"Relatives said: people like you should be killed." The story of a woman who survived torture and fled occupied Mariupol twice

Yahoo

24-04-2025

Maryna used to be very fond of flowers. At home and at her dacha, she had planted absolutely everything that could be grown in the Azov climate – roses, hyacinths, daffodils, dahlias, hibiscus, tulips of all colours and sizes, and even blue daisies. There were also conifers that she had planted herself.
Maryna recalls her garden when she talks about Mariupol. Like her hometown, it remains behind the barbed wire of occupation.
Maryna's mother moved to Mariupol from the Carpathian mountains in western Ukraine, where she gave birth to Maryna. Maryna's children, a daughter and a son, grew up in the city on the Sea of Azov. Her parents are buried here, and she is no longer able to visit their graves.
Suffering from cancer, Maryna survived bombardments, ended up in Russian torture chambers with her daughter, and then searched for her son, who was in the military and about whom she had heard no news for months.
After several unsuccessful attempts, Maryna, her daughter, and her son managed to escape. Now they are free but separated, living in different parts of the world. Documents and keys are the only things they have left of their former lives.
Maryna told Ukrainska Pravda.Zhyttia (Life) about surviving in Mariupol, returning to the occupied city for the sake of her son and fleeing her beloved home city, now controlled by the enemy.
Her name has been changed for security reasons.
Mariupol's Kalmiuskyi (formerly known as Illichivskyi) district before the full-scale war
Photo: Tetiana Aster
Maryna used to live in Mariupol's Kalmiuskyi district. She worked as a seamstress at a boarding school, then as a courier at the Illich and Azovstal metallurgical plants.
She saw both the dark and gloomy Mariupol of the 1990s and the one that it had become a few years before the full-scale war, with new parks, fountains, and bike paths. Then the Russians came, and the cosy city remained only in her memory.
The war hit as Maryna was in a house near the village of Sartana. Maryna's large family included an elderly father, father-in-law, husband, 19-year-old daughter and son-in-law who was in the military. They also had two large dogs in their yard.
Maryna's family did not leave the city because the elderly people downright refused to leave their home. "This is our land, so we will die here", Maryna recalls her elderly father saying.
It was not the first time the war had knocked on the doors of Mariupol: residents remembered the attacks and relatively quick liberation in 2014, so many did not take the first explosions in February 2022 seriously.
Maryna and her daughter considered evacuating in the first days, when they had the opportunity, but they didn't dare to go through with it. The residential area where Maryna lived was a quiet place at first. Her daughter and her husband were renovating their apartment on the left bank at that time, and it was a pity to leave everything behind.
When the mobile network, electricity, water, and gas were cut off in the city, it became clear that they had to prepare for long-term survival.
Maryna still had a supply of food, plus everything they had managed to buy in the first days, while some shops were open. She was also lucky with water – there was a large five-cubic-metre rainwater well in her yard, so she didn't have to queue for wells under fire.
"People on our street agreed that if there is a strike, everyone would run to the scene and dig out and rescue anyone trapped under rubble. We agreed not to abandon each other.
There were a lot of elderly people – my daughter and I brought them food and pills. We helped them bandage their wounds while there were still bandages available", Maryna recalls.
The first attack from Grad multiple-launch rocket systems occurred on 7 March. One rocket fell right on the border of their garden. On that day, Maryna's neighbours knocked on her door as they came to buy petrol to flee to Dnipro.
"Oh no, there is no evacuation corridor, no one can leave", Maryna told them, but they didn't listen.
The next morning, on 8 March, the Russians shot at her neighbours' car while they were trying to evacuate. The husband, wife, their pregnant daughter and their Labrador – everyone in the car – were killed. Their bodies were lying on the roadside for a long time.
Later, Maryna would go to the place where her neighbours were killed, see the destroyed car and take a few photos. She would be tortured for these photos on her phone, but that would come later. For that moment, her daily life was a struggle for survival, but at least she was free.
She walked the destroyed streets in search of firewood, heated the stove, baked bread and fried pampushky (filled doughnuts). Back then, there was still enough food to feed the cats and dogs abandoned by the townspeople who had fled.
Maryna's neighbour, who sold meat, started exchanging his stock, which began to deteriorate without electricity, and gave away lard for free. Maryna would mix the lard with garlic and give it to the elderly.
In March, strikes occurred every day. The street where Maryna lived was dotted with craters, and her husband's relatives also moved into the house – so it was ten people under one roof in total.
The Illich plant
Photo: Tetiana Aster
Food and water supplies were running low. Maryna and her daughter went in search of water – when an attack started, they ran to the basement, where they had to stay for 3-4 hours.
