The Daily - Inside Mariupol

Episode Date: April 1, 2022

This episode details graphic scenes. Russia has mounted a brutal siege around the port city of Mariupol for more than a month, framing it as the key to a war of liberation. In reality, it’s a campaign against a city that is critical to Russia’s strategy — it would help open an important supply route and serve as a symbol of victory. What is happening inside Mariupol, and what does the fighting mean for the future of Russia’s war on Ukraine? Guest: Valerie Hopkins, a correspondent for The New York Times, currently based in Ukraine.Have you lost a loved one during the pandemic? The Daily is working on a special episode memorializing those we have lost to the coronavirus. If you would like to share their name on the episode, please RECORD A VOICE MEMO and send it to us at [e-mail]. You can find more information and specific instructions here.Background reading: In Mariupol, Russia is using hunger as a weapon of war. Residents described how they are surviving a monthlong siege of the southern port with little food and other necessities.As the war in Ukraine moves into its second month, fears grow of Mariupol’s fall to Russia.Want more from The Daily? For one big idea on the news each week from our team, subscribe to our newsletter. For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday. 

From The New York Times, I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. This is The Daily. Today, as Russia tries to reset its war in Ukraine, one city has become central to Moscow's strategy. central to Moscow's strategy. My colleague, Valerie Hopkins, on what's happening inside Mariupol and what the fight there tells us about the wider war. It's Friday, April 1st. first. Valerie, this was a pretty dizzying week of news out of Ukraine. Catch me up on what happened. So over the past week, we saw a series of moves by the Russians that sent pretty mixed signals. First, about a week ago, the defense ministry in Moscow announced that they were shifting their strategy. They said that the first phase of the war was over, that they were going to be reducing their combat in the West while consolidating their

military gains in the East. But at the same time that they said that, they started sending missiles to the West and they continued their assault on Kyiv. So it was pretty unclear if they would stick to their word. And then in the middle of the week, we saw another round of talks between the Russians and the Ukrainians where it kind of looked for a minute like some kind of deal could happen. But then the Russians actually came out and said they were a very long way from the agreement and they would just continue their campaign. Okay, so it sounds like things on the ground are in flux, at least when it comes to territory. But the bombings and the fighting are continuing. So what's the upshot here? Are the Russians losing?

Well, I mean, the Russians have been losing territory around Kyiv. They say that they're sort of preparing to withdraw from that area, but NATO officials have pretty much concluded that they're actually regrouping rather than retreating. You know, there's just so much skepticism from Western officials. The bottom line is they say they're watching what Russia does rather than what it says. So, Valerie, you've been in Ukraine now since the war began. You've been covering it every day. I'm wondering what you're focusing on now. Well, one of the places I can't take my eyes off is Mariupol,

where Russia's claims definitely don't match with reality. Russia has waged a brutal siege campaign around this port city for more than a month. They're portraying their efforts as key to their war of liberation, of helping Ukrainians who they think want to be part of Russia become part of Russia. But in reality, it's a brutal campaign against a city that's critical to Russia's strategy for taking and growing its territorial gains. Explain that. Why is Mariupol so critical? So Mariupol is a big port city that was, before the war, home to about half a million people.

It's really close to the Russian border, and it's also very close to Russian-occupied territory in eastern Ukraine. Right now, it's the last sliver of Ukrainian territory along the strategic body of water, the Sea of Azov. So controlling Mariupol would not only mean controlling its port, but it would also create what we call a land bridge from the Crimean Peninsula, which Russia annexed in 2014, to these territories in the east that Russia also controls. So it would be a crucial resupply route and just this kind of strategic symbol of victory for Russia. Got it. So taking Mariupol would mean that they really gained this

important stronghold. It's like the last puzzle piece in this whole part of Ukraine's south. Exactly, Sabrina. So what's actually happening in Mariupol? Well, we know it's being heavily bombed, but beyond that, it's really hard to tell. it's being heavily bombed, but beyond that, it's really hard to tell. The siege of the city started very early in March. Over the last four weeks, the power in the water got shut off. The communications went down at the very beginning of March. And around that same time, the Russians effectively encircled the city. Around mid-March, some people were able to get out as part of a humanitarian corridor. But since then, the situation has grown more dire by the day and by the week. People are running out of food and water. People have been sheltering in basements.

However, you know, it's very difficult to be able to get accurate, up-to-date information while it's happening from there, simply because of the lack of connection to the city. Right. I wanted to ask, how do you report on a place you can't talk to? It's pretty hard. But occasionally, people inside Mariupol are able to get a signal. There's a few spots inside the city, and they're able to post something on Facebook or Telegram or Instagram about the situation. And a big part of what I do is just scouring social media, watching these videos, trying to get a sense of what the situation is on the ground

and how much it's changed from day to day or week to week. And I've also spent a lot of time on the phone talking to people who've somehow managed to make it out. One woman whose story really stuck out to me was this woman, Christina. Tell me about Christina. Christina is 28. She's married. She has two young kids who are six and eight years old. I talked to her on the phone some days after she had escaped from Mariupol.

