A former player of Shakhtar and the Ukraine national football team, and presently a coach in the Academy of Football Club Mariupol Hennadiy Orbu talked about the horrors of war in besieged Mariupol.
“It wasn’t until yesterday that I escaped from Mariupol and entered safe territory. Thank God, I’m alive and well, and with my family. 21 days of the war I was in Mariupol.
I worked in the Football Club Mariupol and rented a flat in the city. My family was with me. Now the flat is ruined.
When the bombardments started, we were sitting in the basement of a block of flats. There were about 200 of us. Overall, we didn’t have any communications — no power, no water, no gas. My main task was to feed my children and my wife,” fanday.net. quotes Orbu.
“All people came together and helped one another, shared anything they had. When gas was cut off, we cooked food over a campfire. Mostly, these were groats and potatoes. We didn’t have any meat.
We stood five hours in a line under grenade launchers to get at least two large bottles of drinking water.
I saw bodies of killed civilians right on the street. We tried to leave the basement as few times as possible, only when we had to look for something”.
Yet, the master emphasised that he didn’t see any Russian soldiers.
“I didn’t see any military. We were shelled from the air.
As for the evacuation, everything happened on impulse. There was no mobile connection, we didn’t get any news and didn’t know when and where the humanitarian corridors were opened.
Our friends helped us with cars, and in the morning, at our own risk, we decided to go by ourselves. There was a column moving, about 100 civilian cars. We joined them and started moving. All I brought with myself was a couple of tracksuits, trainers and documents,” the Shakhtar legend added.