"The Russians were committing crimes that would take two heavy volumes to describe. It was hell. You don't see this in horror films", she says.
Some memories from her search for water still haunt her. In front of her, the Russians shot a civilian man with a dog – just because of his jacket, which resembled the one that the workers at the Illich plant had.
"His head was torn into small pieces, and he fell down. My daughter and I ran away, someone was screaming," she recalls.
Maryna also saw Russian artillery targeting the humanitarian aid queues, where dozens of civilians were standing.
"We were standing in the queue to receive the humanitarian aid: they would give us three carrots, two potatoes, and some dog grains. People would gather, and a shell would fly right at them. Specifically to hit them.
One strike – and that's it, 10-15 people are gone. You can't tell where their legs are, where their arms are. The stray dogs were pulling them apart. Sometimes you would see a dog running with someone's hand in its teeth."
When the Russians took control of the Illich Steel Plant, they started forcing people to clear the rubble in exchange for food. Maryna's daughter joined in, trying to bring some sense of purpose to the terrifying monotony of their daily life. But while performing those so-called "jobs", she went through the most traumatic experience of her life.
"I told her not to go. She said, 'Mum, the other girls are going, so I'll go too.' The Russians chose her and two other girls to 'clean their office'.
At first, everything seemed more or less normal. But on the fifth day, one of the Kadyrovites [pro-Russian Chechen fighters], who was in charge, raped her. She came home in a terrible state. I honestly thought I'd never get her back to reality," Maryna recalls.
The aftermath was devastating. She started having epileptic seizures, hallucinations and couldn't sleep. And still, the suffering in the city – almost entirely under Russian control – was far from over.
The Sea of Azov before the full-scale war
Photo: Olena Suhak
To move around Mariupol, residents had to pass through a filtration process – a humiliating procedure, from which many never returned.
Maryna knew she wouldn't pass, so she bought a fake certificate, supposedly from the occupying forces, but without the Russian "commandant's" signature. It allowed her to move around the city, but not to leave it.
As it turned out, Maryna had been on the Russian authorities' radar from the very beginning. Their database had records about her son, a veteran. To make things worse, it was her ex-husband, the father of her daughter, who had reported them to the Russians.
When the full-scale invasion began, the man spent three days hiding in a basement. Maryna and her daughter brought him food. Then he disappeared. Later Maryna found out that his "love" for the Russian occupiers had outweighed any paternal feelings.
"My ex was always pro-Russian. He'd shout, 'Once our guys show up, you're in trouble. Get out of here!' He brought them a phone with a photo of my daughter and son-in-law in military uniform during the Russians' filtration operations. He told the Russians that we'd been to rallies in Kyiv, that we were pro-Ukrainian, supported the Azov Brigade and backed our forces", Maryna recalls.
Soon, the first searches began. Maryna buried all the gifts from Azov fighters, including books, patches and flags, in the garden. The first visit from Russian security agents passed without consequences, but Maryna realised they had to get out. They tried to contact volunteers. But the convoy they hoped would take them to Ukraine ended up going to Russia instead.
Maryna and her daughter were arrested at a checkpoint between Ukriane's Novoazovsk and Russia's Taganrog in July 2022. They were immediately taken to separate rooms. Out of 40 people detained, they were the first to be interrogated.
"My daughter went in first, then they called me. She was already gone as they had taken her out through a different door. I entered a room that had two huge lamps, a table and a chair. I sat down; the lights were blinding. Two of them were sitting in front of me.
One of them came up and kept pressing on a spot on my left shoulder. I struggle to lift my arm even today as it still hurts", she says.
They asked Maryna about her son – where he'd been, what he did and what his political views were. She said she didn't know. The Russians dragged her by the hair for that.
Then they made her sign a statement promising never to cross into the Russian Federation again and sent her to the room where her daughter had been interrogated.
"There was blood everywhere in the corner. There wasn't blood on my daughter, but she was covered in bruises. Her long hair was a mess, like it had been yanked. Her face was dark and she was shaking all over. I knew then that they'd been abusing her."
The women were taken to a basement after the interrogation. There they were kept for three days. They were forced to clean rooms after interrogations. They didn't see other people, but there were teeth and hair in the blood-stained cells.
A Chechen soldier came over to an exhausted Maryna one evening and asked: "Why are they treating you like this? Do they think you're murderers or something?"
Maryna told him their story. Then he asked, "Do you have cancer?" It was clear the Russians had gone through all her belongings, including her medical paper.
