Twitter thread from Ukrainian MP Dmytro Gurin
1/I am a member of the Ukrainian Parliament. My parents are now in Mariupol, in a district with 150,000 residents that was razed to the ground.
2/The house where I grew up was bombed. It's a 9-storey building in a classic Soviet modernist block. The bombs hit all the buildings around it. My school was also hit.
3/There is no military infrastructure in the area at all, and yet the area was carpet-bombed just like Aleppo.
4/My mom is 67; my dad 69. The last time I heard from them was day before yesterday at 9 am. The conversation lasted 30 seconds. Their phones are dead. Their neighbor had 20% charge left. Yesterday he said they are alive. There is no mobile network anymore.
5/The last thing I know about them is that my mother has high blood pressure and a bacterial infection, and no access to medicine, and my father barely got away from the artillery fire opened at the civilians who wanted to flee via the 'green corridor'.
6/I lived in Putin's Russia for 12 years, from 2002 until Maidan 2014. I knew it would be bloody. I knew Putin would bomb cities, hi did it everywhere.
7/My parents didn't believe Russia would attack. When the first bombs fell, they refused to evacuate. They thought the army would just quickly pass through the city and they would sit it out. They already ran in 2014 and thought they are too old to run again.
8/When they realized that Russia wouldn't hesitate to bomb Russian-speaking cities, it was too late. Now they are hiding in a basement. Fortunately, they are Ukrainians, i.e. they have enough conservation stocked to last through a nuclear war.
9/But there is no electricity, water and heating in Mariupol. Due to constant shelling, the infrastructure cannot be repaired. +3C during the day, -3C at night. In three days -7C.
10/There was supposed to be a humanitarian corridor the day before yesterday. Meeting points for civilians were announced. Shelling along the highway didn't stop, evacuation was impossible, so people were taken to bomb shelters.
11/30 mins later, the meeting points were hit with artillery fire. Yesterday? You won’t believe, same shit. Today? Putin promised to open green corridor to Macron, to whom he lied in the face just two weeks ago
12/I bet, "Ukrainian Nazis will shoot the evacuation column with Grad launchers." The only thing I think about is whether my parents will be lucky in this lottery.
13/The shelling never ceases in Mariupol; the Russian army went into a frenzy. It's fun for them to bomb residential areas.
14/ NATO says closing our sky would cause WWIII. Excuse me, but what the hell started then 11 days ago? Europe simply decided to wait until Putin said that NATO should withdraw its troops from Poland under the threat of nuclear bombing of cities.
15/ Fresh data. Russian troops heavily mined the highway from Mariupol and chaotically the fields around.
16/ Holy fuck. This is Russian idea of liberation in Mariupol.
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17/ First 12 days of WW3: in Ukraine destroyed or partially destroyed 34 hospitals, 202 schools, 1500 residential buildings including multi-storey. After Maidan we invested into schools and hospitals hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild them in a modern way.
18/ Btw, do you remember this news? Intelligence confirmed I'm on this list, as are three of my other friends — MP, businessman and civil activist. Why?
Russia plans to target dissidents in Ukraine to be killed or sent to camps, U.S. says
Those at risk for human rights abuses after an invasion would most likely include political activists, "religious and ethnic minorities and LGBTQI+ persons."
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna17031
19/ I’m naturally Russian-speaking, I lived in Moscow, I found there love of my life. But! During 8 years I worked on the top-level positions in reform projects. My last project — 8 articles of the Constitution of Ukraine in the new edition.
20/ That what Russia wants to kill — people who change Ukraine. I think there are a lot more people on these lists that I know, I only asked about three, Russia wants to kill them all. Once again: Russia want to kill MPs — that’s denazification!
21/ And another funny story of how this war started for me. February 24th, I couldn't sleep. While many had thought I was overreacting, including my friends and my parents, after 12 years in Putin's Russia, I was 100% sure that war was about to break out.
22/ And I had a gut feeling it was going to happen that night, or maybe the next one. At dawn, my Twitter feed exploded with the news that Putin, indeed, had declared war on us.
23/ It happened the moment I found the video where Putin announces his 'special operataion to protect the people'; these words coincided with the first rocket explosions in the distance.
It was a reeeeal immersion experience.
24/ I pulled down the curtains so that if they start bombing my block, and the windows break, it might prevent the shards from reaching my bed (so naive). And then I finally fell asleep for an hour and had no dreams.
25/ I still have no contact with my parents.
26/ The most fashionable photos of the season - with British grenade launchers (there are Russian tanks you can shoot, it’s fun). Two deputies of the Kyiv local council in the territorial defense unit. Vadym Vasylchuk, Yury Fedorenko. It’s a shame I can’t handle weapons yet.
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Link to tweet
(You can find the images at the link to the unrolled thread.)
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