20 days in Mariupol: The team that documented city’s agony
By MSTYSLAV CHERNOV
March 22, 2022 GMT
MARIUPOL, Ukraine (AP) — The Russians were hunting
us down. They had a list of names, including ours, and they were closing in.
We were the only international journalists left in
the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, and we had been documenting its siege by Russian troops for more
than two weeks. We were reporting inside the hospital when gunmen began
stalking the corridors. Surgeons gave us white scrubs to wear as camouflage.
Suddenly at dawn, a dozen soldiers burst in: “Where
are the journalists, for fuck’s sake?”
I looked at their armbands, blue for Ukraine, and
tried to calculate the odds that they were Russians in disguise. I stepped forward to
identify myself. “We’re here to get you out,” they said.
The walls of the surgery shook from artillery and
machine gun fire outside, and it seemed safer to stay inside. But the Ukrainian
soldiers were under orders to take us with them.
___
Mstyslav Chernov is a video journalist for The
Associated Press. This is his account of the siege of Mariupol, as documented
with photographer Evgeniy Maloletka and told to correspondent Lori Hinnant.
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