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'It's hell': A Mariupol photographer recounts his escape from the besieged city

Mariupol in mid-March.

Relentlessly bombarded, besieged, the city would be 90% destroyed, according to the authorities.

© Pavel Gomzyakov

Text by: Anastasia Becchio

7 mins

Pavel Gomzyakov, a photographer living in Mariupol, was able to leave the besieged city in a car with his wife, their son and five other people in mid-March.

Before that, he lived, with his relatives, in a cultural center transformed into a shelter for the population.

Story of a complicated escape, in the middle of distraught inhabitants.

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Where were you when the Russian invasion began on February 24

The day the war started, I went out into the street to buy water and heard that our soldiers had started fighting back against the advancing Russians.

I saw, in the distance, missiles flying and I then understood that we were no longer safe in our apartment.

We quickly gathered up our things, I took a few minutes to copy some photos I had taken for clients onto a hard drive, took my camera and headed out to a western part of town, to my parents, leaving almost everything behind.

We thought, at the time, that we would stay there for a few days and that we could return to our apartment quickly.

But we never went back.

How was your life organized then?

Everything happened really fast.

First, the products began to run out in stores.

On March 1, half the town had no electricity and communications became poor.

At that time, my daughter, who was studying at a dance school in Kharkiv, was also under fire.

A family took her under their wing and they decided to leave town.

That's when the electricity in Mariupol was cut, as well as the telephone and internet connections.

After a sleepless night, I miraculously managed to text and learn that she had left the area.

For the next six days we had no further contact, we didn't know if she was alive.

From March 2, there was no food and water available in stores.

People started collecting rainwater or snow.

Others found springs near a river, but getting supplies meant dodging bombs and queuing.

The five of us - my wife, my son and my parents - were lucky because my mother had the good idea to fill the tub with water.

We had enough resources to drink and eat moderately once a day.

On March 8, I learned by chance that there was a place in Mariupol from which we could pick up a weak signal for the mobile phone and I managed to reach my daughter and learned that she had managed to win Germany.

I wept with joy.

You have sought to leave town several times.

How did things go

The problem was that all the exits from the city had been mined and Mariupol was under almost continuous fire.

On March 10, thanks to a radio that I managed to get working, I learned that there was a humanitarian corridor up to Zaporijjia.

We drove to a checkpoint on the outskirts of town, but quickly realized that there was no humanitarian corridor, there was heavy artillery fire, shells flying overhead. above our heads and hit buildings before our eyes.

There were buildings on fire.

We turned around and found ourselves in

who had already lost their homes.

How did you live in this center?

We were going to collect wood, to heat the water and prepare the little food we had.

We had found a spring not far from the center, but we had to cross a front line.

A local deputy, Vitaly, took care of the supply.

Sometimes we only had two ravioli per person to eat.

As the days went by, the bombardments got closer.

At night we slept in a basement.

Our great fear was to be buried alive.

We understood that in the event of aerial bombardment, we would all turn into corpses, that we would die there.

And it was with this idea that we fell asleep.

You finally managed to leave the city with your family by car on March 15, like hundreds of other vehicles.

What image do you retain of the city you left

Several parts of the city were simply razed to the ground.

There is no longer any means of communication, no food, no water, no heating, my God... it's a horror!

And a tiny majority of the population was able to get out of this hell.

This is our case and now my life purpose is to scream, to be the voice of all those people who got stuck.

There are many children who have been left without parents: they have gone to look for water or food and have been killed on the way.

These children, terrified, remained in the cellars but their parents will not return.

There are dead everywhere.

In Mariupol, it's hell.

My parents and my sister are stuck there and I haven't heard from them since March 10.

We need peace negotiations for a ceasefire.

Evacuating tens of thousands of people all at once is unrealistic, but we can help them survive by at least bringing them water.

There are women giving birth there, old people, there are sick people.

They urgently need electricity.

We must, by all means, stop the exchange of fire between the two armies and understand that there are people, that there are all these souls who are praying to stay alive.

It is not soldiers, it is civilians who are burning in this humanitarian hell.

In a cultural center turned into a shelter for the inhabitants of Mariupol

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