Regardless of where they are, most people in Viktoria’s life have been accounted for. The one glaring exception is her sister Inna. She has been MIA for quite a while. She wasn’t in any one place during the siege, and in the immediate aftermath, there wasn’t any information or leads on where she might have been and what might have happened. Apart from a single entry in a DPR humanitarian aid system (which, as I noted at the time, wasn’t necessarily a reliable or accurate source of information), there had been nothing.
Now, well, maybe there’s something. Inna’s cell phone has been off the grid for a while, but late last week, her account showed as online in the Viber messaging app. For this to happen, it would mean that the cell phone had been charged and was working, and that it was in a place with either wi-fi or a cell tower. (The latter would also require a SIM card for the telecom network in operation in the area.)
What does this signal about Inna? We don’t know. Although the cell phone is working — technically the Viber on the cell phone — and sent the ping, there’s been no follow up. Messages and attempts to call have not produced any results. It could have a been a brief, one-time thing. The phone might have had wi-fi for a moment, but has since been in a place with only cell service and a non-functional SIM card. (People in Mariupol previously had three or four cell networks to choose from. Those all stopped working during the siege, and the occupying forces set up a different, incompatible cell network when they arrived.)
I keep say “the cell phone” because that’s really all we know. Without any messages or phone calls being answered, we don’t know that Inna still has the phone, or if someone else found and accessed it. There’s still no information one way or another about Inna’s situation. There’s been a sign, but we don’t know what that means. The wait continues.
By now, you’ve probably heard and/or seen footage of the shopping center in Kremenchuk that was attacked and destroyed by a Russian missile the other day. Reports from various on-the-ground sources, including ABC News (https://abcnews.go.com/International/live-updates/russia-ukraine/?id=85460300) and the BBC (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-61967376) have detailed much of what happened and shown the dead and wounded from the attack.
So how is Russia describing this attack on a civilian area, with no military value and not located near a legitimate military target? “The Russian Ministry of Defense stated that they hit ‘a train with weapons from the West’, after which a detonation occurred, and a fire engulfed a non-functioning shopping center nearby.”
⚡️There were no military facilities around the mall in Kremenchuk within a radius of 5 km, – Interior Minister Denys Monastyrskyi.
Viktoria has gotten a couple of updates over the past two or three days. First, she heard from her long-time work friend Angela over the weekend. She, along with her husband and son, had stayed in a coastal village during the worst of the siege and takeover of Mariupol, but they are back in the city now. Their apartment suffered some damage, but was still habitable. (That was the case for many buildings — but not all, of course — that weren’t street-facing.) They’re getting by, I guess; Viktoria didn’t say otherwise.
Naturally, Angela had been learning what she could about friends and the people she’d worked with. (She and Viktoria were the only two women on their 10-person crew at Azovstal, and they’d worked together for many, many years. So, work friend, yes, but real-life friend as well.) Angela passed along news that two of the men from their crew had died. Some people asked how Viktoria was, which (a) is nice to know that she hasn’t been forgotten since moving to the US, and (b) is super nice of them to ask given all that’s going on their lives.
The second bit of news came today (with a smidge yesterday): Viktoria was able to talk with Baba Katya and Rodion for a bit. They are staying with a friend in the village of Staryi Krym (“Old Crimea”), which is just outside the border of Mariupol to the northwest. They’ve got water and electricity there but no communications, which still puts them better off than many people in Mariupol. Katya’s apartment in Mariupol is good — locked up and looked over by a neighbor; minor damage but habitable if they wanted to move back, but there are no plans to do so at this time.
Rodion’s doing OK. He’s in “school” — a Russian brownshirt indoctrination center by another name — for a couple more weeks. He had to get a severe buzzcut a few weeks back to address any possible issues of lice or other vermin from their weeks in the basements and generally unsanitary conditions, but it looks like it’s growing back in now. (I’ll get V to forward a photo; she got a couple from Katya prior to their conversation.) He asked Viktoria about his mother, which I’m sure was a tough question for V. Unfortunately, there’s still no information about Inna, so I’m not sure what she told him.
The friend that Katya and Rodion are staying with does have a car, so there are some plans to do a couple Mariupol runs over the next days or weeks. Katya will go by the apartment block and do a little recon and recovery of Zhenya’s and V’s mother’s apartments. There’s probably nothing to really see or do at this point, but who knows. And, after school is finished, they’ll plan to go visit Artem and his family, to see how things are going.
I’ll write up any updates as soon as I know them.
As promised before, a couple photos of Rodion, along with a new friend he made in the country.
Also, Baba Katya went into Mariupol sooner than I was told, and got a look at the two apartments. She described them to Viktoria as “horrifying.” The only things she found was a coin in the family apartment, and a personal safe from Zhenya’s apartment. The safe was technically fire-proof, but as you can see from these photos, “fire-resistant” might be a better description.
