.

“Who knows when we can return to Melitopol, nobody can be sure of such things these days,” Alina tells me, ­summing up the uncertainty of so many Ukrainians right now.

A study by the International ­Organisation for Migration (IOM) ­released last week showed that 6.5 ­million people had been displaced within Ukraine since the beginning of Russia’s invasion and war.

This was in addition to the 3.5m who had fled the country and were designated as refugees. Unicef has also confirmed that 2.5m of the internally displaced were children. Staggeringly, right now internally displaced Ukrainians count for almost 12% of the total number of internally displaced people in the world, ­taking Ukraine close to the figure reached in Syria after more than a decade of war.

As I write Ukrainian resistance in ­Vika’s home of Mariupol continues to hold out despite much of the city being reduced to rubble. On Friday an International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) convoy travelling to the besieged city turned around because it had become impossible to proceed with its mission to evacuate civilians. Yesterday ICRC said they were trying again to facilitate the safe passage of those still trapped.

It’s estimated that nearly 5000 people have now been killed across the city, many buried where they died or their ­bodies left on the street.

Some 290,000 people including Vika have already got out but perhaps as many as 160,000 are still trapped without power and with little food or other supplies.

Among them perhaps are Vika’s father Rostislar and mother Valentina, though when we spoke she was unsure of their precise whereabouts.

I asked Vika if given what she had ­experienced at the hands of the Russians in Mariupol she could every forgive them?

“By them do you mean soldiers, the state or president?” she asks in return by way of reply before continuing.

“I still have friends in Russia, I cannot put them together and what I have seen. I cannot hate them. No, I don’t, I don’t have any feeling towards them. Maybe for now,” Vika concludes, before we say our goodbyes and I wish her luck in the future.

There Vika’s story ends, but not quite. Last Friday while crossing from Ukraine back into Poland I bumped into her by chance on the Polish side of the border. How are things now I ask?

“I’m good. I’m working with a ­humanitarian group here now at the ­border, and I feel much better,” she ­explains. “Don’t you think I look better,” she asks me smiling?

“Yes,” I reply. And she does.