Ms Campbell’s niece in the basement during an air raid
(Picture: )A mother has told of the “unimaginable” ordeal faced by her family in the besieged city of Mariupol and her fears for her aunt who works at the children’s hospital hit by a Russian air strike.
The last time Yuliya Campbell, 36, who lives in Canterbury, had contact with her mother living in the city was nine days ago.
Mrs Campbell said the last text message she received from Tatiana Petrukhina was on March 2 to say: “Don’t worry, we’re fine. The electricity has gone so I don’t know how long the battery is going to last.”
She has not heard from her or the rest of her family since.
Her fears grew after the Russian strike on the children’s hospital where her aunt, Iryna Cherednichenko, works as a nurse. Three people including a child were killed and 17 people injured, officials say.
Mrs Campbell said the attack was “crossing every single line of humanity”. She added: “What is happening is inhumane, it’s an act of terror. The war crimes are happening in front of our eyes, Putin needs to be stopped.”
In the days since Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, Mrs Campbell would call her family and, in the distance, could hear air raid sirens and the sound of heavy fire as Russian troops advanced on the port city in south-eastern Ukraine.
“They were being light-hearted and pretending nothing is going on because they knew how worried I was,” she said.
The city of around 440,000 residents has been subject to heavy shelling and a 12-day blockade, leaving residents without food, water and electricity.
At least 1,582 civilians have been killed in Mariupol since the invasion began, the city’s council said in an online statement on Friday.
In an increasingly desperate situation, people have been forced to get water from melting snow, while three attempts to create humanitarian corridors have failed, trapping residents in the city.
Her 66-year-old mother, along with her aunt, uncle, niece and brother-in-law are among 20 of Mrs Campbell’s close family and friends still thought to be in Mariupol.
Mrs Campbell told the Standard: “It has been a rollercoaster of emotions. The first couple of days I was in shock, I was having panic attacks.
“Your body is running on adrenaline, getting a few hours of sleep a night. This has been the longest nine days of my life.
“My niece is the same age as my son, she’s 10, so for me to think that my little boy would be in that situation, sleeping in a basement, it’s unimaginable. It’s torture.”
The mother-of-two also described the heartache of seeing the city in which she was born and grew up in being destroyed in front of her eyes.
She added: “All my childhood memories have been wiped out in front of me. Everything I love has gone. There’s nothing left.
“The other day my sister and I watched a video of her flat in Mariupol being shelled and on fire.”
Mrs Campbell said her hope is for her family to “make it alive” and reach safety “whether it be in Ukraine or elsewhere”.
“At this stage, all of us who are watching from a distance, we know more than those who are currently in Mariupol because they have no internet,” she said.
“They probably don’t know the whole extent of the damage and don’t understand that the city has been destroyed.”