The safe survived, but all the hardware burned away. That, plus the mounting holes in the bottom, probably allowed the fire to get to the contents.Katya’s friend had the tools to open it, but there wasn’t much inside to salvage. A couple of the documents have legible portions, but most things were sheets of ash.Viktoria had mentioned that Zhenya had a gun, but based on the remains, it appears to have been some sort of pneumatic pistol (a BB gun). Not sure of its construction, but it didn’t survive either.
I often find and save links and articles that I mean to share. Sometimes they become part of a larger, cohesively-themed post, or sometimes part of one of my “Short Notes” posts. And then there are these — assorted things that I’ve collected for which there’s just not much to say, or for which there hasn’t been much written. I’ll add comment and/or context as best I can, but most of these stories just are what they are.
¶ I’ve mentioned the filtration camps in the past, but never really wrote about what they do. Here’s a fairly detailed story from some of the people who have survived the “filtration” process: ‘The Russians said beatings were my re-education’ – BBC News
¶ Not an article, just a Twitter post that showed up today and, for obvious reasons, pisses me off no end. I have no doubt that in Russian state media reports, the mural will be attributed to a grateful Mariupol citizen:
In Russian-occupied Mariupol, the war that destroyed the city is being glorified pic.twitter.com/A6SD9Q3kgu
The Mariupol CIty Council Telegram channel still exists and does posts, though I’m sure the occupying forces would complain that it’s not the “real” (i.e., Russian-controlled) city council. That reason alone is probably a good reason to believe what gets posted, but since I’ve been watching the channel for the past 4 months as well, I know that the information that shows up there is good. In a recent post, it highlighted a recent presentation by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) at a meeting in Geneva. It’s somewhat gratifying to me to know that Mariupol is still on the minds of some people out there in the world.
‼️The deadliest place in Ukraine! The UN human rights report on Mariupol
“From February to the end of April, Mariupol was probably the deadliest place in Ukraine. The intensity and scale of the fighting, destruction, death and injury strongly indicate serious violations of international humanitarian law and gross violations of international law,” said UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Michelle Bachelet.
Conclusions of the report:
1,348 civilians, including 70 children, have been confirmed dead in Mariupol. But the actual death toll is many times higher.
Residents spent more than a month under siege: in basements without water, heat and medical care
Damaged or destroyed up to 90% of high-rise buildings, as well as up to 60% of private
All hospitals were damaged or destroyed.
There was no water – people ran out to wells or open reservoirs, and on the way many died
The city was bombarded with tanks and heavy artillery, used multiple launch rocket systems, rockets and air strikes.
Many residents have not yet been buried.
The evacuation of civilians in Mariupol was carried out within a month. 350,000 people left the city. They were ready to evacuate in any possible direction, but not everyone had the opportunity.
The current situation in Mariupol is terrible. The WHO warns of the dangers of an outbreak of infectious diseases, in particular cholera.
Many of those bullet points have been mentioned here, so nice confirmation in that regard. Again, it’s good that what happened (and, to some degree, is still happening) to Mariupol hasn’t completely fallen off the world’s radar. Maybe there will actually be some consequences in the future.
Pavlo Kyrylenko, Ukraine’s governor of the Donetsk oblast made a statement the other day about the latest shelling of Bakhmut, and had a perfect summary of the war in Ukraine:
“The Russians call the war a ‘military operation’, but in reality it is an operation against civilians. Every now and then they fight where the military has never been. This is terrorist behavior and the attitude towards the enemy must be appropriate,” Kyrylenko said.
Things are not really improving in Mariupol, and live is not becoming any easier or better since the Russians and their puppets, the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR), assumed power. I’d written previously about how their attempts to restore electricity and water have been, at best, terrible, and no real progress has been made on that front. The only water for people to use has to be trucked in and distributed. People have to sign up to get water, wait about 2 days for their place in line to come up, and then actually wait in line to get their water.
Waiting in line for potable water, June 7 2022
In the mean time, the DPR is trying to put a pretty face on the rubble by watering the plants in the city so that they can get photos of life returning to normal (or maybe how things are “thriving” now that the Russians are in charge?). And to note, I know this is non-potable, “technical” water that’s being used; it just seems like wrong message when people are still thirsty.
Water is only part of the story, there is also a lack of food and supplies in the city. When I was young, I remember the stories about bread lines and such in the Soviet Union (which always seemed to be accompanied by black and white photos from the 40’s and 50’s). Well, the lines are back:
Food lines, June 10 2022
I haven’t read about any process for getting this assistance, but I can’t imagine it would be any easier than getting water. And on this particular day, the temperatures were in the upper 80s, so not a great time to just be standing out (especially if you don’t have water to stay hydrated).
In addition to the lack of water, the other big contributor to the fear of a cholera outbreak is the garbage. There’s a lot of it, and it’s not being addressed.
