Back
Automatically translated version. May contain inaccuracies compared to the original.
Colonel Oleksiy Sharuda of the State Emergency Service remained in besieged Mariupol during the spring of 2022 year, coordinating rescue efforts and assisting civilians. His story has been entered into the Voices of the Peaceful Museum. This was reported by the Rinat Akhmetov Foundation website.
At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Sharuda led the emergency rescue squad of the Main Department of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Donetsk region. 28 February he gathered officers and took on responsibility for extinguishing fires and saving people.
“I had to save people. You must, you took an oath, you must help,” he said.
At that time, six fire and rescue units were operating in Mariupol, according to the article. Because of constant shelling they had to be redeployed, and communication with the units nearly disappeared. In March, Russian troops destroyed all fire stations in the city. Rescuers continued to coordinate actions on their own.
As Sharuda recalled, families of rescuers, children, and other civilians were sheltering in the basement of the central fire station. However, from 14 March, due to intensive shelling, trips to help people became almost impossible.
“Radio stations were not picking up; repeaters were broken. I don’t know how I endured all this. But I tried not to panic, because three hundred people were sitting in the basement. My wife was very helpful to me emotionally then,” he added.
When water, food, and fuel supplies were almost exhausted, Russian troops surrounded the fire station. Russian special forces entered the basement looking for the unit commander. Sharuda explained to them that rescuers and civilians, including women and children, were there.
According to him, the occupiers stated that people had to leave the fire station, after which representatives of the so-called “DNR” were to enter. Later, Russian troops offered the colonel to assemble a detachment and work under their supervision, but he refused.
Sharuda stayed in the besieged city for some time longer and helped other firefighters evacuate from other stations. In early April 2022, he and his family managed to leave the occupied territory.
Today Oleksii Sharuda lives with his family in Odesa. Since 2024 he has been retired.
You can learn his story on the museum portal.
Document: PDF proof of the original version of the news item ""Не знаю, як я це пережив." Історія рятувальника з Маріуполя увійшла до музею "Голоси Мирних"". It records the publication content at the moment of the first scan, the preservation date and the source: Gordon.
