“The Ukrainians will not lose hope even in the face of all the horror and destruction of Mariupol, the resistance will not stop.” Yuliia Fedosiuk is 29 years old and married to Arseniy, also 29, a soldier of the Azov battalion who is fighting in Mariupol in a theater of war made of rubble and blood.
Yuliia answers the phone from Rome. She says that for over two months she has been experiencing a mixture of fear and hope: the Russian attacks on the territory of her Ukraine are terrible, but she does not stop thinking for even a minute that the Ukrainians can have the future they want and that they deserve.
The Azov battalion in which her husband is fighting at this time represents the last resistance to the Russian offensive in Mariupol. The port in the south-east of the country has been described as the “European Aleppo” by the High Representative for Foreign Affairs of the European Union, Josep Borrell. A city razed to the ground, which, however, can still be saved. Little more than the carcass remains of the symbolic Azovstal steel mill built in 1933, at the beginning of the Soviet era, but inside about 600 wounded soldiers and a thousand civilians find shelter, protected by the labyrinth of underground chambers. Throughout the city, however, it is estimated that around 100,000 people remain. But living conditions are critical for all: on Thursday, local authorities declared Mariupol vulnerable to epidemics, due to the appalling sanitary conditions in much of the city and the fact that there are still thousands of dead bodies on the roadsides.
“The appeal of Arseniy and the other soldiers who are with him is addressed to the countries of the European Union, they ask to get them out of that hell, starting with the wounded and defenseless citizens that the Russian armies do not allow to escape”, says Yuliia, who converses with her husband every day.
They can keep in touch fairly frequently thanks to modems from Starlink, Elon Musk’s SpaceX satellite internet service. “We can chat, but we can’t talk, I can’t hear his voice because the quality of the connection doesn’t allow it.” It wasn’t always like this: “At the beginning of the month – he adds – I didn’t hear from him for a week, and it was terrible because there was no way to get information, and in general all the news that came from the front was not like before hand therefore could not always be trusted. I prayed every day that he was still alive ».
On Wednesday morning, a few dozen people, mainly wives, sisters and mothers of the Azov battalion soldiers, demonstrated in Kiev to ask for humanitarian corridors in Mariupol, to evacuate wounded civilians and soldiers. They painted their faces red, like the blood of their compatriots and family members. They sang the national anthem and chanted slogans addressed to the government of Kiev, the UN, the Red Cross: “Save Mariupol”, “Save the children”, “Save our soldiers”, “Save Azovstal”.
The fear of many Ukrainians like Yuliia who have direct contact with those at the front is that the horror of Mariupol could be repeated elsewhere, in other cities.
“Arseniy and the other soldiers of the Azov battalion know that the Russian forces will not stop: the Russian army, they say, is willing to continue this massacre throughout the Donbass and all the eastern part of Ukraine,” says Yuliia.
Yuliia is originally from Lviv, a city in the west of Ukraine, but she moved to Kiev about ten years ago to finish university and to take her first steps in the world of work. In the capital she met Arseniy, but in 2014 he followed the Azov battalion to the Donbass. “For many years I have only seen him 4 or 5 times a year, no more,” explains Yuliia.
Much has been said about the role of the Azov battalion in Donbass over the past eight years. There was talk of right-wing extremism, of attacks on pro-Russian citizens, of brutal and violent methods. But often they are generalizations, often the stories are exaggerated, explains Yuliia.
After all, the entropy of information skyrockets in any conflict situation. As has happened since the beginning of the Russian invasion on February 24th. Is between fake news, Russian propaganda and other media negligence, it is difficult for an ordinary citizen to find his way through the enormous noise of information circulating. “There is a part of the media and journalists who are doing a good job, they tell the war from the front or with balance – says Yuliia – but in too many newspapers there are infiltrations of Russian propaganda, they feel like fake experts who speak out of proportion of neo-Nazism of Azov, all this pollutes the debate and does not help to understand reality ».
Now that she is in Italy, Yuliia lives in Rome in an apartment with three other women, all wives of soldiers from the Azov battalion who arrived in the Italian capital thanks to some friends who have lived here for some time.
From Italy she hopes to help spread the message of help that comes from her husband every day: “We want to tell all of Italy and Europe that Putin will not stop with Ukraine, he is an enemy of civilization and of Western values. We Ukrainians now want to fight, we want to win our war, but we need the help of the European states. And we hope that the embargo will soon arrive on Russian energy sources, which still finance the shedding of our blood ».
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