Corpses on the streets, survivors in basements – what Oleg, 19, saw in bombed Mariupol

There comes a point when you are no longer afraid, when you can no longer hear the rockets, bombs and grenades. Where you only function to survive. For Oleg everything could have ended at such a moment.

On a war day, the 19-year-old student and his father leave the basement in Mariupol, where his family is hiding from bombs, to run errands, Oleg tells us on the phone.

You hear a shot, then the whistle of an explosive device. They run, the whistle gets louder. Seconds later, the grenade hits them. It doesn’t explode. “I’ve never been so close to death,” says Oleg.

Oleg escaped from hell, this is how he describes his hometown of Mariupol. “I’ve lived my whole life there without ever thinking about moving,” he says. “Now the Russian army has bombed, burned, destroyed everything.”