Shells are falling nearby, houses are burning, corpses are everywhere – an artist about life in destroyed Mariupol

Mariupol became Ukraine’s big burnt wound. Thousands of people were killed, houses were destroyed, lives were destroyed. The Russians mercilessly shelled the city, trying to wipe it off the face of the earth. The artist Oleksandr Lukyanov is from Mariupol, who went through all those horrors. However, he was able to save himself and his family.

“Nature has also declared war, the unknown is scary”: the first days in Mariupol

59-year-old artist Oleksandr Lukyanov said that he lived on the left bank of the city, in the area that actually became the front line. He managed to leave his native Mariupol at the end of March. Later, the man will write on the social network: “Life has slowed down to the limit. One desire is to sit in silence and look at the sea. It has remained the same, we have not. Elon Musk dreams of the beginning of a new superlife on Mars, and we think about an ordinary existence on Earth . Life has become zero…”

Together with his family, the man lived on the left bank of the city. Their neighborhood has turned into a front line since the first days of the Russian invasion. In Oleksandr’s paintings, you can often see the landscape that was visible from the window of his native house – a magical view of the Sea of ​​Azov. Now it remains only a memory, because the war destroyed his house, like hundreds of other houses.

Oleksandr painted pictures all his life. Today, he depicts the destroyed native Mariupol.

“There is hope for something good in each of the pictures. All Mariupol residents who have gone through this hell understand well what is depicted here,” the man assured.

Oleksandr himself was born and grew up in Mariupol, where his parents once met. According to the artist, drawing was passed down to him genetically from his father, mother, grandfather and grandmother.

I lived about 300 meters from the sea, so my entire childhood was spent there. I can’t imagine a city without the sea. Only we are not there anymore. It is clear that I remember what it was like and what it has become. Recently, Mariupol began to blossom before our eyes. But it so happened that everything ended very quickly, – he noted.

Alexander assured that none of the townspeople could foresee such a war. Mariupol residents themselves have been living under shelling since 2014. People got used to the sounds and didn’t even react anymore. The situation in 2022, when a rocket arrives in one yard, and then in others, was completely different. But not everyone dared to leave everything and go immediately. After all, people understood that if the situation escalated, then by leaving, they would, in fact, say goodbye to everything.

Such was the story of Oleksandr. At first, the city had television, the Internet, electricity, water, and gas. According to the husband, at first the news calmed everyone down. It was reported that the war would last about ten days, that they would shoot and calm down. However, when the Internet, water and electricity disappeared, real life began in Mariupol. The rocket hit the yard and knocked out windows in a neighboring house. Cars standing nearby were affected by this. At first, everyone hid in the apartment behind the walls of the corridor, as far as possible from the windows. Everyone believed that it could not last long.

A man’s memory:

There is water, electricity, gas, internet, TV, communication. It is allowed to live. Food supply for 2 weeks. 10 more days. In the eastern part of the city, it is a real hell, constant shelling, people are running to the center. The first dozen victims.

The fourth day. Communication, electricity, gas, water were lost. I start to think how to survive. The wife and daughter are hysterical: “Dad, go away” But how? Shelling in our area is very close. They hid in the basement of the house, in the dark by candles.

There are more and more people. Cold and wet. 25 people live there. The house shakes from shells. Shops and neighboring houses are being attacked, people under fire are robbing food stores just to survive. Snow, actually winter. In March – 10 degrees. There are corpses everywhere. The dead are lying in the sinkholes under the houses. It cannot be buried. The wounded are not lucky, there is nowhere to wait for help. The cold weather. Wind. The wind is strong. Nature has also declared war. The shelling does not stop day or night. This hum makes my heart skip a beat.

10 days have passed. It’s getting scarier and scarier. What’s next? The unknown is scarier than reality.

“People stop being people, they are only interested in food and water. And there is nothing else”

The shelling became more and more intense, the shells flew directly into the houses. And in the area where the artist lived with his family, it was getting harder to live, because everything was being shot at. The Russians flew over the defenses and landed actually two kilometers from the houses. Battles began – military men were running everywhere. And the locals continued to walk around the city in search of food. According to the man, looting began in the city.

While we were sitting in the basement, the guys started bringing bags full of all kinds of food and alcohol. Well, that was the audience there… They started taking out pharmacies. Life acquired a different meaning, that is, it had no meaning at all. And it’s terribly cold, because you can’t stay out in the basement at minus -10 – -12 degrees. With all the desire, there would be some zero or plus. It’s terrible. All the time in the dark, there are no candles, he recalled.

According to Oleksandr, over time, people stopped reacting to shells exploding nearby. He added that a person, in order to survive, changes so much that he no longer pays attention to anything. The locals did not even look back at the explosions.

