They were “very white in the face. And their hands, too, were so white. Then they weren’t standing, I guess because of the lack of blood sugar. They got out of the car with difficulty, and I thought they were really like zombies ”. This is how the survivors of Mariupol appear, to those who help them escape from the Russian detention camps. One glance is enough, they are the ones who drag on and are really bloodless, undernourished, so colorless. Survivors in the bombed city, in cellars and shelters, to save themselves from bombs and roundups, now they are afraid of the dark, of violent noises, of what else could happen to them. Many were evacuated by the Russians, taken to the Donetsk camps first, and later to the “filtering” camps in Russia, where they are interrogated and checked (phones, any nationalistic tattoos, fingerprints).
But someone manages to escape, thanks to a network of Ukrainian drivers, volunteers (including Russians) and refugees, which starts from the Republic of Georgia. The Volunteers Tbilisi group is organizing dangerous trips – especially in the Russian section – to finally bring these people to safety. From Taganrog, for example, some unnamed Russians drove the fugitives to Rostov, others picked them up and took them by train to Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia. At the station, here is the Georgian driver, who takes them across the border and places them in a first shelter in the southern part of the country, where they can receive first assistance, a bed, food. And a concrete freedom.
Moscow writes to the Italian government: “Consequences for arms in Kiev”
by our correspondent Paolo Mastrolilli
On the night of March 31, one of these transports transferred a family of 8 from Mariupol to Akhaltsikhe, in a sorry state, as did Masha Belkina, a twenty-year-old girl who coordinates the activities of Volunteers Tbilisi. Masha is Russian by birth, but four years ago the family moved to the capital of Georgia and opened a small hotel. It must be explained that the Georgians are afraid of the same fate as the Ukrainians, as well as the Poles, and many men have volunteered to fight the Russians alongside the Ukrainian army. And just in the days of this family’s journey from Mariupol to Georgia, two volunteers returned to their homeland in a coffin. Fallen in the field, their names were Gia Beriashvili and Davit Ratiani, killed during a fight in Irpin. The body of the third fallen, Bakhava Chickbava, has not yet been repatriated. He is known to have died in a fight in Mariupol. To welcome the first coffins at the airport, the president of Georgia, Salome Zourabichvili, just to explain the importance and significance of the presence of this country on the scene of the conflict.
Zelensky’s move for Mariupol’s soldiers “Free them and we deal”
by Paolo Brera
But back to Mariupol’s family, there were eight of them and all battered. With two serious injuries, a 52-year-old woman with shrapnel wounds in three places on her body, and another deep wound in her leg, and her son, who was also struck by a shrapnel in the left shoulder blade. In the Russian camp of Bezymennoye where they had ended up, the doctors had proposed surgery, but she had refused, not trusting the “enemy” doctors. They were then operated on in Georgia, and they are doing better. In the transport there was also a very old woman, and a son, who was carrying a small wooden stool. Masha told him he wasn’t in the car, to leave him there. And he said before her that he needed her to make her mother sit, so as not to tire her too much. Then he confessed that it was the only thing that was saved from their home, “of our life”.
War Russia-Ukraine, the timeline of the conflict
curated by Flavio Bini and Paola Cipriani
Volunteers Tbilisi has so far ferried 2,000 Ukrainians to Georgia. From there, if they want, they are helped to reach Poland, France, Germany. Many remain, hoping to return to their homes soon. Alena Dergachova, journalist of the independent online newspaper The Village (invisible in Russia, because it is obscured) visited this family and was unable to speak with them because “they are in a very serious psychological state”.