By Alessandra Prentice and Joseph Campbell
ZAPORIZHZHIA, Ukraine (Reuters) – After two months in a bunker, Mariupol evacuee Tetyana Trotsak is feeling the sun on her face and staring up at the bright blue sky on her first day of freedom.
But she can’t forget the 42 people she believes are still stuck in a shelter they shared under Ukraine’s besieged Azovstal steel works.
The 25-year-old, her husband and parents were among the dozens of civilians who reached the Ukraine-controlled town of Zaporizhzhia on Tuesday after being evacuated from the plant in Russian-occupied Mariupol where other civilians and the city’s last defenders remain under siege.
Holding her lapdog Daisy to her chest, Trotsak looked around at the quiet street with wonder.
“To escape and be beneath the peaceful sky, look at it – blue and the bright sun. I think we’re all getting badly sunburnt because we got so little vitamin D,” she said on Wednesday after her first night above ground since early March.
“But I’m terribly worried about the civilians and wounded soldiers that are still there.”
Of the 56 people, including children, in their bunker, Trotsak knows of only 14 who were able to evacuate so far.
City authorities say around 200 civilians and more than 30 children are still trapped at the steel plant, whose vast network of underground bunkers has suffered repeated bombardment from encircling Russian troops.
LIFE UNDERGROUND
Trotsak, who works at a local power company, said her family decided to take refuge at Azovstal after a shell landed near their home, blew open the doors, and “made everything shake like jelly.”
They grabbed a few belongings and some bedding and moved into one of the plant’s shelters, pooling food with other families and making makeshift beds out of bits of wood. The cold, damp conditions made everything mouldy, she said.
As the weeks went by in March and sounds of fighting and explosions appeared to come closer, the group started losing hope they would soon be able to return to their homes.
“When the heavy shelling started and powerful strikes started landing near our shelter, we could feel the shaking just by sitting on the bed,” Trotsak said, recalling frantic efforts to find a way to light the pitch-black bunker after the attacks cut off power supplies.
Talking about their ordeal, she remained calm, tearing up only when she described how her family had to ask a Ukrainian soldier to kill their older dog Jerry, who was blind and suffering in the cramped shelter.
The soldier took the dog away and came back crying, Trotsak said.
A radio was their only connection to the outside world and in April they heard reports of international efforts to help trapped civilians in Mariupol. “This gave us more strength, it felt as if … we might get out and it would all be over,” she said.
But when the evacuation day arrived, there were not enough spaces for everyone. Trotsak’s family were encouraged to go in the first wave because her mother has asthma, she said.
“Go ahead, get to Zaporizhzhia and grab a table at a cafe and … we’ll join you for a pizza,” she recalled one of the people saying who remained behind.
“Of course it was terribly uncomfortable for us that we went first.”
The group picked their way through the rubble around the plant, escorted by three Ukrainian soldiers. There was so much debris that the walk to the waiting buses, which should have taken 15 minutes, took two and half hours.
“Walking past the plant the day before yesterday, we saw that everything was ablaze in black smoke,” she said. “God forbid more shells hit near the bunkers where the civilians are.”
The port city, which before the war had 400,000 inhabitants, has seen the heaviest fighting so far of the conflict, which Moscow calls a “special military operation” to disarm Ukraine and defend its Russian-speaking population from fascists.
Kyiv and its Western supporters say Moscow’s fascism claim is a baseless pretext for an unprovoked war of aggression that has driven more than five million Ukrainians to flee abroad.
Trotsak and her family are staying at a hotel that has been commandeered to house evacuees, but Trotsak does not want to stay long and take up space for the many Mariupol evacuees she hopes will soon arrive in the relative safety of Zaporizhzhia.
“It’s peaceful, no sounds of explosions thank god. And I hope there never will be here any kind of booms here, just fireworks and thunder.”
(Editing by Alexandra Hudson)