“You just change. You no longer have emotions and feel sorry for anyone. I’m not sure that anyone helped the wounded, because there was nothing to help. Everyone is in the same situation… It turns out that people stop being people, they are only interested in food and water, because there is no such thing. There is nothing to cook. Panic begins – where to cook, how to cook, where to get firewood,” he added.

“The advance has already begun with us”: about the “green corridor”, the MLRS “Grad” and the surrounded city

After some time, they announced a “green corridor” to Zaporizhzhia. The man ran after the car. The neighboring garages were already flooded at that time. The family took the most necessary things, a guinea pig and a cat. There was only one thought in my head: “You’ll be back soon, it won’t be for long.” Oleksandr never got through to his eldest daughter, who lived in another part of the city – there was no longer a connection. Therefore, getting into the car with his wife and youngest daughter, they decided to leave. However, on the way out of the city, the convoy was fired upon from MLRS “Grad”.

The “green corridor” turned out to be such that the poor people were covered in the first cars. When you see a shell hit a car in front, it’s a sight… It’s clear that everyone turns around like crazy and goes back to the city, – he recalled.

Having reached the western district, where his eldest daughter lived, the man saw that there was a fire in them, and the windows and doors were gone. Having gathered all together, the family went to the village of sailors, which is at the entrance from the other side of the city. There they planned to wait in a private house until it was all over.

A few days later, the family learned that they had nowhere to leave, because the city was surrounded and roadblocks were set up.

In general, the advance has already started here. It was actually by the sea. We also went to the sea for water. Nearby was a port and houses. Of course, there were a lot of our soldiers. The city was surrounded. What does it mean? Soldiers run between houses, ours and not ours. Children are running… It is not clear what is happening – where and who is there. That is, in general, everything is confused. Then the heavy artillery began to work. We saw where they had howitzers. And they just shot the city. Volleys and we see that the city exploded. And so from morning to evening. In fact, everything was simply demolished, – said Oleksandr.

“Human life was not worth anything at all. In general”

Shells formed funnels three meters long, and trees were uprooted. 15 people were hiding in the cramped basement, including two 3-year-old children. They all stood. There was fear in their eyes, no strength, only fatigue and terrible apathy. Food was cooked on the hearth, curled up, to the whistling of bullets and shells. Over time, it became clear that there would be enough food for literally a week, because no one expected it to last so long.

Human life was worth nothing at all. In general. It’s hard to believe, but war is war, there should be no regrets. Otherwise you will lose. While we lived, we walked 5 kilometers for water, then for some frozen fish at some base.

Life became unbearable and everyone started to run away from the city, because everyone understood that the city would no longer exist. Besides, the majority, like us, in what we were dressed, went – said the artist.

“Everything in the house was on fire – food, clothes. The children were not crying. There was silence”

Later, the shell exploded near the house where the family lived, and a minute later it hit the next room. Only a terrible rumble and something falling was heard. It was dark everywhere, everything was full of smoke… Someone suddenly shouted: “It’s on fire! Everyone out.” Everyone began to take what they could out of the house, because the roof could collapse at any moment.

When Oleksandr ran up to the car, he saw a huge part of the wall on the hood. It was not possible to start the car. Fiery debris was falling from the roof, and there was no water at all. The man watched in horror as the wheels caught fire. With a shout “Did they take the cat out?” Oleksandr’s daughter begins to cry. Here the man realizes that the documents were left in the house, on the bed. He opens a broken window and jumps into a black wall of smoke.

God, it worked. He coughed for a long time without breathing. One wrecked car was able to roll away from the burning house. Huge fire, black smoke, wind. The frost is creeping up. We all watched the house burn in silence. Silence. Thank God that everyone is alive! Everything burned – food, clothes, blankets. The children did not cry – said the man.

“It’s like you don’t belong to yourself”: reflections on the war

Alexander is sure that if you look at the war from a thousand kilometers away, a person will never be able to understand it. After all, there are no words that can describe it.

“When shells fall a few meters from you, when all the houses are burning and corpses are lying everywhere, then you understand that you will no longer be the same as usual. It is impossible to understand war, you can hear it, experience it, but it is impossible to understand it,” he noted.

It’s like you don’t belong to yourself. This is a situation where you are so helpless that if shells explode near you, you will not move. Because you don’t know what to do anymore. You just don’t have any options or chances. Nowhere to run, everywhere the same. People are just going crazy. There were cases when the father packed his child in one ordinary food bag and went to hide. This is a true story. Or the story about how my classmate’s mother died. He put it in the closet to bury it somehow… And there are just a lot of such cases, Oleksandr said.

Some residents of Mariupol committed suicide because they had lost everything. According to the man, these are statistics that you will not read anywhere. And it is so scary that words cannot describe it, it can only be experienced.

