Stripped naked during searches and sent to a filtration camp: a Ukrainian woman got out of Mariupol and spoke about the horrors of this trip

Blonde girl in a wreath with red poppies. Ukrainian costume, beads and in the hands of a bandura. This 17-year-old Maria Vdovichenko was in many pre-war photos. Until recently, she lived with her family in Mariupol, she was the president of the school, learned to play the bandura, and went to church with her parents. But with the advent of the war, everything turned upside down. She told the publication Hromadskehow he and his family lived from hand to mouth and got out of the occupation.

Photo: Shutterstock

Her life immediately changed on February 24th. When the city began to be shelled, the house turned into ruins, and only a quarter of a piece of bread, the size of a fist, remained from food.

Recently, Maria's family got out of Mariupol. On the way, they survived the occupation and the filtration camp.

Next - from the first person.

“The war has begun. Re going!"

On February 24, at 03:50, my mother heard the first explosion, ran into my room with my younger sister and loudly uttered the most terrible words: “The war has begun. Re going!". Where are we going? How are we going? We quickly stuffed warm clothes and leftover food into our bags. We thought we could leave. But failed - the city was closed.

Then the real nightmare began. People ran out of their houses, tried to buy everything, withdraw cash, fill up cars. And there were explosions all around.

At 12:00 our house was already shaking. Which cellar should we run to? I called the chairman of the OSMD, asking where we could hide. They answered me that our basement was not designed for this, there are windows, repairs, it is impossible to go there.

At that moment we still had all the communications. Our food and water supplies were relatively small, because we thought that it would last 3-4 days.

Bath in the usual Khrushchev

Two days have passed since the start of the war, and communication, water and light have disappeared. Subsequently, there was no gas. We understand that the situation is difficult.

Shells were flying at Mariupol all this time. The left bank of the city was destroyed, blast waves reached the Primorsky district, everything rumbled.

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In the apartment, we hung the windows, inserted foam rubber between them. We thought it would protect us.

We decided to hide in the bathroom. There were days when we already knew at what time we would be shelled. Only noise, rustling, explosion - they immediately ran to the bathroom. It gradually got boring. There was no hope that everything would end, that we would be rescued. Well, what is a bath in an ordinary Khrushchev?

One morning, I do not remember exactly what date, we were all lying in the same room. They heard how everything was shaking in the apartment, how something was falling in the next room.

But we lay there and thought: no, it's somewhere far away, we don't believe in it.

The vibrations of the earth began, the house seemed to bounce. We quickly closed ourselves in the bathroom. At first there was such silence, it seemed as if something was falling, and then a blast wave ... The upper floors of the house simply folded. Pieces of concrete, furniture, slate from the roof fell, glass flew. They were screaming everywhere.

"People were ready to kill each other for a sip of water"

We managed to get out of the house, my father said to quickly go to the first basement that came across.

Around ice, glass, noise, shots, and we run and think: if only there was a staircase to the basement, if only we could go down, if only we were not crushed by a stove.

My sister ran to the basement first, followed by me and my parents. They started knocking and heard that there were people inside, and they were whispering. In the end, some man opened the door and said that he could not let us in - they say, there are a lot of people in the basement, there is no extra space. Father did not listen, pushed him away, and we entered.

There were 20 people inside, our neighbors. Another family with a five-month-old child came with us. That is, if we had not broken in, more than one family would have died under our house.

In the basement we saw different horrors. People ran out of food, they turned into animals. Were ready to kill each other for a sip of water.

There was nothing to cook food from, water was extracted from ice and snow.

People were in insane danger when they went outside - fragments, pieces of buildings, stones flew at them.

One day, a mine flew in front of our door to the basement. The hole was so big, it looked like someone had dug deep. We thought that we would fall asleep, the building had already begun to collapse. We were afraid that this would not become our common grave.

“In this basement there was only our hope and prayer”

My mother has been suffering from polyneuropathy for six years now. This is a lesion of the nervous system. Due to stress, she stopped walking, her heart stopped twice. Pharmacies did not work, we did not have medicine. The emergency department, which was opposite our basement, was destroyed.

My father resuscitated my mother as best he could and knew - artificial respiration, heart massage. Tablets had to be searched for under shelling. We couldn't lose mom. In this basement there was only our hope and prayer. And that's all.

On the tenth day of our stay there, we had one piece of bread left. It was the size of my fist. We divided it four times. I could not eat my piece, because we were starving for a very long time. He was with me for a very long time. I was afraid that everything would end, and not even him.

