![]() He has worked in Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan, Gaza and the disputed territory of Nagorno-Karabakh in Azerbaijan, but little can compare to what he witnessed in Mariupol.Ĭhernov dodged sniper bullets to film tanks firing on apartment buildings. ![]() He speaks calmly, thoughtfully but decisively, ideal qualities for working in a warzone. He is wearing a top emblazoned with Ukraine’s coat of arms. I meet Chernov in Paris shortly after he has received the Prize for Impact – winning it jointly with Maloletka – at the annual Press Freedom Awards organised by the campaign group Reporters Without Borders. ![]() Russia has recently built a new army compound in Mariupol, according to experts assessing satellite images, and its port is apparently being turned into a military base to help supply Putin’s forces by sea. Although some have been allowed to return home, many are thought to still be help captive by the Russians. An i investigation last year found that some survivors of the siege were taken to camps in Russia, with some being asked to sign papers saying that Ukrainian forces had shelled their own city. The occupiers have reportedly demolished part of a theatre where up to 600 people may have died when it was bombed by the Russian air force an aide to the city’s mayor claims this may be an attempt to cover up an alleged war crime.Īround 100,000 civilians were not able to flee or chose not to do so. The siege ended on Friday 20 May when Russia declared it had full control of the city – which had once been home to 430,000 people – and its Azovstal steel plant, where defending troops had been sheltering. He hopes the film will be available to British viewers in the coming months, and his account deserves our attention again while abuses in Mariupol continue. In the US it will air as part of the PBS docuseries Frontline. There is 30 hours of that I brought back from the city.” “Finally, I’m able to publish more than the 40 minutes of footage I sent from Mariupol. “I’m really excited that people will see the full story,” Chernov tells i. Mstyslav Chernov’s film ’20 Days in Mariupol’ premieres at Sundance on 21 January (Photo: AP / Frontline) Now, 10 months later, Chernov is readying for the premiere of his new documentary 20 Days In Mariupol at the Sundance Film Festival in Utah this month. “We were very lucky.” Their field producer, Vasilisa Stepanenko, was elsewhere in the city but thankfully also escaped. In this exodus of 30,000 people in a single day, Russian soldiers were not checking the vehicles too closely. There were so many of them, going through 100km of occupied territory.” ![]() “This was one of the first days when a ‘green corridor’ was organised for people to leave, so we were able to join a family and they drove us out through these chaotic Russian checkpoints. They only survived thanks to Ukrainian civilians. “We were without a car and we had no batteries, so we couldn’t send any photos or footage, we couldn’t function – and it was so important to send what we had filmed.” “But once they’d finished their job, they left us,” says Chernov. They took us through the battlefield.”Įscorted through streets where tanks had blown apartment buildings to pieces and missiles had left deep craters, they were taken to armoured cars and quickly driven away from immediate danger by the soldiers. The next day, a group of Ukrainian special forces came into the hospital and extracted us. “There was a Red Cross radio there and a police radio, so we asked for help. “We couldn’t leave and we knew that it was just a matter of time until they came into the hospital, so doctors gave us scrubs and hid us. “The hospital was surrounded by Russians,” recalls Chernov, a filmmaker, photographer and writer with the US agency Associated Press. ![]()
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