Mariupol survivors, dazed and exhausted, describe horrors they endured

“The ground was shaking,” said Ruslana, sitting alongside her daughter as she ate her first proper meal in weeks — fresh bread and stewed fruit — inside the Zaporizhzhia reception center.

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Like other civilians interviewed, she did not share her surname out of concerns for her family’s security.

“The scariest thing was that when you went out in the street, you saw that nobody was allowed to collect the bodies,” she said, her eyes widening. “A lot of buildings were on fire. We know that a lot of families burned alive.”

When the first bus opened its doors in Zaporizhzhia, many of the families just sat and waited, as if struggling to grasp that they were safe. Some children sat painfully still. They stared in silence at the Ukrainian police and volunteers who were registering their arrival.

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