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People quarreled among themselves, quarreled, they tried to drive some out of the basement so that there would be one less mouth. There was no kindness, only darkness, and we could already smell death.

This went on for 12 days.

“We will not leave here. This is my grave"

Usually the shelling began somewhere in the morning. Then there was a short break, and then again. But that day, everyone woke up from an unheard-of noise at two in the morning. We lay and tried to sleep. The cup that stood on the shelf above me jumped. The sound was as if I was lying down and four trains were driving next to me on each side.

Usually, when they shot, a child cried, someone read a prayer aloud. At that time, everyone was silent.

Suddenly the earth began to tremble, it seemed as if everything was flying at us. Stucco and bricks fell from the ceiling.

I lay there and thought: we won't get out of here. This is my grave. I was already desperate, I could neither pray nor hope. It's over, it can't be long. At that moment I was sure that I would die, and I would not die alone. My family lay on the same blanket with me.

I decided to pray anyway. I asked God to die quickly and not to see the death of my relatives, not to see how they suffer, and I cannot help them.

We didn't have anything. No strength, no hope, not even a normal first aid kit. Everyone understood that if it hit, we would not get out of here. As in a neighboring building, where no one was taken from. This was forbidden to do by enemy soldiers, it was simply impossible.

“Either we will die of hunger, or we will fall asleep, or they will simply kill us”

Since then, I don't remember how the days went by. We were exhausted, hungry, tired. One day my father said: “Either we will die of hunger, or we will fall asleep, or they will simply kill us.” Russian soldiers walked through the basements, checked who was sitting there, threw bombs. When they knocked on us, we did not answer.

One day we heard from the neighbors that we could go to Melekino. Dad had old Zhigulis, battered by debris from buildings and glass. We didn't even know if the car would start, but it started. We rode under shelling, hail. The fighting continued, and we had one goal: to survive, to get out of this hell.

We almost reached Melekino, where there was a DPR post. We understood that we couldn’t go back, but we didn’t want to go further: if they didn’t kill them there, they’ll kill us here, for the enemy we are nothing, just a target.

We were stopped at the checkpoint, asked at the place of registration: “Mariupol? You to the right."

What kind of "right" we did not know. From there we were directed further and further. So a large column of cars and even people walking on foot gradually formed.

Subsequently, the “DPR” military told me to go. We set off, and they just fired at cars and people.

“With all our money, we were able to buy two loaves of bread.”

So we drove to Yalta, Donetsk region, where we hid for more than 10 days in an old boarding house. We didn’t have food, we took water from a well. The cash we had left was nothing.

In Yalta, they were just changing power to the “DPR”, and they tried to show their good side. They were invited to come to them, give their first and last names, in order to receive humanitarian aid. People went to survive, not to die of hunger. But they didn’t give any rations there - they got locals who sold them at the bazaar at sky-high prices.

Several stores also operated in Yalta, where products were imported from Russia. Prices are high, lines are long. With the money we had, we could only buy two loaves of bread. We took care of them, hid them so that they would not be taken away.

Even then, there was “denationalization” in Yalta: soldiers went from house to house, looking for “nationalists”, “fascists”, as they say. People were taken away in unknown directions, someone was killed.

Hunger, cold and fear of freezing

In Yalta, hunger, cold and fear of freezing came to us again. All we had was fire, water, tea and two loaves of bread. The parents decided to leave.

So we got to the filtration in Mangush. There were two camps. The first one is for people who were walking. They could be filtered for over a month, the queues were insane. People tried with might and main to escape and escape. And another camp was for those who are machines.

The camp is not some kind of settlement, it's just columns of cars. There were 500 cars ahead of us in line, thousands more behind us.

It was forbidden to get out of cars, look for food, water, go to the toilet. Soldiers with weapons walked everywhere, threatened, checked, looked to make sure everyone was in place.

This filtration camp, as we were told, worked from 05:00 to 23:00, but in fact - until they wake up, eat breakfast, smoke, talk on the phone, nothing starts.

They didn't care about civilians. Every hour two, if you were lucky, three cars passed by. We lived in the car for two days while waiting for our turn.

"Filtration starts at 14"

Here's how the filtering works: they have a checkpoint. A car drives in there, where they check every pocket, glove box, trunk, every bag. People have clothes and what's underneath. Men are undressed on the street near the cars. They are looking for tattoos, some kind of marks, in a word, “nationalists”.