Apparently, the Chechen soldier felt sorry for the women. They got their things back during his shift. He gave them some kind of documents – passes to get through three checkpoints on the way to Novoazovsk – and told them to run.
"He said: 'Go back to Mariupol and try to get out however you can. I can give you 24 hours to run. But you need to get more than five kilometres from here'", remembers Maryna.
It was 23:00. There was a storm, pouring rain, lightning – the kind of bleak landscape you'd expect in an apocalyptic film scene.
Maryna's leg was injured, but she and her daughter set off. Later, they were picked up by a couple who hadn't managed to leave Mariupol after visiting relatives. Ironically, they were from Moscow.
The women spent the night at a hotel in Novoazovsk, then came back to Mariupol and contacted the volunteers again.
A car came for them at 06:00. They travelled through the fields to avoid checkpoints. There was only one check at the entrance to Berdiansk. After that, the women spent a week in a hotel waiting for a permit from the Russian occupation commandant.
Eventually, the Russians gave the green light. Maryna and her daughter finally got into a car travelling in a convoy through Vasylivka to Zaporizhzhia – towards freedom.
"When we saw our Ukrainian flag, we burst into tears. We fell to the ground. We couldn't believe we'd made it out of that hell…"
Soon after she returned to the temporarily occupied territory in search of her son. His arrests and imprisonment are a long story of their own.
Death and life in occupied Mariupol
Photo: Viktoriia Roshchyna for Ukrainska Pravda
Maryna's son had served in the Azov Regiment back in 2014, but he was discharged after being injured a few years later. He was being held in a pre-trial detention centre at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. He hadn't been found guilty, but amid the chaos of the Russian advance, the detainees were neither evacuated nor released.
The Russians quickly took control of the pre-trial detention centre. Maryna went there with a care package in the spring of 2022, while the battles were still ongoing. She stood outside the prison for three days, begging the warden to let her see her son. Eventually, in May, they let her in.
Her son was in poor shape. By then, the prison was already run by the Russian military. But at least she managed to see him.
After managing to reach Zaporizhzhia safely, Maryna did something desperate. In November 2022, she returned to Mariupol. It was a mad, reckless move, but she was ready to do anything for her son.
Back in the occupied city, Maryna went everywhere she could – to the so-called military prosecutor's office of the Russian occupying regime, to special departments.
"You'll end up where he is, dear", one of the Russians told her. They humiliated her, tried to scare her, but she refused to give in.
Her son was to be "put on trial". Maryna begged them to let him go, saying he was disabled and had done nothing wrong. But in response, she was told: "That didn't stop him from killing our boys when he served in Azov".
Eventually, at the end of November, her son was released for a bribe. The young man spent about seven months recuperating at Maryna's husband's place.
Maryna left the occupied territory for the Netherlands – from there, she sent him money through acquaintances so he could leave too. But in June, they came for him again.
"The world isn't without 'kind' people. Someone turned him in. One summer morning, he woke up to find four Russian soldiers standing over him. He was arrested.
"We didn't know anything for four months", says Maryna. It was a nightmare. And then a phone call: 'He's alive'. I was lucky to have many friends – and that the Russians are greedy for money. We managed to arrange something through intermediaries. They brought him to the house beaten and threw him into the garden."
In autumn 2023, the young man was sent to receive treatment in the occupied city of Novoazovsk – they had to change location so that it would be harder for the Russians to find him.
In the winter, he tried to leave the occupied territory for Taganrog, Russia. By some miracle, he passed a polygraph test but was denied permission to leave. He went into hiding for another two weeks and then decided "Whatever happens, happens" – and tried again.
"There were so many people… A young girl was at the checkpoint. She looked at the passport and said: 'You were there two weeks ago. Here's your passport. Go ahead'. His heart dropped to his feet – he got through customs very quickly."
Then came Taganrog, Rostov, Moscow. Constantly looking over his shoulder, her son made it to Belarus and then crossed the border into Volyn Oblast of Ukraine. In Ukrainian-controlled territory, he found a job and began rehabilitation.
In January 2024, Maryna was finally able to hug her son. But her daughter persuaded her to move abroad for good and begin the treatment she needed.
A Russian flag against the backdrop of scorched buildings, 9 May 2022
Photo: Viktoriia Roshchyna/UP
When Maryna visited occupied Mariupol for the second time, it was a different world. Ruins, fear, repression, chaos. Flats were only handed out to Russians and migrants from the Russian Federation, while thousands of Mariupol residents were left without a roof over their heads.
