The independent Kazakh publication "Respublika" released a series of reports devoted to the true history of the war in Ukraine. This view "from abroad" on the events seemed interesting to us, so "ElitExpert" decided to introduce it with these publications our readers.
Residents of the post-Soviet countries of the older generation perfectly remember the terrible diary of the young Tana Savycheva, who kept it in the besieged Leningrad during the war. The child's handwritten testimony of how her loved ones died one by one came as a shock to readers. No less famous is the diary of Anne Frank, a Jewish girl from the Netherlands who hid from the Nazis in captured Amsterdam. Both girls died, and their diaries became symbols of the cruelty of war, which did not spare even children.
It seemed that something like this remained only in the history books, and it is quite difficult to imagine that right now, in 2022, children are again writing diaries during bombings that wipe entire cities from the face of the earth. But it is so. We will tell the story of one such children's diary - out of hundreds and hundreds available.
"My grandfather died..."
8-year-old Yehor from Mariupol kept his diary from March to May this year. He wrote in his notebook about the wounds on his back after shelling, his sister's injury to the head, about the hole in his mother's leg from shrapnel, and also about how his loved ones die under the bombings...
From the first days of the war, Mariupol — a large industrial city with a population of half a million — was blockaded by Russian troops. By May 2022, after two months of persistent fighting, it was effectively destroyed and razed to the ground: according to official estimates, about 90% of the housing stock there was destroyed or damaged. It is impossible to accurately calculate the number of dead residents, but according to the Ukrainian side, at least 25 thousand townspeople died in the city.
The symbol of the tragedy of Mariupol became the photos of hundreds of graves that flew all over the world, in the courtyards of nine-story panel buildings and on children's playgrounds. People had to bury their relatives and neighbors simply in the yards, because the cemeteries did not function, and it was impossible to get there under shelling.
Olena Kravtsova, together with her 9-year-old son Yehor and 15-year-old daughter Veronika, lived in Mariupol near the Azovstal plant. The woman worked in the subscriber department of the local utility company, and the children went to school.
"On the first day of the war, February 24, we just couldn't believe it was happening. After all, it's the 21st century, what kind of invasion? Most of us were sure that everything would end somewhere on the distant approaches to the city, everyone hoped that the war would pass. I didn't miss it. The fact that in a week the whole city will live in basements, and there will be no water, electricity, or gas for three whole months, no one could imagine even in their wildest dreams," says Olena.
Eight-year-old Yehor started keeping his diary a week after the Russian attack.
His records begin with the words "I slept well, woke up, smiled", and then the child records the tragedy that happened in the city day after day. Children's lines about the war, about the death of loved ones, about neighbors and cats alternate with pictures of tanks, soldiers, dead people on the street, destroyed houses and clowns, which he wanted to see on his birthday.
Yehor's mother, Olena Kravtsova, tells:
"We lived in my parents' private house, not far from the center. One morning, a shell flew straight into the house, blew off the roof, and the ceiling collapsed. My children and I were in another room - after the shelling, we got out and saw that my dad was lying on the floor. He was cut with fragments, probably some kind of internal injuries - we don't even know what exactly, because there was no ambulance in the city anymore. He bled and died..."
After that, the family decided to go to relatives - to an aunt who lived in the city center with her husband Yevhen Sosnovsky (and he himself posted on Facebook on May 4 post with Egor's diary) . Relatives lived in an apartment building and without hesitation agreed to shelter the niece and her children. However, while they were making their way to them through the warring city, they came under fire again.
Yevhen Sosnovsky tells:
"There was a knock on the door, we opened it, our niece and her children were standing on the threshold. All in dust, in blood. He says - "we were fired upon, we are wounded." We began to see their wounds, and it is a real horror. 8-year-old Yehor has a huge wound on his back, no skin, no piece of meat, his sister's head has been cut open. The niece herself was bleeding from her leg, but she was in such a state of shock that she didn't even notice it. I don't even know how she brought two children under fire to us... They treated them themselves, there were bandages, hydrogen peroxide in the house. They were afraid that there would be an infection, but, thank God, it happened."