It happened that not all passengers from the car were filtered: they could take their father or mother away, and the car had to move on. People got lost. The military had weapons, but the people had nothing.

Our turn came at 23:00, we were the last car for that day. We were let in and searched. Mom didn't go anymore because of her illness. She and her sister were allowed not to go out: they said that “filtering starts at the age of 14.”

My father and I left. There was a booth with two rooms 200 meters from our car. There were emaciated people on the street, they had no clothes, it was cold outside. My feet were so cold that I couldn't feel my toes.

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They just walked around, talking among themselves, discussing the women they had tortured.

I heard conversations between them:

“And the one who didn’t pass, where did you do it?” One asked the other.

“Yes, he shot me. About 10 people, maybe more. I don’t think so, I’m already tired,” he answers.

One man who was being filtered came out with huge, frightened eyes. He was shaking. He said that there was a cruel interrogation, he was beaten. His woman was never released.

“They tried to find people who love their homeland, who want to live normally”

Next was our turn. I went to one filtration room, my father went to another.

They took my fingerprints, scanned documents, checked my phone. They asked provocative questions. About power, Ukraine, about my own positions. They tried to find people who love their homeland, who want to live normally. They mocked, humiliated, could call names, beat.

They took my passport, they saw that I was 17. They didn’t like me, it seemed that I looked too young, but they were just looking for some young girls.

I was pushed out of there. Their armed soldier accompanied me to the car.

He pushed me because I seemed to be slowly leaving. I fell, hurt my knee, but I understood: if I don’t get up now and run to the car, I won’t go back. I ran all the way.

Mom saw me. She began to panic: what happened to her father? Did he not pass? Has he been killed already? Is he being bullied? And I couldn't say anything. I sat there and didn't know what was going to happen next.

However, the father returned after 40 minutes. We saw him pushed out. He got out and fell. Tried to get up and fell down. But still got to the car.

Because of the beatings at the “filtration”, the father lost his sight

Father stepped on the gas, and we set off. There was no direct route to Berdyansk: the bridge had been blown up, so we drove through the outskirts and villages. We saw corpses, broken equipment.

Already on the way, my father began to have vision problems - he began to see poorly.

In Berdyansk we spent the night in the car. There, the father told how his filtration took place.

They also asked him for documents, took fingerprints, stripped him, and searched him. They began to interrogate, pressed morally. First they pushed. When they saw that he had an empty phone, the question began: Why is the phone empty? What are you hiding? We don't believe you!" And they just hit him in the head. He does not remember who, how and what. He remembers how he already found himself on the street. From this beating, my father lost his sight, and we still had to go further.

There were 27 checkpoints from Berdyansk to Zaporozhye, and at each one they checked documents, a car, asked if it was filtered. People were taken away food, warm clothes, asked for cigarettes, even asked about drugs and alcohol.

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We were driving, and there were battles nearby. Something flew under the car, there was an explosion, the car jumped. Father said not to worry - it might have been a firecracker. But we understood that there are no firecrackers in war.

The road was hard. We saw destroyed houses, anti-tank mines in the middle of the road, tanks with the letter Z in the yards, burnt bodies along the road, wrecked cars. The forest was on fire all around us.

"Do not be afraid. It is Ukraine"

At dawn we arrived in Orekhovo, Zaporozhye region. Ahead of us on the road were chimney blocks, hedgehogs, thorns. It feels like breathing becomes easier, and then ahead we saw the Ukrainian flag.

At first they were afraid: is it really a provocation? Is this just another exam we have to pass?

We were stopped. They say: “Good afternoon! Show me the documents, please.

We showed, although we were still sure that this was a provocation.

They tell us: “Don't be afraid. It is Ukraine".

We started crying. We could not believe that we were protected, that we had found our land.

Then we went to the refugee assistance center in Zaporozhye. Mom was given medical assistance, because she could not walk then. The father was very ill: he did not see. My sister and I are emotionally exhausted. We were psychologically broken.

Volunteers helped us get to the Dnieper.

In the city, two doctors examined my father, and they concluded that he had an injury as a result of a shell shock. There is complete loss of vision in one eye, and the other sees as if through a plastic bag.

To receive quality medical care, volunteers sent us to Lviv. Here the father was again examined. We were told that his treatment would be long, complicated and expensive, and that he might have to travel abroad.

“We cannot lose our father. He saved us, now we must help him, ”said Maria’s mother, Natalya Sergeevna.

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