Alice Artyuk and Julia Boyko Sheltered in a Basement for Two Weeks in the Decimated, Sieged Ukrainian city of Mariupol before they found the courage to defy the conflict and leave the area on foot, when food was depleted and with it the hopes for the future of their young children.
Carrying only water, cookies, clothes and a ukulele, the two women, who are raising their children alone, walked with their boys away from the city, passing by minefields and the dead, to embark on an eight-day journey that led them to the security of a small Czech village.
“We decided that if we were to die, we would at least face it instead of hiding,” said Artyuk, a 31-year-old social worker and music teacher.
“We want to leave Mariupol because of the bombing,” Artyuk said. “There were explosions everywhere.” She said walking was safer than driving “because you could see the mines”.
Tens of thousands of civilians had been trapped for weeks in the Black Sea port city, mostly in basements with scant supplies of food, water and medicine. Mariupol, once home to 400,000 people, was besieged and destroyed by bombing during the first days of the Russian invasion more than a month ago.
Local authorities say thousands of people have been killed. The United Nations says thousands of civilians may have died in the city, which has been described as a “special military operation” by Moscow. Ukraine.
Artyuk’s apartment, which she had just repaid in December, was destroyed by the bombs, she explains. Boyko, for her part, said her house was hit by a military strike and that all personal documents were destroyed in the ensuing fire.
More than 4.2 million refugees have fled Ukraine since the Russian invasion on February 24, most of them entering the European Union through border crossings in Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia and Hungary.
THE Russia states that it aims to demilitarize and “demilitarize” Ukraine with a “special military operation”. Ukraine and the West have argued that the February 24 invasion was illegal and unjustified.
‘WE LOST EVERYTHING’
Boyko and Artyuk left on March 17, covering almost 100 kilometers on foot before traveling by bus and train to the city of Lviv in western Ukraine. From there they escaped to Poland.
“We lost everything when we left,” said Boyko, 34, at a cottage on the edge of a forest about 122 kilometers from Prague. “My mind and heart remain in Mariupol because of my family. I do not know what happened to them. “
While some refugees have moved further west, many have settled in Central European countries, such as the Czech Republic and Poland, where large Ukrainian communities existed before the war.
The two women ‘s priority now is to find schools for their sons, aged 8 and 11, and to learn Czech so that they can work. They plan to move closer to Prague and have very little hope that at some point they will return home.
“There is nothing left for us to go back to,” Artyuk said.
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