This is the first time
I saw "Z," the Russian sign of war.
The hospital is surrounded.
Dozens of doctors, hundreds of patients and us.
I have no illusions about
what will happen to us if we are caught.
February 24, 2022.
The city looks normal.
Someone once told me, "Wars don't start with explosions.
They start with silence."
When we realized that the invasion was imminent,
our team decided to go to Mariupol.
We were sure it would be one of the main targets.
But we could never imagine the scale
and that the whole country would be under attack.
An hour after we arrive,
the first bombs hit in the outskirts of the city.
A military base with antiaircraft systems.
Russians are clearing the path for warplanes.
Huge port, industrial city,
a bridge to Crimea.
We were here eight years ago when Russia tried to take it.
And, without a doubt, they will try again.
We drive to the Left Bank,
the part of the city closest to Russia.
This is the first person
I speak to today.
I don't know if I should keep filming
or try to calm her down.
I was wrong.
An hour later, shells do hit this neighborhood.
There are no directives
to evacuate the city,
but some people are leaving anyway.
I understand their anger.
Their country is being attacked.
It's our country, too,
and we have to tell its story.
There are almost no real bomb shelters in the city,
so people hide in the basements of their apartment buildings.
Suddenly, the lights go out.
We send videos and photos
to our editors.
The war has begun.
Ukraine is now a nation at war.
190,000 Russian troops and their proxies
coming from Ukraine's northern, eastern and southern borders.
Russia is moving fast.
After Putin stopped speaking,
on cue, the missiles and air strikes began.
Air raid sirens sounded on and off.
Kharkiv in the east and Mariupol in the south
both came under heavy fire.
There's real anger in the air.
The hatred for Vladimir Putin is... is palpable.
February 26th.
This is emergency broadcast system.
Russians are starting to surround the city,
taking towns and blocking the roads on the outskirts.
A quarter of the residents have left.
But most decided to stay.
This is Terrasport fitness center.
Now it's one of the biggest improvised shelters
in the city.
People put tape on the mirrors so fewer fragments are created
when bombs fall.
This woman,
she's the one I told to stay home on the first day.
I apologize.
I'm glad she is okay.
As I look at all these children,
I think about my daughters.
They also have to leave their home because of this war.
News comes from all over Ukraine,
and I cannot get over the feeling
that something terrible is going to happen to this city.
Missiles fired at civilian locations,
according to the Ukrainians,
even though the Russians say
they are not targeting civilians.
Their worst nightmare coming true,
thousands of citizens are trying to flee the country.
And those who are left behind have filled bomb shelters
amid fears of rocket attacks overnight.
Ukrainian soldiers like these
have put up a stout defense of Mariupol
because, as a large port, it's economically vital,
and as a major city just 30 miles from Russia,
it's strategic.
For both sides in this war, it is quite a prize.
February 27th.
Soldiers are patrolling around Emergency Hospital Number Two,
a couple kilometers from the front line
on the edge of the city.
So far, Russians have not been able to break through.
For the first time in Mariupol,
I hear a sound of a fighter jet.
The soldiers are tense
and don't want to be filmed.
We're interrupted
by an ambulance siren.
Evangelina, four years old.
U.S. officials warn
that Russian forces are turning to their old and brutal tactics
of laying siege to cities
while targeting civilians and infrastructure from afar.
...these punishing artillery
and air strikes.
Heavy losses, as indiscriminate shelling rain down
on apartment buildings,
the university in flames.
"Show this to Putin," a doctor said
to an AP reporter.
The doctor wanted Vladimir Putin to see, quote,
"the eyes of this child and crying doctors."
Anyone wanting to leave Mariupol
probably has to hit the road by tomorrow,
after which the last route out is expected to close.
March 2nd.
Russian strikes are causing problems with Internet
and electricity.
All the international journalists
we met in Mariupol have left.
But we decide to stick with the medics for a few days.
We drive to the Left Bank,
where the heaviest fighting is happening.
This woman was standing
on her balcony when the shell hit the house
on the opposite side of the street.
