AT 3.50 ON THE COLD MORNING OF 24 FEBRUARY, Iryna Prudkova, 50, received a message on Telegram from her daughter, Valeria, 24, who lives in Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv.
“Are you listening to Putin? ” Valeria’s message read. “That’s totally fucked up. There is a special military operation.” At 4.08am Valeria messaged again: “Mum, Kyiv is being shelled.”
Sitting in her small flat on the first floor of a nine-storey apartment block in the leafy Kirovsky residential area of Mariupol, a port city on the Azov Sea, whose name has now passed into infamy, Iryna knew what she had to do.
She had already packed a small bag containing money, some jewellery to trade for food and shelter, and documents. Her husband, Alexandr, 46, argued that they could stay a day or two to sort out their affairs. “I told him, ‘We have to leave, it is the last chance.’”
As Iryna hastily packed a suitcase, Alexandr took their Mercedes W212 to fill it with petrol, joining a long line of cars.
As Alexandr waited nervously, the night sky suddenly lit up with a deafening thunder, a noise unfamiliar even in a city close to the frontline of the eight-year battle between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in Donetsk and Luhansk.
The war had taken its grip of Mariupol – and has yet to let go.
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