At the market, Maryna saw an old man – dirty, hunched, eyes full of tears. He was staring into a paper coffee cup. She offered to buy him a new one. They started talking – it turned out he was from Kurchatov.
"Oh, then we're not far from each other", Maryna said. She offered him her late father's old one-room flat: damaged, but with windows and running water. The man was overjoyed.
There were queues and commotion in the streets. Locals were preoccupied with getting passes, documents, trying to receive pensions. But there were also those who welcomed the "Russian world".
"Once I sat down at a bus stop – two men came over. One said: 'Thank God Russia has come. Finally. They'll make Mariupol a gem!'"
"I wanted to reply: 'Wasn't Mariupol already a gem when we lived here?' – but I kept silent. You couldn't speak freely in the city anymore."
One of the greatest misfortunes under occupation is losing faith in people who once seemed decent. At the boarding school where Maryna used to work, it turned out that many were collaborators.
"Our children and teachers were once 'Cossacks' and 'Berehynias' [female guardian figures in Ukrainian tradition, symbolising protection and motherhood], and now the main Berehynia supports a 'good Russia'. I see her standing in the town centre, laying flowers for some Russian 'veterans of the Afghan war'' and giving speeches about how wonderful Russia is."
A local councillor who had performed at their boarding school during celebrations for years took part in the Russian "Victory Parade" on 9 May 2022. He shook hands with Pushilin [the Russian-backed leader of the occupied Donetsk oblast] and proudly showed off a vodka bottle marked with the letter Z.
And the neighbours who had returned to Mariupol from the Russian city of Krasnodar even threatened Maryna – despite the fact that she had brought food to their elderly parents while they were hiding in the basement under shelling.
"The neighbours' children said: 'Either you shut your mouth, or we'll turn you in – and no one will ever find your guts'".
Maryna still keeps in touch with some relatives who stayed in Mariupol. But not all are glad to hear from her. Those who once took pride in her veteran son, under the influence of Russian propaganda, now believe he is a "Nazi".
"My relatives have basically disowned me. They said: 'People like you should be slaughtered – and your children, the moment they're born. All of you, especially Azov fighters'.
They believe Azov fighters destroyed Mariupol. I say: 'I was in Mariupol too, I saw who was shooting, who was using civilians as cover. You saw it yourselves.' But in response, I only hear the propaganda they show on television."
Maryna is now in Europe, with asylum seeker status, living with an elderly couple who fled from Zaporizhzhia. Fellow Ukrainians support Maryna, but she still cannot return to a normal life.
Moreover, an injury she sustained during a shelling has left a lasting impact on her health – on 26 March, a blast wave threw her into the space between a door and a wall, crushing her body badly.
"I wouldn't say it's bad here, but it's not home. I'm receiving help, I have treatment, and my tumour isn't growing. Doctors are monitoring me, but psychologically I'm not in a good place.
"Panic attacks, fear, high blood pressure. Sometimes I walk normally, and five minutes later – a seizure, and that's it. Twice they've had to call an ambulance – my blood pressure spikes suddenly."
Even in safety, she doesn't feel at peace. The foreigners around her don't understand what she has lost.
Maryna's home district before the full-scale war
Photo: Tetiana Aster
Her home on the left bank has been dismantled down to the foundations. Another family home in the Illich district was completely destroyed. After an airstrike, all that remained of the 130-square-metre house were four small pillars.
But what pains Maryna the most is the loss of her parents – or more precisely, the inability to even visit their graves.
A year before the full-scale war, her mother died and about a year after the fighting began – her father.
"My father survived the shelling, but then he had a stroke. I couldn't return by that point. A friend I sent money to withdrew it in cash and buried him. And I can't even visit his grave…
"I still can't recover after the death of my neighbours. The woman had worked in emergency services all her life. Her husband was a locksmith. Their daughter had just done IVF, was four months pregnant. And their dog – a labrador... Did they ever think that on 8 March they were heading towards death?
"The screams of people jumping from balconies. Burnt, gunned down... Did they think it was the last second of their lives? Sometimes I lie down and wonder – why did this happen to us? Some senile old man wanted land and killed so many people. For what?" Maryna asks. But those questions will forever remain unanswered.
Mariupol was her universe. And although she had travelled across nearly all of Ukraine, she always returned to where her home and flower-filled yard were. But now there is nowhere to return.
Entry permits from two factories. A passport stating place of birth – "Mariupol". Registration. Keys.
That is all Maryna has left. She now keeps them as her most precious memory.
Author: Olena BarsukovaTranslation: Myroslava Zavadska, Tetiana Buchkovska and Anastasiia YankinaEditing: Shoël Stadlen