But shells don't just hit the Left Bank.
These days, attacks happen all across the city.
The boy was playing soccer
with his friends when shelling started.
His legs were completely blown off.
Ilya, 16 years old.
The front line is closing in.
We've sent all the photos and videos.
Note to editors: graphic content.
This is painful.
This is painful to watch.
But it must be painful to watch.
In the port city of Mariupol,
local officials say hundreds of casualties are now feared.
A father lost in grief
over the body of his 16-year-old son Ilya.
The electricity's gone.
The Internet's gone.
The Russians are coming.
Mariupol awaits its fate.
March 3rd.
The shelling has reached
the neighborhood around the hospital.
Patients are moved
away from the windows,
and day after day,
the conditions in the hospital get worse.
This is one of the boys who was hit
while playing soccer.
Doctors smile at him,
but I hear a whisper that his leg may need to be amputated.
There are almost no antibiotics left to stop the sepsis.
The Internet and phones
have stopped working,
and I'm sending short dispatches to our editors
over the satellite phone.
The morgue is full, so doctors store bodies in utility rooms.
We stay and sleep in the hospital.
So far, it seems to be the safest place.
From our observation point
on the seventh floor of the hospital,
I see the battle on the front line continues.
Russians are still trying to break into the city.
Kyryl, 18 months old.
All night, we sit
on the seventh floor of the hospital,
hoping to catch a connection,
to find a way to get these images out.
Nothing works.
I think about all this country has been through
over the past eight years,
all that I've filmed.
Revolution of Dignity.
Crimea's annexation.
Russia's invasion of Donbas.
MH17.
Donetsk airport siege.
War that seems endless.
Thousands have died.
We keep filming.
And things stay the same.
Worse even.
Propaganda turns everything upside down.
I think about my daughters.
They were born into a world at war.
I wish I could see them now.
But all I have is a satellite phone
to make short calls to editors.
We tell them, "Mariupol is under siege.
"Russians are killing civilians.
"We are holding up.
Tell our families we love them."
Evacuations of two besieged cities in Ukraine
are being delayed amid reports that
Russia is violating a temporary cease-fire.
The city is surrounded by Russian troops,
and there is no way out,
even for any humanitarian help.
The situation is really dire in Mariupol.
A courier that was planned to evacuate people from there,
and we've heard that it has not happened,
that Russian forces have continued to shell the city.
That's what the mayor has said.
Um, we have no real-time information
of what's going on in the city.
This is the only radio signal
you can catch in Mariupol now.
Over the next weeks, Russia will bomb buildings,
cut electricity, water, supplies,
and finally, crucially, the cell phone,
radio, television towers.
We have to get out of the hospital
to try to find a connection,
to see what's happening to the city.
March 4th.
A mall near the hospital was destroyed.
As we search for a connection,
we go neighborhood to neighborhood.
Houses we saw standing days ago are destroyed.
We follow the smoke.
Houses hit by shells burn.
A humanitarian corridor was opened on March 5th.
Vehicles fled the city,
only to be blocked by Russian forces.
Then the road was closed.
Red Cross, police,
Ukrainian soldiers try to help and calm people down.
The more people realize
that they are trapped,
the more desperate they grow.
The city changed so much, so quickly.
When we were in the hospital,
one of the doctors told me,
"War is like an X-ray.
All human insides become visible."
"Good people become better.
Bad people worse."
But I thought,
"It's not only the bombs, lack of food, water.
"It's isolation, the inability to contact relatives,
to find out what's happening in other cities."
People charge cell phones from a generator
just to use them as flashlights.
Cut off.
We feel the same.
We still cannot send our images.
That night,
as we watch artillery shooting,
our phones suddenly pick up connection.
I split the footage into ten-second clips,
set three phones on the windowsill and send.
Bombs continued to rain down
on the southern Ukrainian city of Mariupol,
which was fully surrounded by Russian troops.
The Russians say
they aren't targeting civilians.
This is 18-month-old Kyryl.
Medics try to save the boy.