These inscriptions, these children are killed. I’ve noticed that people don’t respond to horror anymore, they just don’t. It is in peaceful life that they sympathize. And imagine it at every step, everywhere the same. You have nowhere to go. In the neighboring house on the gate is written in chalk: “8-year-old Dasha, grandfather and grandmother died in the house. A mother and a son died in another.” And so the whole district through the house. Either burned or destroyed. The corpses of locals and soldiers appeared on the street. An endless stream of cars and people stretched out of the city under shelling. Old people and children walk like ants Fleeing from war, Oleksandr noted.

The man said that he has a picture: “Lord, how I envied the seagulls.” Often, when the enemy dropped bombs, Alexander raised his head and saw seagulls flying there.

“This is good for them,” I think. After all, they will not ask how they should fly, where they should fly, and so on. I really envied them. And we were helpless, just like animals abandoned for slaughter, in the literal sense, – added the man.

Oleksandr’s relative first took them to Berdyansk. And from there on buses they got to Zaporozhye, enduring endless humiliating checks by the strict “liberators”. The man said that when he went on the Internet, he saw that the whole of Mariupol was actually destroyed and that there was nowhere to return. Literally a week after the family left, fighting continued in the city. And already in the place of Oleksandr’s car stood a Russian tank on fire. And in the house where the family lived, a wall was demolished.

Today, the man lives in the territory controlled by Ukraine. He paints pictures and says that “this is the only thing he has left for now.”

“And if I ever have to return to my native Mariupol, the first thing I will do is run to the sea. I will go into this green water and scream with happiness. I spent my childhood here, my whole life. And now I want to howl without him,” – wrote a man under one of his paintings.

The Russian occupation authorities failed to prepare for the heating season in Mariupol. This was announced by the chairman of Mariupol, Vadym Boychenko.

“The occupation government is not capable of anything today. “Only the Ukrainian authorities can organize the life support of the city of Mariupol and the occupied territories,” he said.

He emphasized that the occupation authorities of the city of Mariupol had to prepare for winter as early as March 2022.

“Utility services do not work. The heating season in Mariupol has not yet started. People are sitting in the cold, people are freezing, and we see inscriptions both on entrances and on apartments: “SOS! We are freezing.” All the Russian propaganda was about the winter that came to the territory of Ukraine,” the chairman said.

According to Boychenko, all that the occupation authorities are doing now, trying to at least somehow regulate the situation, is handing out heaters to local residents.

“People line up in kilometer-long queues, fight for these heaters, go through this humiliating procedure… But the worst thing is: in order to plug this heater into an outlet, you need to have electricity. And there is no electricity in the amount required for the heating season. They did not provide this tool for life. And, accordingly, we see dozens of fires that destroy at least some housing in the city of Mariupol,” said Vadym Boychenko.

On December 11, as a result of Russian artillery shelling, a car of rescuers who were delivering humanitarian aid to Bakhmut, Donetsk region, was damaged. This is reported by the State Emergency Service of Ukraine.

“Today, the Russians targeted the rescuers who were delivering humanitarian aid to the people who remain in the war-torn Bakhmut.

Fortunately, no one was injured, but as a result of the artillery shelling, the operational vehicle of the 47th State Fire and Rescue Unit was damaged: the windshield was cracked, the rear window was broken, the rear bumper and the rear part of the vehicle were cut,” the message reads.

The State Emergency Service noted that this car was used by rescuers to transport humanitarian aid and water, in particular, to the house where the Russians attacked on the night of December 11.

“Residents of the high-rise building helped the rescuers to put out the fire caused by the shelling with their water, so it was important for the employees of the State Emergency Service to return the precious supplies to the people,” the report noted.

 In the liberated village of Nevsky, Luhansk region, the police registered about 40 complaints about war crimes committed by the Russian army. After the Russians occupied the village, they immediately began robbing people.

Public Radio correspondent Yanina Lvutina told about it.

“The Russians burned people’s houses, took away everything that was valuable. The occupiers immediately took away mobile phones from almost all residents,” the journalist said.

According to the correspondent, there has been no electricity in the village since the end of March. It is impossible to restore electricity supply in Nevsky, because the communications are completely destroyed. People take water from wells.

There are currently 153 people living in the village, up from over 600 before the full-scale invasion.

In the temporarily captured territories of the Luhansk region, the Russian invaders are trying to introduce military education for children instead of vacations

This was reported by the Luhansk Regional Military Administration.

“The so-called “LPR” mentioned schoolchildren. Instead of vacations, it was suggested to organize a “young fighter’s course” for students of the 8th and 10th grades,” the report says.

As the regional military administration emphasized, propaganda for the invaders is more important than light, water or heat, even in winter, when the population in captured cities freezes in high-rise buildings without communications.

“Just like in Lysychansk. In December, an interdepartmental working group on the search for spontaneous burials began work there. It was half summer, three months of autumn – they decided to search under the snow,” the message reads.