The worst of the war in Ukraine can be seen in the beds of the children’s hospital in Zaporijia.
Under the constant sound of sirens warning of possible air strikes, the city on the banks of the Dnipro River has become the main refuge for civilians fleeing the Ukrainian coast in the Sea of ​​Azov – mainly from Mariupol, a port municipality of 400,000 inhabitants for three weeks under intense bombardment.
Since the end of last week, when the first civilians managed to break through the Russian military siege in humanitarian corridors, the hospital has taken in at least six children in serious or critical condition.
In dark rooms, windows are taped over the glass and barricaded with sandbags to prevent shrapnel from being thrown at doctors, nurses and patients in the event of an explosion.
There Diana, 13, woke up and slowly tried to remember what had happened to her, her sister and her niece. The young woman had undergone surgery hours earlier to extract a bomb fragment stuck just above her forehead.
On the 12th, she decided to enjoy the hot morning with her sister, Natasha, and her niece Dominica, just 4 years old. Those rare moments of silence and calm allowed the three to breathe for the first time in ten days an air that was not the humid and heavy of the basement where the family sought protection from the bombs that hit the region near their home, in Mariupol.
It was five minutes under the sun, which made it possible to almost forget that Russia had invaded Ukraine, until a bomb fell next to the three. Diana suffered injuries to her head, arms and right leg from splinters of red-hot steel – a piece of metal became lodged in her skull.
In the seconds following the sound of the explosion, only confusion, which did not allow her to remember how the attack had ended.
On the 17th, Vadim Denisenko, an adviser to Ukraine’s Ministry of Internal Affairs, said that almost no buildings in Mariupol were spared from Russian attacks.
“There is no electricity, no clean water, the residents really don’t have anything to eat and no services are working — not even the dead are being taken off the streets.” According to the ministry, only 10% of residents managed to flee the city on their own.
“Those who are here are the lucky ones. On the way there are hundreds of wrecked cars, left in pieces, with bodies dumped in the streets and along the road”, says Kathia, who has just arrived from Mariupol. She and her family headed to the parking lot of a shopping mall on the outskirts of Zaporijia, where the city administration set up a reception center for people leaving conflict areas occupied by Russian troops.
Many of the cars arrive with broken windows, punctured or dented bodywork, covered in a fine but persistent dust of cement and earth. It is common to hear from its occupants that Mariupol no longer exists.
In a hospital bed, little Artem, 2, watches a children’s video on a nurse’s cell phone. With a bandage on the left side of his head and a large wound to his belly, he is recovering from an explosion that also seriously injured his parents and grandparents as the family tried to flee the port city.
Nearby, Valentina Feschenko anxiously awaits news about her granddaughter. Masha, 15, had her right leg torn apart by a Russian projectile blast last Tuesday, and the limb had to be amputated.
In a dark corner of the basement converted into a waiting room, Vladimir, Diana’s father, cries and wonders how something so bad could have happened to the family. The bomb that fell while the two daughters and granddaughter had come out of the basement to breathe injured one of them and killed the other two.
“I looked at the floor and there was my granddaughter with a head wound,” he says. “She lay there, not breathing, next to my daughter with her legs fractured and bones exposed.” Dominica—whose pictures her grandfather almost caresses on the phone— died instantly; her mother succumbed to her injuries the next day.
Vladimir tries to stay strong to support his second daughter, Diana, who has just had emergency surgery and wants to know where her sister and niece are. The father cannot hide the pain. “God, why did you bring all this to me? I shouldn’t bury my beautiful girls, I failed to protect them.”
