Mystislav Chernov said in his documentary ’20 Days in Mariupol’, ‘I cannot forget the feeling that something terrible is about to happen in this city.’
Something truly terrible happened in the Ukrainian city. AP’s Chernov witnessed it. “What I didn’t expect was the intensity of the bombing,” he told CBS News.
Chernov and his team stayed in Mariupol for the first 20 days of the Russian invasion. The pictures they sent from there shocked the world. Now it’s part of an Oscar-nominated documentary. Chernov said, “There was suffering in the whole city, there was starvation in the whole city, there was no water in the whole city.” Many people were dying.
The documentary depicts the desperate efforts to save a four-year-old girl. A doctor ordered to record the whole process on camera. He can be seen saying, “This child’s eyes show the innocent Putin.”
At that time another newborn was brought. But there was no way to save him. The shock and grief was beyond comprehension.
As the narrator notes, Chernov notes, “My brain wants to forget all this, but my camera won’t let me.”
Bombs started hitting schools and civilian buildings. Finally, the maternity hospital was not left out. One scene shows a woman named Irina with her unborn child. None of them survived. Russia claims it is ‘fixed’ and the woman is an ‘actress’. But due to power outages and communications failures, Chernov could only send fragmented videos to the outside world.
A man on Chernov’s camera says Russian troops have committed war crimes. Our families, our women, our children need cooperation. Our people need cooperation from the international community. Please, support Mariupol.
Chernov had 30 hours of video footage of the city to show the world what Russia had done to Mariupol. Ukrainian soldiers went to rescue him. On the 20th day he left the city. Mariupol fell on the 86th day. Believe it or not, the situation gets worse, says Chernov. It seemed like it couldn’t get any worse. But it happened.
This was the beginning of a war, which is now entering its third year at the end of its second year.
Thousands of Ukrainian soldiers lost their limbs. A few of them have been sent to the US for advanced treatment.
Oleksii Darnov was a martial arts enthusiast before the war. Petro Kulik worked in the construction industry. Levzen Kalyuzhny was a sawyer and Serhii Volik was a private car repairer.
In their description, the Russian army has more weapons and troops than the Ukrainian one.
Asked how intense the Russian shelling was, Kalyuzhny said, “If we fired one shell, they had 10.”
Darnov did not know how outnumbered the Ukrainians were by the Russians. But he said, much more.
They’re coming, Kulik added.
The intensity of the fighting was so high that wounded soldiers could not be evacuated quickly from the front of the battlefield. It took 24 hours to get Kalyuczny to the hospital, 20 hours for Kulik.
The soldiers were wounded in combat during Ukraine’s much-anticipated counteroffensive to recapture Russian-held territory last year. Ukrainian troops used US mine clearance equipment and armored vehicles to break through Russian defense lines. But the Russian defenses built by digging buried mines and trenches could not be penetrated.
The US has sent more than 300,000 shells to Ukraine. But this cooperation is decreasing. Washington’s politics are at loggerheads to block the funding the US needs to send more weapons to Ukraine.
US President Joe Biden’s message to those withholding cooperation from Ukraine is that history has shown that Republicans in Congress who oppose cooperation with Ukraine should not be held accountable.
In a speech, Senator Angus King said, when history is written today, and it surely will be, do you really want to be listed as a supporter of Vladimir Putin? Those on Putin’s side say yes.
King visited Ukraine and met the Ukrainian leader. He said, what happens next will be the turning point. In his words, if we backtrack, it will be the biggest geopolitical mistake this country has made in generations and it will haunt us for the next 50 years.
King, a member of the US Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committee, outlined what could happen to Ukraine without US cooperation. One of two things could happen, he said: Russia would take over the country and the freedom and democracy of the Ukrainian people would be lost. Another is that the entire conflict could turn into a guerilla war, with Ukrainians fighting from behind trees and buildings.
The inevitable outcome, King said, was that what we today call the battlefront would collapse and the Russians would advance. I think that is quite likely.
In 20 Days in Mariupol, Chernov captures an unforgettable scene of the struggle for survival. It showed that an injured mother was giving birth. He said, they brought the child out and the child was silent. I’ve never felt that excitement there before. It seemed no one could accept the death of another child. Then the child screamed and everyone was in tears.
He referred to this moment as the defining moment in the grueling 20 days. Chernov said, “One doctor told me that the room was just people dying, this was the first time a person was born in the room.”
The child’s second birthday is coming up with the second anniversary of the war. Many cities have fallen since Mariupol and several others are still under attack.
All these cities, Mariupol represents their phenomenon, said Chernov. It is the symbol of all cities. It’s not the past, it’s the present.
Source: CBC News
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