NPR

When Russia shelled their building in Mariupol, 13 neighbors banded together to flee

Before the war, Mariupol residents Tetiana Myhalyova and metalworker Victor Perederiy had never met. But after sheltering for weeks without heat or water, they decided to escape together.
Cars wait in a long line to leave Mariupol, on March 17. The city, on Ukraine's southeastern coast, has been heavily damaged by Russian bombardment.

LVIV, Ukraine — On a Wednesday afternoon in February, Tetiana Myhalyova headed home from her job as a costume maker at the Drama Theatre in Mariupol, expecting to come back the next morning.

But she would never return.

In nearly four weeks since Russia's invasion of Ukraine began on Feb. 24, no Ukrainian city has been more devastated than her home of Mariupol.

The industrial port city on Ukraine's southeastern coast has faced unrelenting bombardment from Russian troops: aerial attacks, rockets, tanks and shelling from Russian ships anchored offshore.

"It's hell on Earth," says Victor Perederiy, who escaped Mariupol in recent days alongside Myhalyova and 11 others. They arrived in Lviv on Saturday.

Before the war, the two didn't know each other — Myhalyova, the 49-year-old costume maker with the downtown apartment, and Perederiy, a 35-year-old metalworker who lived in the suburbs

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