“This is how we strengthen the family”: how Russians and Donetsk residents help the residents of Mariupol

"Sveta, we're fine!

What do you have: is everyone alive and well?

Oh, your baby is buzzing!

- Marina, hearing her sister's voice on the other end of the tube, begins to cry.

She did not speak to her family for two months.

All this time, together with her adult daughter and two little granddaughters, Marina hid from shelling in the basement of her private house.

Only now, when volunteers arrived in the area and gave her a phone to call, she found out that her sister and her family survived and safely left for Donetsk, located 114 kilometers from Mariupol.

“Light, Tanya’s house was completely burned down!

And Grisha, how is Grisha, don't you know?

Our baby is also fine, we are already ten months old, ”Marina, through tears, tries to quickly share the most important information so as not to occupy the phone for a long time.

When the conversation ends, she passes the phone to the next person to call and walks away, sobbing in relief.

Sedatives for children

The first convoy with humanitarian aid from Russia arrived in Mariupol back in mid-March.

However, due to hostilities, it could not be distributed in all areas of the city.

Thus, residents of a private quarter in the Left Bank district of Mariupol began to receive humanitarian aid only two months after the outbreak of hostilities. 

We (the RT group) came here with the Dobrofond charity organization.

It was organized by the spouses Andrey and Katya Sukhinin in 2018.

Andrei is a Muscovite, Katya was born and raised in Donetsk.

In 2014, she and her family fled the city from the war.

Then her relatives returned back, and Katya, being a student, transferred to a Moscow university. 

After the start of the special operation, Dobrofond announced a fundraiser to help civilians.

In two months, we managed to collect things for 1.5 million rubles: people donated new clothes, diapers for children and adults, pillows and blankets, funds for the purchase of medicines, household chemicals, food and even medical equipment.

When a car with Russian license plates stops on the street between private houses, the locals first surreptitiously glance at an unfamiliar car, and then cautiously approach and ask what is going on.

The news that help has been brought instantly spreads around the block - a queue forms at the car.

An eight-year-old girl stretches out her hand to a loaf of bread, her mother stops her: “Daughter, don’t worry, grandmother has already taken the bread.

Let’s better find diapers for the little one.”

• Little Alice shows her younger sister a teddy bear given to her by Dobrofund volunteers.

• © Frame: RT video

The most popular things volunteers are asked about are food, wet wipes (there is a water shortage in the city), clothes and diapers for children.

Residents are also wondering if they are giving out SIM cards so that they can call relatives with whom they are separated.

The old SIM cards no longer work - now in Mariupol, only the Phoenix mobile operator of the DPR catches the connection.

But there are still not enough SIM cards for the numerous residents of the liberated territories.

Yulia comes up to the volunteers in a colorful dressing gown, which is thrown over a sweater like a coat.

She leads her son Yaroslav by the hand, he is almost three years old.

Seeing strangers, the boy asks to be held by his mother and from there looks with interest at a large unfamiliar car.

“I-i-i, brrrr,” says little Yaroslav and buries his mother on the shoulder.

“Maybe you have sedatives for children?” Yulia asks.

Her son does not sleep well: he moans in his sleep, and sometimes starts laughing uncontrollably.

The woman recalls that before the hostilities began in Mariupol, Yaroslav uttered syllables and tried to speak, but now the boy speaks only in sounds.

A Ukrainian cannon was placed almost at our house in March, it stood here and worked.

We hovilsya in the cellar under the kitchen, - says Yulia.

- On March 7 or 8, a shell flew into the kitchen, if we were in the cellar at that time, everyone would have been killed there on the spot.

Thank God at that moment I was in the house with the little one, and my husband and father went out to chop wood.

“Why did they put a Ukrainian cannon in your quarter?” I ask Yulia.

"I have no idea!

I only thought about my little one at that time.

And we couldn’t leave the city either,” she says.

Since April 21, when Mariupol officially came under the control of the army of Russia and the DPR, only the sounds of artillery are heard in the city, which hits the territory of the Azovstal plant.

This is the last place in the city where the formations of the Ukrainian national battalion "Azov" remain in the catacombs.

Locals pay no attention to the sounds of shelling and say that the city is now "very quiet."

family business

Part of the humanitarian aid Katya and Andrey were brought to Mariupol to the military medical unit of the DPR army.

Katya's relatives serve here.

Her father Maxim is a military paramedic and part-time chairman of the Dobrofond. 

The 20-year-old brother of the girl, Vladimir, studies at two universities in Donetsk, however, the state exams had to be postponed: in February, the young man volunteered for the front, underwent an express medical training course and now serves as a medical instructor.

For the past week and a half, the medical unit has been based in a private house, where the military of the Ukrainian national battalion previously lived.

• Katya reads letters to her dad that children from Russia handed over to the military.

• © Frame: RT video

“Our medical unit is advancing right behind the advancing troops.

When this area was liberated and we went into the house, wet shorts and T-shirts were still drying on the rope: that is, the Ukrainian military fled from here right in front of us,” Maxim says.

