Behind the faces of the fugitives from Mariupol is the trauma of 45 days in hell.
Parking in the Ukrainian city of Zaporozhye is the place where those who managed to escape arrive.
To call them lucky, however, would be wrong. They have experienced real horror.
This is the story of the Burats.
We noticed the wife and wife Valery and Tatiana when they arrived.
Tatiana, with her hand in a slingshot, and her husband, Valery, with a plaster on her face covering her jaw that looked broken.
Live news for Ukraine: Johnson and Trus are banned by Russia; The Ukrainian Prime Minister will visit the United States
Image: Valery and Tatiana Burak as a young couple
In the tent, which acts as a port of refuge as displaced people regroup, eat, take new clothes and wonder how they survived, we spoke. Here is their story in their words.
Tatiana Burak: My name is Tatiana Burak and I am an English teacher from Mariupol. Three days ago we managed to get out of Mariupol and then we reached Verdansk. Finally, yesterday we tried to get out of this small town to get to this place.
But during one of the Russian blockades we were stopped and the bus was brought back. But today’s attempt was successful. So, we finally reached Ukrainian territory and even found some of our Mariupol friends here. So we are so happy to do it because we survived 45 days in hell in Mariupol.
Valery Burak: My name is Valery Burak. We are husband and wife.
Image: Sky correspondent Mark Stone interviews Tatiana and Valery Burak in Zaporozhye
The failed escape
Mark Stone: Thank you very much for talking to us. Let’s start over. Can you take us to the moment when the Russians arrived? Describe it to me. What happened?
Tatiana Burak: You know that on February 24, Putin announced this special anti-terrorist operation, as he called it. And we actually planned to leave on that date. But you know, fate: our car just stopped. It didn’t work out and we couldn’t get out.
So as soon as the shelling started, we were in our apartment in one of the neighborhoods on the left bank. Maybe he was the first to start shelling, and we decided to move to another neighborhood because our friends thought it was safer there. So we got in the car of one of our friends and drove to another neighborhood.
Valery Burak: And the shelling was already in full swing everywhere and Russian planes started coming and bombing. Some of our friends’ private houses have already been destroyed on the left bank. That’s why our friends invited us to stay with them in other neighborhoods in the center, where they think it will be safe. But somehow, just before the bridge, our car was shot at from different places and we were wounded and our military helped us get to this hospital.
Hospital treatment was bombed
Mark: So you broke your arm, Tatiana, and you broke Valerie’s jaw?
Valery: Jaw, yes. Three of us were injured.
Mark: And that was from a shell. Russian shell?
Valery: Well, we don’t know the origin of the shelling. You know, no one can say.
Tatiana: There were a lot of Russian terrorist groups all over the city at the time, trying to wreak havoc, you know, and show people that there’s really no way out. And our Ukrainian military was trying to find these groups. So our guess is that this is one of those groups. And so we got to the hospital, where we had surgery.
Mark: And then the hospital could function?
Valery: It could have worked, yes.
Mark: No electricity there now?
Tatiana: Nowhere.
Valery: Two days after we arrived, there was no electricity.
Image: Valery Burak had a plaster on his face covering his jaw, which looked broken
Tatiana: There was a constant flow of wounded people. Many people received various wounds because of all the shelling, because of the air bombs, everything and because of the tanks. The tanks also fired on everything. But in fact, because of all these attacks, virtually all patients in the hospital were housed in the corridors because they were in danger of getting wounds from broken windows.
Valery: So the wards, you know, all the patients were in the corridors.
Tatiana: They all want to go to the occupied territories or to Russia. We talked to their newly appointed chief doctor of the hospital and asked him if we could take an X-ray, he said: “No, there is nothing like that in Mariupol, but I can evacuate you to Donetsk [Russian occupied Ukraine] and you will get some help. But, of course, we did not want to go anywhere in the occupied territories.
Valery: And by the way, he was a military doctor and I guess they will make this hospital a military hospital.
Tatiana: What I wanted to say and tell the whole world is that our doctors, they are real heroes, because the doctors, the surgeons, they basically stayed in the hospital. They did not go. They operated for a month or more. They tried to help people as much as they could. It wasn’t until more than a month later that they began to think about themselves and their families and began to leave.
Mark: And when the bombs fell for the first few weeks while you were stuck there. Just describe your emotions to me.
Tatiana: It was awful, because before that we could only imagine air bombs when we saw and heard them in World War II movies or heard from war veterans about it.
But now that we were on our mattresses, on the floor, in the corridors and we heard the sound of the plane and then a terrible boom and the whole building …
Valery: … the whole building started shaking …
Image: Sky correspondent Mark Stone talks to the Burats
Tatiana: … tremble! Then, after one of the bombs fell, the windows in our compartment on one side, all the windows were broken. And you know we had very low temperatures …
Valery: … about two or three degrees in the building …
Tatiana: … below zero. It was so cold because there was no gas, no electricity, no heating, and patients had to lie on mattresses or beds. They had a blanket and that was it. It was so cold. It was awful. And people were so scared because they thought all these bombs and different artillery – we don’t even know the names of all these systems … but it was awful because we saw the high-rise buildings from the hospital windows burning.
We could hear people crying. It was awful. And the constant flow of people trying to come to the hospital for shelter because they were scared. They brought children; they were wounded. And some people were killed. Some people were injured. They brought them without legs, without arms and killed children. It was awful.
Read more: Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Ben Wallace, Rishi Sunak and Priti Patel among politicians banned by Russia
Corpses on the streets
Tatiana: There was a week when they [the Russians] they were especially active in the neighborhood where our hospital was located, because it was right next to the city entrance.
And then the shelling moved a little and people were trying to get out of the hospital to find their friends; to find their loved ones because there was no mobile connection. They could not contact anyone.
So the first thing people saw when we came out of the hospital were dead bodies on the streets. It was awful. People, different people, different ages, sometimes whole families with children, because there was this projectile or the bomb and they just got in the wrong place and were killed. It was awful.
Valery: People came to the hospital and asked the chief doctor, “We have a body at home, what are we doing with it?” And she said, “Just bury it. Why are you coming here? You know.
Tatiana: So people started burying their loved ones, killed neighbors right in the yards or high-rise buildings, and we saw all the graves.
Destroyed school
Mark: And the school you taught at, both of which were also destroyed?
Tatiana: Yes, our school was built in 1936.
Valery: And he survived the German occupation.
Mark: But you didn’t go through that?
Tatiana: No.
A thriving city
Valery: You know, I remember Euro 2012, when my English friend was in Mariupol for a few days during the tournament and we took him around Mariupol and showed him the drama theater. We showed him where the British Consulate used to be before the October Revolution, you know, more than 100 years ago, and he was just pleasantly shocked that these things existed in Mariupol, and we took pictures there.
Tatiana: Our city was a prosperous city. Different parks, different buildings, many people having fun with their children. And we had historic sites, but now we have nothing, because the symbol of the city, the Drama Theater, has been bombed, and many people who have taken refuge in their basement have been killed.
Please use the Chrome browser for a more accessible video player
1:25 Drive through war-torn Mariupol
This is a ghost town. You can see the skeletons, blackened skeletons of nine-story buildings because they were burned. And we don’t even know how many people were killed inside, because there’s no way to find anyone, because the whole building is on fire.
Many people tried to find shelter in the basements of these buildings, and when the building was bombed or when a shell came, some people were just killed in those basements because the building was destroyed and they could not get out.
Valery: They were trapped.
Mark: Are you disappointed with Europe?
Valery: People like us who were …
Add Comment