“Hi, I’m Elya, I’m nine and a half. I’m hiding from the war. I live on the eastern bank. I’m leaving here today. I’m glad you are reading this text.” This message written on the wall had a picture with it of a small cat and rabbit. Another message, with a picture of some scary faces behind what appears to be a barrier, read as follows: “Hi, I’m Nata, it’s March 19, 2022. The 24th day of the war. I’m from the east myself, on February 24 they shelled us and we fled our homes. This story will end and leave only memories, fear, and blood. Everything will work out. If anything happens, here’s my Instagram [address was removed], you can check and see if I’m among the living, write to me if you see this.”
These messages, often accompanied by pictures, were written by young people on the walls of a basement in a technical university in Mariupol, Ukraine, where many adults and children hid during the Russian invasion that almost destroyed the city. When the messages were later discovered, they were published and subsequently translated into English by Meduza, one of the independent news agencies that were forced out of Russia by the Putin regime.
These messages give an intimate and detailed sense of what it is like to be under such a brutal attack by Russian forces. “Hi, it’s me again, Nata. We settled down in this corner, slept on chairs, cooked over a fire. Today is March 19, 2022, we’re finally planning to leave tomorrow. There’s no light, water, or other comforts here. We’ve been hiding in the basement for 24 days, basically. Shelling and missiles haunt us everywhere. PGTU [the university] took six direct hits. Mariupol is a ruin, a specter. It’ll be very interesting to see how this ends, whether there will be a Ukraine. I’m tired of waking up to explosions and [missiles] screaming overhead. There’s no glass [in the windows] anywhere, and it’s super cold outside. I’m 17, I was planning to enroll in medical school, everyone sitting here had many plans and goals. But, unfortunately, no one needs us. No one was even planning to officially evacuate us, we’re on our own, at our own peril and risk. Of course, it’s really boring here. . . I want only one thing – peace! I really hope that where we’re going, we’ll find a home and build a life.”
Another message read: “Important: Today is March 25, 2022. Tomorrow we’re going to Manhush. It’s 25 kilometers away [15 miles], we’re going as a group. We’re going to wake up at 5:00 am. Wish us luck. . . bye.” Then, “If there are no more messages, we got out.”
Unfortunately, we do not know any of the details about these young people, whether their parents were with them or not, and if they survived their escape from the university basement in Mariupol. Their messages help us to understand the trauma of war that Putin and his national security cronies unleashed on Ukraine. Putin claimed he was intervening in Ukraine to protect Russian speakers who were being persecuted, yet what his military did to this formerly pro-Russian city makes that claim an obvious lie.
If you are a regular reader of these essays, I assume by now you have a map of Ukraine handy. Take a look at the map and note the location of Mariupol on the northern edge of the Sea of Azov. Beginning on February 24, 2022, the Russians launched a three-month siege of the city, which largely devastated it. On May 16, 2022, the Ukrainian troops that had remained in the city by using the massive Azovstal Iron and Steel Works as a fortress finally surrendered and the Russians took complete control of what remained of the city’s ruins.
The city’s population was more than 425,000 in January 2022, but the war reduced that number down to approximately 100,000. In March, the time when these young people wrote their messages and drew their pictures, the city went through a severe humanitarian crisis because of severe damage to the city’s infrastructure, blocked access to sanitation, and critical shortage of food and medicine. Numerous war crimes were committed by the invading Russian forces, and Russian missiles targeted a maternity hospital and a theater that were serving as an air raid shelter, killing hundreds of civilians in the attack. There were so many dead that the city authorities were forced to excavate a twenty-five-meter-long grave in which the bodies were buried, but not identified.
It appears that the goal of Russian forces was to completely destroy the city, including its industrial and business centers, with the intent to completely rebuild it and make it into a distinctly Russian center devoid of any Ukrainian connections or cultural symbols. What happened to Mariupol was also done to other Ukrainian cities. Once occupied by Russian forces, the schools were forced to use a Russian curriculum, media outlets were forced to broadcast or publish in Russian, and Soviet-era street names were resurrected. This is what Putin was offering to the Ukrainian population. It is no wonder why they have fiercely resisted his intervention in their country.
If you want to see what happened to this Ukrainian city, go online, and take a look at the photos of the “Russian destruction of Mariupol” – it’s a tragic picture of what a brutal autocracy does when it is unchecked by democratic forces that value freedom and security. How will the young people who were trapped in that basement recover from this trauma, if they survived the attempt to escape the city? The Russian leadership and its supporters must be held responsible for these crimes against humanity.