And she told me in great detail and with tremendous pain about what the past few weeks have been like for her there. She started out describing what it was like for her when the siege began in early March, when the Russians cut off the phone service and the electricity, while continuing and actually intensifying their airstrikes. She described this moment when the airstrikes hit the building right next to her, and the war had basically arrived in her front yard.

She said she was standing near a window in her apartment, looking outside, talking with her husband. It was really quiet, she said. And suddenly, a bomb hit right next to her building. A bomb hit right next to her building. She said suddenly three houses were just gone. She said her neighbors ran outside and found the body of an 11-year-old girl and her grandfather. And this airstrike also shatters the windows of Christina's building.

So she and her family move to the corridor of her building, where they think they'll be safer from more shelling. And this begins a period where they're, for the most part, too afraid to go out, because she's afraid that the shelling will hit them. So she tells me about what it was like for her and her family to be essentially living now in their hallway. They have to live without windows and without heat, and it's actually minus 7 degrees Celsius, which is really, really cold. And they're also starting to run out of food.

So, you know, she's going into her pantry. She's trying to make what little food she had last for a long time. And she said there was no gas, so they had to build a fire right inside the entrance to the building and cook their meals there over an open flame. And for a while they had had one meal a day. But as the bombing increased, people were sometimes scared to go to that entrance to light the fire and cook even that one meal. And, you know, fairly early on, they started rationing the water supplies.

Her husband would go out and try to collect it. You know, people in Mariupol, some of them were walking six miles every day to get a few liters of water from wells or other sources. They were collecting rainwater and melting snow. She told me about how they had this tiny teapot, and they sort of had a family meeting and agreed that, you know, the first half of the day,

between her, her husband, her two kids, and her mother-in-law, they would share this tiny teapot of water. And in the evening, they would also all drink about a teapot of the water. And she said, you know, after the first week, those two teapots a day between five people became one. And after a while,

some days there was also just no water. She would say how her kids would cry because of hunger and thirst, and they were sort of fading. And, you know, as they sat in this corridor, she said she tried to distract them with books and reading fairy tales and even teaching math. But, you know, she said that they were so hungry and tired that the fire had left their eyes. And she said every day they would sit in the corridor and pray and essentially prepare to say goodbye to their lives.

It went on like this for a couple of weeks, and then... In mid-March, her own apartment building took a direct hit. The strike killed three children and two adults. They were her neighbors. And she decided right there and then that even though it was incredibly dangerous to try to get out of the city in that moment, while it was under siege and under such intense shelling, it would be even more dangerous to stay. She felt they had to leave or they would die there. But there's a problem.

But there's a problem. They had two cars, enough to take their whole family. But they only had enough gas for one of them. We'll be right back. Valerie, you told us that Christina and her family were facing this impossible decision. They didn't have enough gas for everybody to leave Mariupol. So what did they do? Well, there was enough space in the car for her father, but not for his parents. And he doesn't want to leave them alone.

So the older family members decide to stay in Mariupol, and Kristina and the kids and her husband go. And as Kristina and her family start driving, that's when she told me she saw the full extent of what had happened to her city. She said it was a terrible picture, that there were no roads left, utility poles lying on their sides, shells and shrapnel everywhere, and lots of dead people.

She told me how she felt guilty as a mom that she wasn't able to cover her children's eyes and prevent them from seeing the destruction and the corpses. And as they're driving in this long, slow line of cars, there's so much ordnance on the road, actually, that she talks about how lots of people have tire blowouts and there's broken bridges and all these other obstacles. But the main obstacle for them actually are these Russian checkpoints that are pretty common. I think she mentioned passing like 15 of them, you know.

And at the final checkpoint, she mentions these Russian soldiers who are sort of showing off. They're trying to look as if they are these liberating benefactor good guys. Handing out candy and chocolate to her kids. candy and chocolate to her kids, you know, and Kristina is really conflicted. On the one hand, she's livid, you know, these are the forces that have just bombed her city to destruction and forced her to leave her home. But on the other hand, you know, she doesn't want her kids to be scared.

She says she has to lie to her children. She told them they're actually Ukrainian soldiers and she allows them to take the candy. So, you know, after 12 hours of driving, Sabrina, they reach the city of Zaporizhia, which is usually a three-hour drive. And she told me that she and her family arrived and went inside a center for people displaced from Mariupol and saw food and water and supplies and just burst into tears. She said, it would seem like such a simple thing, a cup of tea and a piece of bread.

But they were like miracles. And she told me that on the one hand, she realized that she'd arrived and she was safe and she'd gotten out. But all of her feelings about that were tempered because of the people that she'd left behind. And, you know, she's since left Ukraine and gone to the Czech Republic,

but she's still trying to stay in touch with her father and her grandparents, who remain back in Mariupol. Shortly after she left, she got a message from her dad saying they were now living with no roof and no food and no water. And then a few days later, he got in touch again to ask how he could leave. And then finally, the last time she's heard from him was a while ago. And he said that they'd run out of medicine for her grandma and that they still can't find any gas, and that Russian troops had taken control of their part of the city.

