Reporting team: Shaun Walker, Isobel Koshiw, Pjotr Sauer, Morten Risberg, Liz Cookman and Luke Harding
It is New Year 2022, and Mariupol is in a relaxed mood. But when a strong gust of wind blows over the city’s Christmas tree, sending its vast illuminated branches crashing to the ground, a few superstitious types whisper that it could be a bad omen.
Most people, though, pay little heed to the crescendo of chatter about Vladimir Putin’s nefarious plans for Ukraine. They are used to the idea of war here, after the events of 2014 when Russian proxies seized neighbouring Donetsk and briefly controlled Mariupol, too. The front line, just outside the city, has hardly moved for years. Occasional military skirmishes are a fact of life, but a full-scale invasion seems fanciful.
So for the first seven weeks of the year, life goes on more or less as normal. People huddle in cafes smoking shisha on cold evenings; teenagers giggle as they slip on the ice rink behind the theatre. A few people do become uneasy and clean out their basements, equipping them as bomb shelters and stocking up on tinned food. Often, their friends tease them for such eccentric behaviour.
And then, in the early hours of 24 February, it begins. Around 5am, calls go out to the chiefs of police and other municipal services, announcing that military hostilities have begun and ordering them into their offices. Most are already awake, roused by the sound of Russian artillery.
At 11am, the mayor, Vadym Boychenko, convenes a press conference. Already, three civilians are dead and six injured, he says. The mood in the room is tense, but Boychenko assures the few journalists present that officials and key infrastructure workers are still working, and life will carry on. “Don’t panic. We are ready to fight for Mariupol and Ukraine,” says the mayor. He and most of his team will flee the city three days later.
On those first few days, the fighting is limited to the outskirts of the city. Wounded soldiers arrive at the hospitals from the front, and hundreds of people donate blood. There are long queues at ATMs and petrol stations, but public transport is still running, and some people stoically continue as if everything is normal, heading for work.
At the train station, a young couple hurries along the platform dragging suitcases and cradling a cat. Tearful parents bundle their children on to evacuation trains heading for Kyiv. But the trains leave half empty. By the time most people realise what is coming, it will be too late to leave.
The city
