'Worse than hell': Mariupol mother fears for her daughter as Russia lays siege to the Ukrainian city
Every night, Galina Odnorog waits for a 30-second phone call from her daughter, who is serving on the frontlines of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in the besieged city of Mariupol.
"Nastia lets me know she is alive and immediately hangs up the phone,” Odnorog told USA Today.
The half-minute call is all the time her 27-year-old daughter can spare as she and other fighters try to defend their hometown – a southern seaport of 430,000 where daily existence is increasingly tenuous for trapped civilians.
On Wednesday, Russian forces struck a maternity hospital in the city, killing three people and sparking international outrage. Western and Ukrainian officials called the attack a war crime.
More than 1,300 people have died during Russia's 10-day siege of Mariupol, according to Ukraine's deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk. Residents are desperate for food and fuel. They have no heat and many are without electricity in a place where nighttime temperatures regularly dip below freezing.
Earlier this week, workers in the city began burying scores of dead civilians and soldiers in a mass grave, as casualties from Russian bombardment mounted.
The attack on Mariupol's maternity hospital made her "soul hurt," Odnorog told Paste BN in a phone interview from Zaporizhzhia, about 140 miles northwest of her hometown.
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For years, the 45-year-old single mother realized that war could come to Mariupol, part of the Donetsk region of Ukraine, at any moment; After Moscow's annexation of Crimea in 2014, the frontlines of Russia's aggression moved ever-closer. Over the last eight years, Russian-backed separatists have gained control of one third of the Donetsk region and the violence moved to Mariupol's outskirts.
Before 2014, Odnorog was an economist and entrepreneur, focused on ensuring her children could have a stable middle-class life. She had always been active in civic life but it wasn't until eight years ago that she decided to make defending Ukraine's democracy and sovereignty a full-time focus.
"My cousin joined the navy border patrol troops and Nastia decided to serve,” Odnorog said. “When Nastia made her decision, I respected it."
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Odnorog decided to sell her two small shops in town and start organizing volunteers to supply medicine, food and clothes for the military and others in need. She also pleaded with city officials to help fortify Mariupol for conflict.
“I was struggling to convince authorities to invest more into the bomb shelters, but they would not hear me,” Odnorog said. “I finally gave up my struggle and moved to Kyiv, losing all my hopes for changes,” she added.
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Odnorog was living in Kyiv when Russian President Vladimir Putin declared “a special military operation” in Ukraine.
Unable to reach her daughter initially, she tried to organize a humanitarian convoy - trucks with food, water, clothes – for the people in Mariupol. But with the route to the city under regular fire, she could not deliver anything and is now stuck in Zaporizhzhia – watching from a distance as Russians lay waste to her beloved city.
Ukrainian officials say repeated efforts to send in food and medicine and evacuate civilians have been thwarted by Russian shelling.
“They want to destroy the people of Mariupol. They want to make them starve,” Vereshchuk said. “It’s a war crime.”
On Thursday afternoon, a friend sent Odnorog a photo of dead bodies on Mariupol's snow – blankets spotted with blood covered heads of two people in civilian clothes. Then she saw the video of workers putting dead civilians into in a trench.
“Here is what my city looks like today. This is worse than hell,” Odnorog said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has dismissed concerns about civilian casualties as “pathetic shrieks” from Russia’s enemies and even denied Ukraine had been invaded.
Odnorog is now hoping that international humanitarian missions will get involved and the world will help rescue hundreds of thousands of people trapped in Mariupol.
“We need help organizing the evacuation of civilians, we need to feed starving people,” Odnorog told USA Today.
On Friday, she waited for her daughter's phone call and tried to reach other friends and relatives but it seemed as if phone service had been completely cut off.
"Last time Nastia called me on Thursday morning, she only managed to say: 'Mummy, I am OK.'"
Contributing: Associated Press
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