The bodies were packed into bags and laid alongside the road. Then they were placed in refrigerator trucks and taken away. Where to? There was contradictory information. Some claimed that the bodies were in the Donetsk morgue and were later sent elsewhere. The journalists who arrived in Donetsk to check this out were arrested.
In the end it turned out that a train with almost two hundred bodies was at Torez station—a locomotive, four refrigerator cars, and a service wagon. At first, no one was sure it was the right train. Neither the railroad engineer nor other people who entered the train were willing to talk. The train station employees were more inclined to make statements, but they didn’t know much.
“When I showed up at work at seven, the train was already loaded and running,” says Veronika, who works at the station. The train’s destination was not known until the last minute. “We are still waiting for instructions,” she added helplessly.
When I started walking around the train I noticed that one door was not closed completely and a little crack was left open. It was covered with flies and you could smell the awful odor of decomposing bodies. Fresh stains, like ones I had seen at the station, were visible under a few wagon doors.
People living nearby saw at least three trucks with bodies that arrived at midnight. Loading began right away. There is a lot of sand on the parking lot where the trucks had been standing. It smells bad, too.
In the end the train went to Kharkiv, and then the bodies were transported further.
For many Ukrainians it was a breakthrough moment in the conflict.
“I hope that those in the West will finally wake up and take appropriate action,” says Vladimir from Dnipropetrovsk, who serves in the Ukrainian army. He was not isolated in his hope. But it turned out to be in vain. The Ukrainian war came back on track. It has become a problem that will be settled between Ukraine and Russia.
10. TRANSNISTRIA ON THE DON
IT IS SEPTEMBER 6, late evening. The eastern outskirts of Mariupol are being shelled. I found myself in this city with three other journalists. We had been sitting in a seaside restaurant when suddenly we heard explosions. The recently arrived reporter and cameraman from one of the TV stations had endured similar conditions several times earlier. They rented a car, so it was easier for all of us to get to the event site rapidly. The third among my companions was a print journalist. He had spent more time in Donbas than anybody else. It was not our first trip together. We decided to go, but we had to stop by the hotel to pick up our helmets and bulletproof vests.
Yesterday yet another ceasefire agreement was signed between the separatists and Kiev. I had no illusions that it would last, but I thought that fighting would start at least two days later. Yet it erupted the next day. The Press Service of the Donetsk People’s Republic announced on Twitter that “The Armed Forces of Novorossiya are capturing Mariupol.” There was no doubt who was behind the attack. There was a rumor that a large fleet of tanks and armored personnel carriers had crossed the Russian border heading toward Mariupol.
When we get closer to the battlefield, we realize that the situation is more serious than we thought. Heavy shelling is really close. It must be large caliber because the explosions are very powerful. We hide behind the last apartment building, only several hundred meters from the shelled Ukrainian checkpoint. It is a half kilometer or so from where the shells hit the ground. With each strike you can hear a terrible boom and the ground shudders slightly.
Instead of hiding in the basement the local residents stand outside the stairwell, in the middle of the square, and despair. A guardsman from Azov has arrived. He may be twenty and he is scared.
“So what that we have rifles if they have artillery?” he asks rhetorically.
I run downstairs and open the basement door. You can enter the basement not only from the stairwell but also from the main entrance.
“Please go to the basement. It is safer there,” I tell people who stand outside.
“And if the basement collapses, then what?” someone from the crowd asks me.
I don’t tell him, but maybe I should, that if the basement gives way in the explosion, not even shreds will be left of him standing there in the open space.
“If you don’t want to stay in the basement, at least don’t stand in the middle of the square, come closer to the walls.”
Some have listened to me, others are still outside because they think they know better. Even a young fellow in uniform can’t convince them. He keeps trying to get them to respect his military background.
“You journalists, you only talk and talk, but you do nothing,” a man suddenly snaps at me. Missiles explode around us, so a conversation about what it means to be a journalist seems to me a little inappropriate.
“And what is it you are doing?” I ask him.
“I’m standing here… I live here,” he responds, thrown off balance.
In the end he decides to hide in the stairwell.
After about two hours the situation calms down. We walk toward the checkpoint. Many journalists have come to the scene. The checkpoint itself was only slightly damaged. But a truck, some grass, a gas station, and a medical emergency building were completely incinerated.
Even a few days before the shelling Mariupol had already been living in fear. In Novoazovsk, forty kilometers from Mariupol and ten kilometers from the Russian border, at least thirty tanks appeared. They came from abroad and dislodged the remaining units of the National Guard from the city. The Ukrainian forces, which had been in no way equipped to defend the place, were taken by surprise. Apart from scattered units of the National Guard, only three volunteer battalions, Azov, Dnipro-1, and Shakhtarsk, are based in Mariupol. Almost every day the governor of the Donetsk region, Serhiy Taruta, affirmed that everything was all right and that the city was ready for defense. Hardly anyone, however, believed his words. In March he said the same about Donetsk, and soon after, he fled the city and moved the entire administration to Mariupol.
The hypothesis that the city has not been secured was confirmed by soldiers. “If these tanks attacked us, the city would be captured in an hour,” “Locha” from the battalion Dnipro-1 tells me. A lack of heavy equipment is a problem here. “We won’t defeat tanks with rifles,” claims one of the guardsmen. Then he adds that even the rocket-propelled grenades they have are too old to fight the modern tanks advancing on Novoazovsk.
Almost every pro-Ukrainian resident would say: “We need tanks.”
Others would add: “…and antitank weapons.”
In the next few days, artillery, tanks, and other military units were sent here to defend the city. They brought heavy equipment for building fortifications and digging antitank ditches.
Earlier, something unusual had happened in Mariupol. The city, rather passive and politically indifferent in the past, suddenly turned into a place with a strong movement of pro-Ukrainian resistance. When its residents heard that Mariupol might be attacked and return under separatist control, they started to organize.
On August 28 an antiwar and pro-Ukrainian demonstration was held, attended by at least five thousand people. This is a surprising number for Mariupol with its population of five hundred thousand, who are generally not willing to take to the streets, and many of whom still support the separatists. Although there were no tents and no one wanted to occupy the main square, the atmosphere resembled that of the early Maidan in Kiev.