Dmitry Steshin is a journalist with the Russian news outlet, Komsomolskaya Pravda. He is currently embedded with Russian forces in Mariupol. This report is from 3/24/22. I used Google Translate so it is a bit disjointed but the reader can still get the general idea of the horror and tragedy that he is conveying. His Telegram channel is https://t.me/DmitriySteshin – Natylie

By Dmitry Steshin, Komsomolskaya Pravda, 3/24/22

KP special correspondent Dmitry Steshin visited a hospital covered by Ukrainian Grads. The hospital is “working”, although there are battles on the neighboring streets

The main reservoir of refugees from Mariupol is 20 kilometers from the city, in the village of Volodarskoye. It was “decommunized”, so on half of the maps and navigators it is Nikolsky, which adds confusion to the chaos around.

Life, so to speak, in Volodarsky-Nikolsky is “improving”. Volunteers appeared, began to draw up lists for evacuation. The other day, thugs from the national battalion “Azov” tried to leave the city through the airport, the counterattack was repulsed, but it was not possible to completely clean up the breakouts …

“I’M AFRAID OF SOUNDS”

The main reservoir of refugees from Mariupol is in the village of Volodarskoye. On the wall are notes from relatives.

Vika comes up to me softly, inaudibly: she is in socks – on the icy pavement. I can’t determine the age, maybe she graduated from high school. Knocked down in a tangle of hair, a dirty jacket. Her hands are shaking, she can’t seem to find a place for them. The girl has no things, madness splashes in her huge eyes:

• Talk to me, no one talks to me, but I’m afraid. Explosions, I’m afraid of people with weapons!

I understand that the girl needs to be switched. I take out a handful of candies from my pocket:

• Let’s have some candy and we’ll talk. What is your name?

The girl puts the candy in the pocket of her jacket, I give another one, also hides it, painfully trying to remember who she is:

• I am Victoria. Dyachenko!
• Vika, where did you live in Mariupol?
• I lived in Mariupol, there is also a bombing, I will tell you everything.

But Vika cannot remember the address. Shows me his leg. I saw this – the shock wave just separates the meat from the bones, but there are still small fragments. From above, while it has healed, it does not fester. I ask Vika:

• Feed you?
• I want tea, hot, it’s cold.
• Stand here!

Vika can’t even remember her address. Hands are shaking, there are no things with you.

Vika nods, points to her feet: they say, I’m standing. I push my way into the school cafeteria, the refugees are let in fifteen people at a time. They pour tea for me, I pick up half an apple from the tray. Vika takes tea, doesn’t thank me, doesn’t notice the apple, immediately starts drinking and immediately forgets about my existence. One of my fellow militiamen, a paramedic, says that Vika needs to be taken to the hospital, where they are turned off with relaxants, and his leg is treated. Then treat the psyche, treat for a long time. But where to take it? In Mariupol in the regional intensive care?

For some reason I had confidence that they would help us with something. I was wrong. And we did the right thing by leaving Vika in the storage, in the evening she was already in Rostov …

IN THE POISONOUS MIST

There was no wind that day in Mariupol, so the whole city was covered with gray muslin, such a smelly, nasty fog that torn the lungs. The factories and the port are burning, the grass is burning in the fields… We are going to the hospital. A brand new multi-storey complex, the facade is torn off by fragments, there are no glasses. A week ago, when our troops finally occupied the quarter near the hospital, the Ukrainians launched a package of Gradov on it, the square said goodbye like that. I heard it myself, falling at that moment under the car and sticking my head under the engine.

Now, to the left and right of the hospital, very close, across the street, there is a shooting battle, and behind the facade the artillery continues to pile on, so that the earth trembles.

In the hospital square, people sit on the ground, lie, crowd at the entrance. The bus with the inscription “National Guard” rinses with curtains through broken windows, everything inside is bloodied.

An elderly woman rushes to us, sobbing, asking:

• Lord, at least someone would call my daughter and say that I’m alive. Daughter in Norilsk, teacher.
• Do you have a number?
• Yes, there is!

With trembling hands, the woman unzips her bag, where all her belongings are. In a small saucepan, in a plastic bag, a notebook with half a palm. A friend dials a number … there is no connection, and where does she come from? The woman is crying again.

• What is your name? In the evening we will get out to a place where there is a connection, I will immediately dial your daughter, I promise!

I take off my hat and cross myself, probably the only form of promise that works here. In the evening we called our daughter Natasha in Norilsk, she was about to leave for her mother to take her to Russia.

LIVING AND DEAD

The lobby of the hospital is knee-deep in dirt. Some volunteers or orderlies smear it with mops, realizing the pointlessness of this occupation. People draw water from a blue tank, it is an eerie dark brown color, technical, but there is no other water in the city. The walls are covered with messages: “Tanya, we left. Belosaraika” or “We are on the 1st floor.” Room “Children”.

We find the head physician of the hospital, Olga Petrovna Golubchenko. She refuses to be interviewed, saying that everything is fine in the hospital, everything is there: staff, medicines, food. He does not look into the eyes and generally speaks with poorly restrained anger. We are trying to explain that we have the opportunity to organize help … As a result, we simply turn around without saying goodbye and leave for the main building.

Dark endless corridors, the smell of rotting flesh. Those who have cigarettes smoke, because there is no point in talking about some kind of hospital sterility. In front of us, right in the corridor, a nurse cleans a festering wound to some woman, she grinds her teeth.

The hospital is shaken by explosions. Here the mortar “Cornflower” has earned, but the “Cornflower” flew in response. Bullets whistle along the facade. A grenade launcher fired, it was supported by anti-aircraft guns, life in Mariupol goes on as usual. If you can call it life.

THE SKY PROMISES NOTHING

Same thing on the next floor. A stinking twilight, broken windows boarded up with pieces of cardboard.

A man in a wheelchair describes how he was wounded:

• I just left the entrance, and then it flew in. Sunday the 13th. I went back to the entrance, and the neighbors – three corpses at once, went out to smoke.

Are you bandaged?

Haven’t seen anyone since last Thursday. The fragment remained, they cannot find it, the X-ray does not work. Well, nothing, I will now ring on the frames at the checkpoint, – Mikhail jokes sadly.

Did you offer evacuation?

• Yes, in what I will go, at least there are clothes at home.
• Is the apartment complete?

Michael waves his hand

• There are no glasses, all the furniture lies in a pile. But there is a place to live!

Sasha lies on a stretcher by the wall. He says, “it hurt, as usual, – he went for firewood.”

We are looking for the Department of Surgery and we find … The corridors are blocked by walls made of sandbags. The same walls on the windows, but with loopholes. The Ukrainian National Guard was going to fight here, but changed its mind.

A broken coffee machine, a smashed X-ray, in general, everything that can be broken, even tables. But this is not the worst. There are corpses in the wards, neatly packed in curtains, blankets or simply in bulk, with IV tubes, tires, Ilizarov apparatus … Quiet here, of course, if you subtract artillery. Just tapping the blinds in the broken windows. The crowd of people at the entrance to the hospital is silent, where they do not treat, but simply put them to die. People listen to the ongoing battle, trying to separate the moment in order to lie down right away. And everyone is waiting for something: evacuation or humanitarian aid.

I’m waiting for peace, – the girl Dasha, strewn with freckles, told me, – but I won’t go to the evacuation with a four-year-old child!

Are they firing less already?

Yes, also…

Dasha, like all of us, looked at the sky, but the sky did not promise anything good for the next few days.

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