News
Photographer Evgeny Sosnovsky from Mariupol showed pages from the diary an 8-year-old kid kept during the siege of the city. He published the pictures on his Facebook page.
The 8-year-old resident of Mariupol wrote the word «war» on the first page of the notebook, and then recounted the deaths of his grandparents. The child also wrote about the injuries sustained by his mother and 15-year-old sister and about the death of his dogs. «I slept well, woke up, smiled, got up and read up to page 25. Also, my grandfather died, I have a wound on my back, skin ripped off, my sister has a head wound, my mother has flesh ripped out of her arm and a hole in her leg,» the child writes.
On one page he wrote he was going to celebrate his birthday soon, adding a sketch of his family, a cake and a candle:
On the next page, however, there are drawings of dead people, soldiers with assault rifles, tanks, and burning houses. The child concludes his story by saying his beloved city of Mariupol also died during the war. «My two dogs have died, and Grandma Galya too, and my beloved city of Mariupol during all this time since Thursday, the 24th,» he writes.
On May 3, the Russian military began storming the half-destroyed Azovstal factory buildings, where Mariupol defenders and hundreds of civilians were sheltered, despite the fact that Russian President Vladimir Putin called the storming of the city's Azovstal industrial zone inexpedient and ordered it cancelled to «save lives» of the Russian military.
The siege of Mariupol has been continuing for two months. The city's mayor, Vadim Boychenko, reported that during that time more than 10,000 civilians have been killed, a number that's likely to exceed 20,000. Russian troops have been blocking convoys with humanitarian aid from entering the city for weeks, trying to hide what's happening there from the outside world, Boychenko added. According to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the Russian army wants to make an example of the destruction of Mariupol.