Alla Prohonenko, 53, touches a photo of her father Volodymyr Prohonenko during his funeral in Irpin, a cemetery on the outskirts of Kyiv. Proponenko died during the Russian occupation. Photo / AP
Alla Prohonenko, 53, touches a photo of her father Volodymyr Prohonenko during his funeral in Irpin, a cemetery on the outskirts of Kyiv. Proponenko died during the Russian occupation. Photo / AP
After being trapped for 56 days in besieged Mariupol, the Grinchuk family had two hours to make their way from the ruined building in which they were sheltering to the evacuation point on Taganrog St.
Iryna Grinchuk, a 47-year-old woman cradling two chihuahuas, credited a tiny transistor radio with enabling her to escape with her family.
"It was our only link to the outside world," she said this week from a processing centre for Ukrainian civilians fleeing the Russian invasion.
It would take yet another 24 hours for them to reach safety, however, navigating a gauntlet of more than a dozen Russian checkpoints along a "green corridor" to the southeastern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhya.
They were among 79 people to arrive on the first evacuation convoy to successfully leave Mariupol last week. Ukrainian authorities had hoped to rescue up to 6000 people — including civilians trapped inside the Azovstal steelworks, the last bastion in the city where Ukrainian forces are still holding out.
But difficulties in negotiating terms with Russian forces and communicating with the civilians trapped inside the city — some estimates suggest up to 100,000 remain — meant only a fraction of those who want to leave are able to.
"We were afraid to take this ride, we knew that Russia had promised green corridors previously and then shot at buses. But we'd been cut off from civilisation for over 50 days, so we decided to take the risk," said Iryna, as her dogs Tyson and Nike slept in her lap.
Valentina Grinchuk, 72, gestures after arriving from Mariupol at a refugee centre in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, after fleeing from the Russian attacks. Photo / AP
This week, Vladimir Putin announced that Mariupol had been "liberated" and instructed his army not to storm the Azovstal stronghold but rather seal it off, in an apparent bid to free up Russian troops for elsewhere in eastern Ukraine.
Ukrainian fighters holed up in Azovstal would be allowed to leave if "white flags" were raised "along the entire perimeter or in certain areas" of the plant, the Russian defence ministry said on Friday (local time).
'Mariupol has been fully cleansed'
A video later emerged of Chechen fighters with the Russian army standing amid the bombed-out concrete ruins of the city, with fires still blazing in the background.
"Today, we can say for sure that the city of Mariupol has been fully cleansed," the men shouted. "Russia is the power!"
Iryna described surviving "apocalyptic" conditions in basements and ruined buildings as fighting raged over the crucial port city, whose capture would offer the Russians a land bridge between annexed Crimea and their statelets of breakaway Ukrainian territory in Donetsk and Luhansk.
"The whole time I felt one minute away from death," she said. "Helplessness in the face of danger was the hardest thing to bear. For two weeks in the palace where we were hiding, we were in the crossfire between Russian and Ukrainian forces."
Valentina Grinchuk, 72, holds a plastic bag containing an orthodox icon after arriving from Mariupol at a refugee centre in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine. Photo / AP
As fighting came closer they were forced to flee from one basement to another building in which only one apartment was undamaged.
"People from the DPR [the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk People's Republic] came to the place we were staying and told us to leave — they didn't care where to — as we were in a combat zone."
After previous attempts to organise evacuation routes since the weekend failed, Vadym Boychenko, Mariupol's mayor, spoke on the radio on Wednesday to exhort those residents who were able to make their way to a pre-arranged evacuation point.
The Grinchuks heard the broadcast. The pick-up point was a 30-minute drive away and they had no car. It would be too far for Iryna's 72-year-old mother Valentina to walk.
Miraculously Iryna found a woman with a Lada car that still had fuel.
"I was begging her, I had to pay her 400 hryvnia" - about £10 ($20) - "if I hadn't convinced her we wouldn't have made it in time," she said.
They emerged into a hellscape of upturned cars and destroyed buildings.
"I love my hometown but now it's a ruin. It's worse than Grozny," said Irynya.
A man watches as a car burns with two people inside, after a Russian bombardment in Kharkiv, Ukraine. Photo / AP
They left with the clothes they were wearing. For Valentina that was slippers and a black fur coat. She carried an old sequined handbag with a broken zip. After eating her first meal in more than 24 hours at the reception centre, she filled her bag with biscuits and pastries before fastening it with a safety pin.
"I'm an optimist so everything is fine," she said, as she enjoyed a hot coffee. "I believe in the best so I don't get scared and I don't panic, this was very important to get through this."
At the same table inside a tent at the processing centre, brothers Bohdan and Ruslan Kagadi, 17 and 16, were gorging on biscuits and talking animatedly about their ordeal.
"We didn't have an opportunity to leave until now," Bohdan said. "Until now it's been dangerous to drive out alone as the road goes out past the Azovstal steel plant. Some people got out in the middle of March but since then no one has got out from our district."
A Ukrainian sapper prepares to detonate a Russian 250kg air bomb in the village of Kolonshchyna, Ukraine. Photo / AP
The boys had been staying with their aunt and uncle while their mother lived in another apartment a mile away.
Their mother's apartment had been hit by four shells, Bohdan said.
"Two hits from the north and two from the south, it's a miracle she survived."
'We were afraid we'd be taken to Rostov'
The boys eventually decided to flee at the next opportunity.
"There were meant to be three pick-up places on the evacuation route but only one worked out," said Bohdan, describing themselves as lucky to make it out at all.
"We didn't know where we were going, we were afraid we'd be taken to Rostov," he said, referring to the Russian city where Ukrainian officials claim thousands of their countrymen have been forcibly transported.
A man walks next to a storage place for burned vehicles in Irpin, on the outskirts of Kyiv, April 21, 2022. Photo / AP
As the boys relayed their ordeal and ate sweets, distant relatives arrived to collect them.
"We've been desperate," said Irina, a second cousin of the boys' father.
"There is no connection at all with Mariupol," she said, describing how they had been visiting the processing centre every day for the past month to check the lists of those who had evacuated, looking for the boys' surnames.
The boys said they would now travel to meet their father in western Ukraine.
The Grinchuk family were considering which country they would claim asylum in. One where their dogs would be happy and they could build a new life and perhaps open a new clothing store, Iryna said.