In a few days, this nine-story building also began to be targeted. Everyone had to move to the basement of the neighboring house and this saved their lives - very soon the house was destroyed, and those who did not have time to leave it died.
Evgeny Sosnovsky kept a photo diary in occupied Mariupol for 62 days. He later posted it on his Facebook page.
"In this album, a small part of what happens to me and my family in Mariupol, during 62 days - from February 24 to April 30. This is my photo diary. Most of the photos here were taken before the city was captured by the Rashists. I could no longer freely shoot with a camera in front of the occupiers. After losing my apartment, I had the only one of the three cameras left, also slightly damaged after being with me somewhere at the entrance to the other world. And I tried not to take any chances, so as not to lose her and the card with these pictures. Although it was possible to lose not only this ... ".
Yehor's mother, Olena Kravtsova, tells:
"Approximately 10 families from two neighboring houses lived in the basement. There was practically no food. It was not possible to buy anything because the shops were no longer open. Someone brought food from the surviving apartments and shared with the rest, someone drove and left food. And at first we only had a few packs of butter: we ate one spoonful of it a day with walnuts. That was all our food .
The big problem was with water. When the Ukrainian military was still standing next to us, they helped us with this. Then they left, and we didn't know where to get water. We had to melt the snow, and when it warmed up, we collected rainwater .
Nearby was a sports recreation center with a swimming pool with chlorinated water. Swimmers trained there. Neighbor boys sneaked there under bombardment and filled bottles with this water. It is chlorinated, it is specially added for disinfection. But we still boiled it additionally and drank it. In a few days, several bombs got there and the pool fell asleep. We were very upset...".
Meanwhile, the boy, under fire, by candlelight, or on the street, when the hour seemed quiet, continued to write his diary. He wrote about a new girlfriend, about neighbors, about rescuing a stray cat. And suddenly, like a scream that broke out - "My two dogs and grandmother Galya died ( neighbor - ed.) and the beloved city of Mariupol."
At the same time, the boy drew clowns who would come to him for his birthday, and a little below his two dogs who died under the rubble, which he depicted as angels with wings.
From the Middle Ages to the Future
The family was able to get out of captured Mariupol only three months after the start of the war. At first, it was not possible to leave due to constant fighting, and after the occupation of the city by Russian troops, there were constant problems with carriers. The family tried to get out several times, and only on the third time, after overcoming dozens of roadblocks, they reached the city of Zaporizhzhia in the territory controlled by Ukraine.
The main shock for the family was an ordinary light bulb and tap water.
"We didn't see electricity for almost three months," said Yehor's mother. — I cried when I saw an ordinary chandelier. On the first day in Zaporizhzhia, we felt as if we had stepped into the future from the Middle Ages. Water flows from the tap, there is gas in the kitchen, there is no longer a need to light a fire outside under bombardment to cook food, there is no more dampness and musty basements, that unsanitary. You look at your hands and the hands of your children - and you say to yourself: God, thank you, we finally have clean hands, washed with soap."
By the way, what this child and tens of thousands of her peers experienced, parents all over the world in ordinary life will not allow their young children to watch, even on TV. Too scary for a child's psyche.
After the boy's cousin published excerpts from his diary on the Internet, many people learned about the courageous family. Hundreds of Ukrainians offered their help and expressed support, and the biggest gift was given to the boy's family by the Ukrainian singer Tina Karol, who bought the homeless family an apartment in the small town of Burshtyn in western Ukraine. The boy's family lives there now.
Yehor no longer keeps his diary, which his relatives keep as the apple of their eye. Ukraine assures that it will be printed later and it will be one of the unbiased testimonies of Russia's crimes on Ukrainian soil.
