“If the war ends and we win, and get rid of them, then I think that there will be excursions in Mariupol, just like there are to Chernobyl,” he said of the abandoned site of a Soviet-era nuclear calamity. “So that people understand what kind of apocalyptic things can occur.”…

Dr. Zarubin, a urologist, lived in a beautiful house on the Left Bank, one of Mariupol’s elite neighborhoods. He had a comfortable life and the expectation that he had worked hard enough to have a secure future. But after the shelling began, he had to walk nearly eight miles a day with his son, Viktor, just to find water for their family. Later, as desperation set in, Dr. Zarubin said that people began looting shops and walking away with appliances, or drugs from pharmacies…

Albertas Tamashauskas, 29, worked in Mariupol’s city planning office. On Feb. 23, the day before Russia invaded, he had a final planning meeting about installing bike lanes across the city. But when the siege began, time began to blur and he lost track of what day or week it was. Instead, he spent his days obsessing about finding water or collecting and cutting wood for cooking.

“On the street there was a park,” said Mr. Tamashauskas, 29. “We cut down the trees and chopped firewood. And in the evening, we had to take it to the basement, because, of course, there was so much looting. People took fuel from the cars.”