An elderly Mariupol resident has given a heart-breaking interview about the state of her city as explosions went off around her.
Tatyana Bushlanova, 64, wept on a bench outside a charred apartment block yesterday – and didn’t even flinch as blasts erupted nearby.
Her home in the southern port city has been destroyed, like countless other residents, amid the Russian onslaught.
She described waking up every morning and crying and being unsure of what to do next.
‘I don’t know where to go at all… everything is destroyed, everything is broken’, Tatyana explained.
‘If they provided me with a living place I would leave today. But like this – where to go?’
Her home no longer has a roof or windows thanks to Vladimir Putin’s invasion, she added.
Tatyana continued: ‘You wake up in the morning and you cry. You cry in the evening.
‘Where should people go now? Here, they are sitting there with small kids with little ones,’
Wiping away tears, she added: ‘It does not stop. I don’t know how to stay here during the winter.
‘We don’t have a roof, don’t have windows. Everything is very complicated.’
Mariupol has been devastated during the war and is now under Russian control.
The final Ukrainian stronghold in the city, a steel plant, was being stormed earlier today.
Officials say hundreds of civilians are still trapped inside, despite evacuations.
More civilians were trapped in bunkers and tunnels under the complex and some 100,000 remain in the rest of the city, mayor Vadym Boychenko said earlier today.
The United Nations and International Committee of the Red Cross have been helping to coordinate an operation to bring out women, children and the elderly from the steel works.
Hospitals have been stocked up and supported by volunteers to prepare for the arrival of those who made it out, Dr Dorit Nizan, World Health Organization (WHO) Incident Manager for Ukraine, explained from Zaporizhzhia.
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‘We are ready for burns, fractures and wounds, as well as diarrhoea, respiratory infections.
‘We are also ready to see if there are pregnant women, children with malnutrition.
‘We are all here and the health system is well prepared,’ she explained.
Dr Nizan said some people had arrived recently by making their own way from villages near Mariupol and had minor injuries, but that mental health was the ‘big issue’.
‘Many cried when they arrived when they were met by family members. It was very moving,’ she said.
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