They cannot.
March 9th.
Like a disease, war is taking over the city.
We are back at the Emergency Hospital Number Two.
The few city workers that are still on duty
collect bodies to be buried.
I recognize this sheet.
It's Ilya, the boy who was killed playing soccer.
Somewhere among these black bags
lie the other children we filmed.
Another truck arrives.
Bodies from the streets.
My brain will desperately want to forget all this.
But the camera will not let it happen.
The shock wave.
Ears and skin feel the change of pressure.
We hide in the entryway of a building
and wait for another strike,
praying it will not hit us.
We go to the top of the building
and see the smoke just a few blocks away.
It's a hospital.
I try to find out
how many dead and wounded there are.
But in this chaos, nobody can answer.
The name of the police officer
speaking to us is Vladimir.
He wants to make a statement.
And then he asks once more.
Russian troops commit...
...war crimes.
Our family, our womens,
our children need helps.
Our people needs help from international society.
Please help Mariupol.
Vladimir showed us
the only place in the city
where we could catch a signal and send the images.
Outside a looted grocery store
on Budivel'nykiv Avenue.
Air strikes are
happening constantly.
Vladimir said the footage
from the maternity hospital
will change the course of the war.
But we have seen so many dead people.
Dead children.
How could more death change anything?
Air strikes on the southern city of Mariupol
destroyed a children's and maternity hospital.
For once, the aftermath of a bombing,
here at the city's maternity hospital,
was filmed for the world to see.
Horror and devastation.
This is clearly the worst and most egregious attack
we have seen in this war so far.
The Associated Press also reports
that city workers have had to create
a mass grave to bury the dead.
And Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky
calling this attack a war crime.
March 10th.
The city is still being bombed.
And now I can also hear heavy machine guns.
That means Russians have entered the city.
Vladimir, the officer we met yesterday, is with us.
The last functioning fire department
in the city destroyed by another air strike.
I don't know if he survived.
We try not to stay long in one place.
The biggest university in the city was destroyed, too.
New wounds every day.
We drive back to catch a signal
at the spot on Budivel'nykiv Avenue.
It's still the only place where you can get Internet.
It's past curfew, so Vladimir accompanies us.
We check the news
and speak to editors.
Sorry, what?
Hold on. Hold on.
It's coming back. Hold on.
Hold on, hold on, hold on.
This motherfucker is flying around.
Hold on. I can hear him.
I-I don't think there has been a moment today
when there was not-not an airplane in the air.
And, uh...
I give them the latest.
But there are disturbing updates for us.
Okay.
These women's stories have epitomized
the tragedy unfolding in Ukraine.
And yet, even their suffering has been questioned,
with Russian officials claiming on Twitter
and in news programs that they must be actors.
This maternity hospital had already been
seized by the Azov Battalion and other radicals.
All the pregnant women, all the nurses,
all the service personnel were already expelled from there.
This is information terrorism.
We hoped that the pregnant woman
on the stretcher survived.
So we went to search for her
and other victims at the Emergency Hospital Number Two.
Soldiers are guarding the entrance.
Vladimir says this is the red zone now.
The Russians have entered the neighborhood.
So he comes with us.
Floor by floor, we search for the pregnant women.
There is no maternity ward, so we try the surgery department.
Surgeons are overwhelmed and low on painkillers.
This piece of shrapnel was taken from a patient.
Finally, we find one of the doctors
who treated the woman on the stretcher.
Her name was Iryna.
They said she screamed, "Kill me,"
when they brought her.
She knew her child was dead.
Other survivors are here.
One of them has just given birth.
Another is taken to an operating room.
She lost part of her foot in the bombing
and doctors worry about the child.
We have to leave.
But the corridors are filled with people
who lost homes, relatives.
We head to the exit, but it's too late.
Soldiers say a sniper just shot and injured a nurse
in front of the hospital.
Two soldiers are still trapped.
We hear a low rumble.
So we run to the seventh floor,
to our observation point.
It's risky.
They can open fire at upper floors of the hospital.
