“My boyfriend and I both tried to flee Mariupol,” says Kateryna, “I managed, and he did not.”
Today is the 89th day of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Now, Kateryna is in a territory controlled by the Ukrainian government. Her boyfriend, Maksym, is in a Russian filtration camp, and is likely to stay there for long.
Kateryna and Maksym are both from Mariupol. There, she has been working for a local furniture company. Kateryna lived in the city with her parents while Maksym lived in another part of Mariupol, and they would commute to see each other.
Mariupol is one of the cities Russia nearly wiped out after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It borders the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic, a territory in Eastern Ukraine occupied by Russia since 2014. Many Mariupol locals are used to hearing explosions nearby due to fighting between Ukrainian and Russian forces in the area. However, the city remained relatively calm until 2022.
It was impossible to leave
“I was shaken when the full-scale invasion started,” Kateryna says, “But I hoped for the best and didn’t want to leave the city right away.”
Her family stayed in Mariupol until mid-March.
“At first, we hid in our apartment, in the corridor where there are no windows, but it got too dangerous. We moved to the building basement after a few days,” Kateryna recalls, “By early March, we didn’t have electricity, heating, or running water anymore.”
A house next to their building got bombed, and the family saw corpses on the street. This is when Kateryna and her family decided to flee.
“I called Maksym and told him my parents and I wanted to try to leave Mariupol,” Kateryna recalls, “By that time, it was already very difficult to move around the city, and there was almost no gas.”
Maksym said that he would try to reach their part of Mariupol so they all could leave together.
But Maksym could not show up, because his area was bombed and the movement was too deadly.
Kateryna’s family had to go first. They left the basement and headed to the area near the Drama Theatre, where they tried to join an evacuation convoy that was about to leave the city. However, the evacuation was not successful.
“Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers told us it was too dangerous to go because Russians didn’t agree to the green corridor,” she recalls, “Russians kept on shooting at the cars, and it was impossible to leave.”
“I cannot describe the horror”
The family decided not to stay in their apartment; they went into one of the make-shift hospitals in the area that was used by the Ukrainian army. Kateryna’s parents were already exhausted by that time, so they fainted and felt very weak. The hospital staff provided some help, but they could not attend to them much given the number of wounded people pouring in.
“I went to check on our house a few times, but then, it didn’t matter anymore,” Kateryna says.
While she was staying in the hospital, her building alongside the entire street was completely destroyed.
“I know that there are some satellite images, but they don’t really what it was like,” the woman recalls, “I cannot describe the horror of what we saw.”
Kateryna remembers corpses on the streets and the utter devastation of the city she once called her home. She knew she could not stay in the hospital for long because it was only a matter of days until got destroyed, too.
In mid-March, Kateryna and her family managed to leave, “Our car still had some gas, and we joined the car convoy that was fleeing the city.”
Russian forces still shot at some cars, but Kateryna’s was spared.
“When we reached the first Ukrainian checkpoint, I started crying,” Kateryna says, “I could finally breathe freely.”
The prison-like filter camp
However, when Kateryna was leaving Mariupol, she didn’t know what was happening with Maksym. This is because most of the telecommunications infrastructure had been damaged, and it was also difficult to find a place to charge one’s phone.
Kateryna is now in Western Ukraine, in relative safety. Her family is with her. She tried to contact Maksym, but he was out of reach, so she got in touch with his mother. From her, she learned that Maksym was taken to a village around 50 kilometers from Mariupol by the Russian forces. As Russians gained more and more control over the city districts, they were able to capture most people who stayed behind. Many women and children were deported to Russia, and men were taken to Russia-controlled areas in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic.
Later, it was actually Maksym who connected with her by Instagram text.
Maksym told Kateryna that he was staying in a school in the occupied territory and that the building was now serving as a prison to keep the men from Mariupol captive.
“Maksym reached me in the middle of April as he managed to connect to wi-fi in that school,” Kateryna explains, “He said there were nearly 200 people with him, all men from Mariupol, whose passports were taken away. All had the same story as him: they stayed in the city until it was too difficult to get evacuated, and then the Russians took them. Most men also had to give away their phones, so Maksym was luckier.”
Maksym told Kateryna that he was not beaten up, but he has seen men who were tortured and covered in bruises. Many men were sick and did not receive medication. There were men with chronic diseases, and some men also got covid or covid-like symptoms – even though it was impossible to know for sure as no medic ever inspected them.
“He has been texting me every day, sometimes calling although it was risky, so he didn’t do it often,” Kateryna says, “He told me he was hungry because they didn’t get a lot of food, and the quality was bad.”
Maksym also told her that they didn’t have any shower rooms, so they could only wash in a sink in the general bathroom. He said that he knew some men tried to run away but failed. They were later taken away, and the guards told them they went to “Isolation” in Donetsk. This is a torture chamber.
“I called the official number of Donetsk People’s Republic to ask about Maksym, but the person on the line told me that the man with his passport was already released,” Kateryna says helplessly, “So I don’t know what else to do.”
Maksym is among 1.2 million Ukrainians forcefully displaced from Ukraine to Russia-controlled areas. He has been held captive for more than a month. Russia refuses to release him or other captives.
*中文版：沒能逃離的烏克蘭人，在「過濾營」裡過什麼樣的生活？
Editor: Sylvia Tien
