By Bond Robertson 
“If they take you, he will force you to stand in front of the camera and tell us how everything you filmed is a lie,” said a policeman as he helped two Labor MPs out of the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol.
If journalist Mstislav Chernov and photographer Evgeny Malolitka remain in the city, all the work they did may be lost, according to the policeman.
at Message They talk about the experience of documenting what is happening in Mariupol.
Photo by Workers’ Party journalist Mstislav Chernov.
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
Labor journalist Mstislav Chernov in Mariupol
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
Photographer Evgeny Mallolitka points to smoke after an air strike on the Mariupol Children’s Hospital on March 9.
Photo: Mstyslav Chernov / AP
isolated city
On March 3, the city was almost completely isolated from the outside world, and then defended the phone signal, the opportunity to communicate with each other.
With one bomb at a time, Russian forces cut off electricity, water, food supplies, and finally cell phones, and radio and television towers, Chernov and Malolitka say.
In the absence of information to and from the city, the Russian forces achieved two things.
– Chaos is the first thing. People do not know what is happening and are terrified. At first I did not understand why Mariupol collapsed so quickly. Now I understand that the reason for this is that no one can communicate with each other, as they say.
The second is impunity. When information isn’t out of town, Russian troops can do whatever they want, they say.
– That’s why we took this risk, to be able to send to the world what we saw, and that made Russia angry enough to chase us.
Russia has repeatedly denied attacking civilians, but it has been documented that Russian forces did so several times during the war. Among other things Human Rights Watch and Associated Press journalists.
A dead man on the street in Mariupol.
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
A police officer appears dead after an airstrike on a hospital.
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
He died along one of the streets of Mariupol.
documented
As the only international journalists left in the city, the journalists felt responsible for telling the world what happened in Mariupol.
On March 9, the pictures came that shocked the whole world. Only the ruins remained after Russian missiles hit the children’s hospital in Mariupol.
According to the Ukrainian authorities, 12 people were killed in the attack.
One of them is a small child.
Pregnant young woman in the children’s hospital in Mariupol
Medical employee at the Children’s Hospital in Mariupol
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
A pregnant woman is discharged from the hospital.
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
The hospital after the bombing
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
– When we arrived, emergency workers were still pulling pregnant blood-stained women out of the rubble, journalists say.
So far, journalists have seen corpses in the streets, deaths in hospitals, and the dead being pushed into mass graves.
I have seen so much death that I have photographed it, almost without catching it.
With the help of a policeman they sent the pictures that shocked the whole world. Pictures showing wounded civilians in the rubble. Some are carried on stretchers and should be affected by pregnant women or women who have just given birth.
Russian authorities called it false news, claiming that Ukrainian forces had established positions in the hospital and that there were no patients there, and that the hospital was controlled by Ukrainian nationalists.
PT journalists, who were in Mariupol and documented the attack on video and photos, saw no sign that the hospital was being used for anything else – as a hospital, NTB writes.
Two young men mourn the body of an 18-month-old boy who was killed in a rocket attack in Mariupol on Friday 4 March.
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
surrounded
Mariupol has been surrounded by Russian forces for several weeks.
The port city of 430 thousand people was the first target of the Russian invasion. If the Russian forces were able to occupy the city, it would have direct contact with the Crimea and complete control of the Sea of Azov.
People are dumped into mass graves.
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
People could not bury their loved ones because of the attacks of Russian troops.
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
The mass grave is located on the outskirts of the city.
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
The city authorities reportedly recorded 2,500 deaths during the siege, but were unable to count all due to the constant artillery attacks. The information has not been confirmed by independent sources.
The local authorities were also said to have asked people to leave the bodies in the streets. Holding funerals is very dangerous.
leave the city
On March 15, the two journalists left the city. People in the city were afraid that if the journalists didn’t come out now, the stories they had documented wouldn’t see the light of day.
– At this time it was not safe anywhere in Mariupol, and there was no help. You can die at any time.
They left town in a Hyundai with a family of three, and drove into a five-kilometer traffic jam outside the city. On that day, about 30 thousand people came out of Mariupol.
– There was so much that the Russian soldiers did not have time to look closely at the cars with windows covered with flying pieces of plastic.
On March 19, Ukrainian authorities said that about 350,000 residents were still trapped in the city.
There were repeated attempts to get them out through “humanitarian corridors”. There is no agreement with Russia on this matter.
A man rides his bike on a bombed street in Mariupol.
Photo: Evgeniy Maloletka / AP
Heavy fighting continues in Mariupol, but the city may fall in a few weeks, according to the Institute for the Study of War, but there will be no journalists there to document it.