Because of the scope of recovery of the bodies of those killed by their aggression, the Russians and DPR have decided that they just aren’t going to bother anymore. There had been some stories and photos initially of workers, including citizens of Mariupol, going through the rubble of destroyed building to recover the dead. (The people of Mariupol were doing this work because it was one of the few ways to get food.) But that was slow going because there are a lot of destroyed buildings and a lot of bodies. So now there are no recovery efforts; they are just scooping up the rubble and carting it off – In Mariupol, the occupiers carry construction debris along with the remains of bodies to closed landfills – PHOTOS – 0629.com.ua.
While I’m sure part of the argument for doing this is to more quickly address the decomposition and stench that has been enveloping the city, it also give cover to mask the true numbers of the dead and to prevent meaningful closure for a lot of people. And to make investigating war crimes more difficult.
As if we need punctuation to that, here’s a video from last week of one of the mass graves outside of Mariupol. Before the task became too great and/or instructions to conceal the extent of the issue came down, there was some horrifying effort to at least bury some of the bodies. Not that they were necessarily identified. I remember seeing a couple of those Maxar satellite photos of newly dug mass graves (Apparent mass graves near Mariupol expanding in size, satellite photos show – National | Globalnews.ca), but it’s really different when you see a video of someone driving the length and width of it.
They had to work to change the Ukrainian “i” into a Russian “и,” but that was much better propaganda for state media broadcasts than, say, giving the people of Mariupol running water. I’m sure the people of Mariupol will take the time to do it right when the city is reclaimed and rebuilt.
There hasn’t been a lot of updates of late because there hasn’t been all that much to report. Hopefully (or not) that might change soon.
Zhenya is still on the farm, and it’s driving him crazy. It’s still probably one of the safer parts of Ukraine, and if it were up to me, I’d tell him to stay there and make the best of it until, hopefully, all this is over. But I don’t know if that’s going to happen. Zhenya doesn’t like farm life, and Viktoria is convinced he’s just seconds away from being thrown into the Army and sent to the front lines. Something’s likely to give at some point; I don’t know what and I don’t know when, but I think it’s coming.
Katya 2 and Vanya are still in Vienna. Although they’ve both gotten their approvals to go to Canada, there was a typo on Katya’s visa and that needs to be fixed before they can go anywhere. This is having the secondary effect of delaying the travel permit that Vanya needs, because it may turn out that Katya will need one as well, and it would make sense to get that all done at the same time. The Canadian immigration service might not be quite as bad as the US one, but it’s still taking quite a bit of time. (It took a month for Katya’s original approval, and now it’s been at least three weeks since we initially told them about the typo. Ugh.)
Artem was able to talk to Zhenya briefly about a week ago. He, his mother Katya 1 and her new husband are still in the Mariupol area, which means they’re scraping by somehow. Still no running water, consistent electricity or communications. But Artem did get a new phone number (the Russian/DPR phone service Phoenix is the only one that operates in the area now), and relayed that to Zhenya.
Viktoria heard from her long-time friend Angela, whom I’ve mentioned once or twice. She and her husband had taken refuge in a costal town on the eastern/Russian side of Mariupol, but have now returned to Mariupol itself. I didn’t hear all the details from Viktoria, who herself probably didn’t get all the details. (They didn’t talk, it was just a message of some kind.) Sadly, it sounds like Angela is a Russia/DPR booster, which is really too bad. Angela is a nice and bubbly person (I’d met her a couple times), so to hear that she swallows the bilge coming from Russia is disappointing.
Sadly, there’s still been no news about Viktoria’s sister Inna. V had tried looking at the DPR site she’d found back in March (the one that had said Inna had received some humanitarian assistance), but there was nothing helpful there. There was an entry from sometime in April, but V felt it was the same information as before, just with a different date. (Even if it was new information, it would still have been about two months old, so not really helpful.) I don’t think V’s given up hope yet, but there’s not much to go on. As is too often the case, it’s the not knowing that makes this hard.
For other family and friends, there hasn’t been any new word one way or another. And for the foreseeable future, I don’t really think the “no news is good news” maxim will necessarily apply. All fingers will need to remain crossed.
Just a quick post to highlight a video I came across. The footage is somewhat old, but was only recently released because of the military sensitivity.
As you will recall, the army regiment defending Mariupol held out for an astoundingly long time. This, despite the fact that the city was well-surrounded by Russian forces on three sides, with the fourth side being the Azov Sea. (With Russian naval vessels in the Azov, you could make the argument that the city was fully surrounded.) But the Azov regiment defended Mariupol for nearly three months. Part of the reason they could hold out for so long was that they had gotten some supplies early in the war, thanks to a gap in the Russian coverage of the city. With that gap, helicopters missions were able to sneak in seven or eight times before Russia managed to close the gap.
The video below shows some footage of those missions and how they had to fly extremely low to the ground (or sea) in order to sneak in. Flying so low is difficult, so it’s quite a testament to the skill of the Ukrainian pilots. The flights at the time (back in late March or early April) had to cover about 60 miles to get to Mariupol, and while I don’t think they flew that low the entire distance, it was still a very impressive feat.