But from here, we can see more.
They are coming closer.
If reinforcements don't arrive,
the soldiers downstairs will not be able to stop them.
They will take over the hospital.
What should we do?
We need to send all this footage.
Survivors from the maternity bombing.
Tanks shooting at residential areas.
There is no connection here.
And we can't get to our car.
And if we get caught, Vladimir says,
"Russians will make you say everything you published
was a lie."
The night is sleepless.
Feverish thoughts of past, present and future
race through my mind.
I want all of this to stop, but I have no power over it.
My memory keeps carrying me back home and back to war.
If someday my daughters ask me,
"What did you do to stop this madness,
this sadistic virus of destruction?"
...I want to be able to give them an answer.
This is a special military task force.
All night, we hid inside the hospital,
and Vladimir used the last of his radio's battery
to contact them.
This morning, they broke into
the surgery department to rescue us.
They said we were already behind enemy lines.
We are still wearing the scrubs
the doctors gave us,
in case Russians entered the hospital that night.
We run,
abandoning the doctors who have sheltered us,
pregnant women who had been shelled,
the people who live in hospital corridors
because they have nowhere else to go.
The Russians took over the hospital
a few hours after we escaped.
They've taken the Left Bank,
except the Azovstal steel factory.
And they are closing in on the city center.
Ukrainian forces fight back, but they are outnumbered.
The city is slowly dying like a human being.
On the day we escaped from the hospital,
the military task force moved us and Vladimir
to an area still under Ukrainian control.
And for days, we tried to find a way to get out of the city
with all the footage.
March 13th.
Shelling of residential areas continues.
Without any information,
people don't know who to blame.
Vladimir keeps insisting
we need to find a way to leave.
But we no longer have our van.
It was left behind in the hospital.
And anyone who drives us with our cameras and hard drives
through miles of occupied territory
would be taking a risk.
On March 15th, our editors send us a message:
"Yesterday, some people were able to leave
"with a Red Cross convoy,
and there is another one leaving today."
We go to the last functioning hospital in the city.
The Red Cross convoy has left.
I wish I could do more.
Stay longer.
But we need to leave.
One of the doctors tells us to follow him to the basement.
We need to catch up with the convoy.
Vladimir says he can try to take us with his car.
I tell him it's dangerous.
But he wants to help to get us and our materials out.
And he still hopes if the world saw everything
that happened in Mariupol,
it would give at least some meaning to this horror.
Vladimir's car was damaged by shelling
but miraculously still runs.
We are with his family.
We make it through 100 kilometers
of occupied territory and 15 Russian checkpoints,
cameras and hard drives hidden under seats.
By dawn, we finally catch up with the Red Cross convoy.
Yesterday, I told one of the officers who extracted us
from the hospital, "Thank you for saving us."
He said, "Thank you for telling the story of this city."
And yet, as we drive away,
I keep thinking about all the people
whose tragedies will remain unknown.
I will see my daughters.
And I can only hope that these people survive
and will be with their families, too.
The total number of refugees
who have fled Ukraine so far is now nearing three million.
And Russians continue to strangle
and starve Mariupol.
Got some new video this morning
of 2,000 cars that officials say managed
to make it out of Mariupol through a humanitarian corridor
that Russia did not renege on.
Devastating images are now
emerging from Mariupol, where the mayor says the death toll
could be as high as 20,000 since the war began.
Leaving people without supply lines
for food or water, without Internet connection
to the outside world.
It was a tragedy.
This woman and her unborn child later died.
And we know about the atrocities that have been
happening inside Mariupol because of journalists
from the Associated Press.
The only international reporters to remain
after the Russian bombardment bore witness
to what have become indelible images of the war.
AP reporters on the ground
showed the world a mass grave in Mariupol.
I'm talking about narrow trenches in Mariupol
with babies' bodies in them.
AP... AP journalists have been there.
I've seen so many fakes.
Who wins the-the information war, the one who wins the war.
Do you really, truly believe this? -
Do you truly believe what you're saying?