People who escaped from Mariupol describe the flight from its ruins: ‘The city is gone.’

Most of the people from Natalia Popko’s neighborhood in Mariupol supported the Russians when Vladimir V. Putin ordered his forces to invade Ukraine on Feb 24. Even when the bombs started falling and they had to start sleeping in their basements, they blamed their travails on the “Nazis” from Kyiv, she said.

“Then they ran out of food, and there was no more water or gas or electricity,” Ms. Popko, 37, said on Thursday.

She had traveled to Zaporizhzhia in central Ukraine with her husband, mother and 10-year-old son, Matvei, along with a grumpy 16-year-old cat named Marta.

She and other evacuees described how their once vibrant seaside city had been turned into an apocalyptic hellscape.

“The city is gone, the city is destroyed,” said one of the evacuees, who gave her name as Sasha. Like others, she was reluctant to provide her full name. Read more

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