“We were the only international journalists who hadn’t left Mariupol. For more than two weeks we were documenting its siege by Russian forces. We were making the report from the hospital when armed people appeared in the corridors. Surgeons gave us white coats to disguise.

Suddenly at dawn a dozen of soldiers broke into the hospital: “Where are the journalists, goddamn it?” I looked at their sleeve bandages (blue-Ukrainian) and tried to figure out if they could be disguised Russian soldiers. I stepped forward to give myself away. “We are here to rescue you”, they said.

The walls of the surgery were shuddering due to artillery and machine-gun fire and it seemed to be safe inside. But Ukrainian soldiers had an order to take us away. We ran outside having left doctors, who were really kind to host us, injured pregnant women and people who were sleeping in the hospital corridors as they had no place to go. I felt myself awful leaving them all.

Nine minutes, maybe, ten – eternity while driving through bombed and destroyed houses, When the shells burst, we were falling on the ground. Shockwaves in a row shuddered my chest, my hands got cold.

We managed to get to the exit and an armored vehicle took us to the dark cellar. And only there we were told by a policeman why the Ukrainians risking their soldiers’ lives took us away from the hospital. “ If they catch you, you will be filmed and you will be made to say everything that you have filmed  is a lie. All your efforts and everything you had done in Mariupol would be in vain” – he said.

The policeman, who was begging us to show the world his dying city, now asked us to leave. We were approaching thousands of cars ready to leave Mariupol. It was March 15. We had no idea if we could make it alive.

Mstislav Chernov