Thread by @OlenaHalushka

"My son and husband are lying dead in the yard, and I am singing". The story of Angelika Medvedeva from #Mariupol. Angelika lived in Mariupol for thirty years. In March she lost her husband and the only son Denys, whom she could not even bury. /1

She escaped the 'hell' with her daughter-in-law, who lost 15 kilos, and little granddaughter. And now she is trying to start a new life in Lithuania. She still flinches when she hears the sound of an airplane. /2

"On February 24 as usual, I left for work at 6:30. On the way, I saw AFU troops and equipment. Instead of work, I decided to go to my son, who was at home because of coronavirus. I realized that there could be problems with food, so I bought the essentials." /3

"A few days later a bomb destroyed the railway track. My son insisted that we go to his place because it was quieter there. I left without my things, taking only documents. Since March 2, Mariupol has been without communication, water, and gas." /4

"There were already tanks in front of our house, and there were "Grads". When they were firing, everything was shaking and you couldn't see anything because of the smoke. The most frightening thing was airstrikes. We saw the corpses of burnt people lying in the street." /5

"One day the son came in and said: 'Daddy, I think we're on fire,' and they went out. It was scary, the child and the daughter-in-law were asleep. Then her husband came running in, shouting: "Denys has been killed, he's gone!" /6

"I don't remember what I shouted, he ran forward up the stairs, I followed him. The door was open and my son was lying on the ground. Next to him was a pool of blood. I came back and saw my daughter-in-law with the baby in her arms." /7

"She started talking, I pushed her into a shelter, ran out to my husband and saw him. A bullet hit him and then another. He screamed from the first shot and lay down next to my son. The only thing I remember from this period is that my granddaughter was crying a lot." /8

"My son used to sing songs to her guitar. So I remember taking the baby in my arms, my son and husband lying in the street a few meters away, and me starting to sing. I don't know what to call it, I thought I was crazy. It was like some kind of madness." /9

"For 3 days I didn't leave the cellar. It was very cold, and the baby's legs turned blue. My husband and son were lying and there were more dead people next to them. There were about 12-15 Russian-speaking soldiers around them and there was a truck with bodies." /10

"They loaded the bodies of my close people into the truck and drove on. I don't even know where they took them." /11

"Evacuation. I found a car w a press sign on it when my daughter-in-law and I got in and cried out loud. You don't know whether you will be saved or not. A bearded man saw the sign for the press, smiled and said: "What are you crying for, we freed you". I wanted to kill him" /12

"The Moscow journalist told me that I could either go to Donetsk or to Rostov. So I decided that I needed to go to Rostov, to my parents who live in Russia, and then onwards. The first thing they asked us in Donetsk was how we got through without passing filtration." /13

"For 2h we were there: they were checking our phones, downloading smth, taking pics, taking fingerprints, palm prints.There was a lot of tension: I started explaining that we had to go, my daughter-in-law started shouting: "If you had not killed us in Mariupol, kill us here" /14

"My father met us in Rostov. We ate food and couldn't stop. Then I took train tickets to St Petersburg. On the train, the FSB officers asked us to show our passports. At the border before Estonia, we were checked again for a long time" /15

On April 24 they arrived to Vilnius

#ArmUkraineNow #MLRSforUkraineNow /16

Source: radiosvoboda.org/a/mariupol-voy…

Each story of #Mariupol survivors is a horrible nightmare.

Tens of thousands of stories we will never learn as people were killed.

Same atrocities are happening now in the occupied territories.

But even this is not a convincing argument for the West to #ArmUkraineNow