- We go into the yard - there is a dead dog.

They didn’t approach, the right-wingers (the nationalist, ultra-right organization Right Sector * -

.) sometimes leave such surprises for us - streamers, for example.

They turned the body over with special cables - everything is clean.

Then we buried this dog.”

Doctors from the medical unit provide assistance to everyone who needs it: the military, their own and Ukrainian, and civilians who suffered during shelling in the city or attempts to go to the rear.

“Dad said that when the first Ukrainian prisoners of war were brought to them - two buses - they were absolutely sure that Ukraine had already occupied both Lugansk and Donetsk.

The commanders told them that in the east of the Armed Forces of Ukraine they almost took Belgorod, and Mariupol is the last frontier that needs to be defended, ”says Katya, handing over the medicines brought from Moscow to her father.

After receiving the humanitarian aid, the doctors invite us to the backyard: there, on the fire, water for tea is already boiling in a pot, next to it is a pack of simple cookies.

Katya tells her father about her five-year-old son, shows him a video of the boy's performance: a thin voice is heard from the speaker, which sings "Let there always be sunshine."

The girl notices a red spot on the ground next to the bench: “What is this, blood?”.

“No, this is borscht.

We washed the pot here,” her brother smiles.

Another young guy sits down by the fire - Artyom, a third-year student at the medical university, who jokingly declares that he is still a "doctor's embryo".

Artyom serves in the medical unit with his father, also a military doctor.

“This is how we strengthen the family,” Artyom smiles.

- I pull off the left boot from the wounded man, the father - the right one.

You know how close!

What are people ready for?

Katya and Andrey do not have time to talk enough with their relatives: they have to go further in order to bring humanitarian aid to a church on the outskirts of Mariupol.

The red brick church with golden domes stands on a hill.

It seems that the central dome is hanging in the air above the roof of the temple.

When we drive closer, it becomes clear that the dome and the cross are supported by iron frames.

“The roof itself was torn off by shelling, but the main structure survived,” says the caretaker Alexander.

The man recalls that the temple was fired at first from Grads, then from tanks, then from mortars, and the fire was fired by the Ukrainian army, which was standing lower along the coast.

The shelling began already on February 24, he says.

At that time, about 20 people were hiding in the lower temple, which is underground.

The caretaker was with them all this time and did not leave the temple.

When asked why the Ukrainian army hit the people they were supposed to protect, Sasha smiles as if guiltily: “They wanted to destroy.

Church or people, probably.

In the temple, the rector, Father Alexei, serves a memorial service for the dead residents, who managed to be buried.

"Lord have mercy!

We pray for the repose of the souls of the departed servants of God,” the priest prays, and then begins to read a list of 63 names.

After the service, he explains that these are only those whom relatives were able to bury, and then come to the temple and ask for a funeral service.

On February 24, a shell flew into the house where Father Alexei lived.

Batiushka, together with his wife and seven-year-old son, moved to a bomb shelter in another area, where "it was the hottest."

• Residents of this quarter in the Left Bank district of Mariupol were able to receive humanitarian aid only on the 20th of April.

• © Frame: RT video

“I believe that it was God who placed me and my mother in such an area so that I could understand from my own experience what the people who now come to me and share their grief have gone through.

God took him away from his son: sometimes we went out into the yard to collect snow.

He almost did not react to the sounds of shelling, ”says Father Alexei.

On March 28, he took his family to Makeevka, and on April 1 he returned to his native church to resume services.

He has a different answer to the question why the Armed Forces of Ukraine were beating the city, which they were supposed to protect.

“We somehow already discussed this: the enemy of the human race is leading this.

A person can be in the hands of God if he believes in God and gives himself to him, and if not, then he falls into the hands of the devil.

No matter how evil a person is, no matter how desperate, he still will not do such terrible things on his own.

It is only the devil who can lead such a story, ”says Father Alexei.

The last point where volunteers bring help is the Republican Trauma Center in Donetsk.

Now they are helping injured civilians, including those from Mariupol, the military of Russia and the DPR, as well as the wounded military of the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

Here we unload blankets and pillows, operating kits and ophthalmic equipment.

• Doctors of the Trauma Hospital in Donetsk accept humanitarian aid.

• © RT

The head of the ophthalmological department, Irina Sukhina, carefully takes a small wooden box from Andrey's hands.

It contains a lens for an apparatus that examines the fundus of the eye.

“What a beauty,” Irina smiles, looking at the lens.

“For us, this device is very important now, it allows you to see retinal and fundus tears, hemorrhages, and retinal detachment.

You know, we are now facing a huge amount of severe eye injuries.

Mostly fragments from mine explosions that damaged the eyes.”

When the volunteers are ready to leave the hospital in an already empty car, Katya's mother and grandmother manage to drop in and have a very short chat.

Andrei at this time is talking with doctors about what else they may need in the future.

“We will definitely contact you and you write everything you need.

When we come here again with humanitarian aid, we will bring it,” he promises.