Valerie, Christina's story is so wrenching. But she left two weeks ago. So I guess I'm wondering, where do things stand now in Mariupol? How much of the city do the Russians control? Well, Sabrina, it's really difficult to tell because there's so little information coming out and the fighting seems to still be raging. And the fighting seems to still be raging. But, you know, I recently spoke to the mayor who said he did estimate that about 50 percent of the city is under Russian control. And how many people are left in the city and who are they? I've heard so many different estimates from 100,000 people left to 160,000 people left. The mayor is calling for a full evacuation of the city. And it's going to be

difficult because most of the people who are left are older, elderly, infirm people. And the pictures and videos that we've seen coming out of Mariupol in recent days, including with people who have been embedded with Russian forces, tend to confirm that. But, you know, one reason that the estimates are also tricky is that we don't really know what's happening to people who are in neighborhoods that are being taken by Russian forces. There are hundreds and hundreds of reports of Russian forces coming into a neighborhood, finding the bomb shelters or the collective centers where people are sheltering and taking them out of the city and bringing them either to Russia-held territory further east and then directly to Russia. Wait, taking them? Well, it's very unclear. The Russians, of course,

are trying to present themselves as liberators and they need to show evidence of the people that they've liberated. So that's why they're handing out chocolate to kids, and that's why they are encouraging people to come to Russian-held territory and possibly to Russia. But then there are other stories that are more horrific of people being taken places, having their fingerprints taken, photographed, and then having their documents taken away from them. And they're waiting to find out what's going to happen to them. Wow, effectively prisoners. Well, that is certainly what the city administration of Mariupol is saying. And they actually estimate that between 20,000 and 30,000 people may have had this happen to them. And, you know, they also estimate that 2,000 kids have had this fate.

And I spoke to a grandfather who's been trying to get his 12-year-old granddaughter back who was taken to Donetsk, a Russian-held city now. And he has no way of communicating with the authorities there or organizing her transfer. no way of communicating with the authorities there or organizing her transfer. So Valerie, the picture you're painting here is incredibly dark. And this is very, very bleak situation for Ukrainians in Mariupol. And I guess what I'm wondering is, what would a Russian victory in Mariupol mean for the future of the war? Well, Sabrina, of course, territorially, it would be a victory for Russia, even if the whole city is completely destroyed. But I think that in many ways, whether or not Mariupol falls, it's not really the point.

not really the point. This brutal campaign has already sent a message to Ukraine and to the world, and especially, definitely, to the people of Mariupol, about just how far Putin is willing to go. You know, we talked about looking at what Russia does and not what it says. And Mariupol is what Russia is doing. Valerie, thank you.

Thank you, Sabrina. On a Friday morning, a convoy from the International Committee of the Red Cross that had been on its way to Mariupol to facilitate a large-scale evacuation of civilians had to turn back after, quote, arrangements and conditions made it impossible to proceed. Separately, a limited number of buses with civilians made it out of the city, but it was not clear if more would be allowed to proceed. Separately, a limited number of buses with civilians made it out of the city, but it was not clear if more would be allowed to leave. Christina said she did not know whether her father and grandparents were among those need to know today.

Today, I want to talk about one aspect of Putin's war that affects and has real effects on American people. Putin's price hike that Americans and our allies are feeling at the pump. On Thursday, President Biden said he would release up to 180 million barrels of oil from the U.S. strategic reserves over the next six months in an effort to lower gas prices that have surged as a result of the war in Ukraine and sanctions against Russia's energy industry. There isn't enough supply. And the bottom line is, if we want lower gas prices, we need to have more oil supply right

now. It is the largest release of oil from the emergency stockpile since the Strategic Reserve was created in the early 1970s. And a lower court in New York State ruled that the state's newly drawn congressional maps were unconstitutional, a decision that could block their use in this year's midterm elections.

A judge ruled that the map-drawing process, overseen by the Democratic majority, had been tainted. He gave the legislature until April 11th to come up with fairer maps for U.S. Congress and the state legislature. The ruling is likely to be appealed, but if it stands,

it could endanger a major achievement by Democrats over the past few years, the creation of an even congressional map that no longer favors Republicans. Today's episode was produced by Stella Tan, Luke Venderplug, Aastha Chaturvedi, and Rochelle Banja.

It was edited by Michael Benoit, Patricia Willans, and Larissa Anderson. Contains original music by Dan Powell, Alishba Itub, Marion Lozano, and Rochelle Banja. And it was engineered by Chris Wood.

Our theme music is by Jim Brumberg and Ben Landsberg of Wonderly. The Daily is made by Lisa Tobin, Rachel Quester, Lindsay Garrison, Claire Tedeschetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon-Johnson, Brad Fisher, The silly is made by Thank you. Alicia Baitube, Chelsea Daniel, Muj Zaydi, Patricia Willans, Rowan Nemisto, Jody Becker, Ricky Nowetzki, and John Ketchum. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Schumann, Cliff Levy, Lauren Jackson, Julia Simon, Mahima Chablani,

Sophia Milan, Dez Ibiqua, Wendy Doerr, Elizabeth Davis-Moore, Jeffrey Miranda, That's it for The Daily. I'm Sabrina Tavernisi. See you on Monday. Thank you.