Footage from a Mariupol hospital in which a Ukrainian soldier asks a boy: “Where is your mother?” spread all over the world. Subsequently, they were included in the documentary film “20 days in Mariupol”. They show 10-year-old Vladik Gusak. He and his parents, Oleg and Olga, survived hunger, air bombing, and death threats.
The publication “New Poland” publishes the story of a Mariupol couple about escaping from hell.
Evgeniy Prikhodko: You were in the maternity hospital in Mariupol when on March 9, 2022, a Russian plane dropped a bomb on it. How did you end up there?
Olga Gusak: My daughter Nastya was pregnant. After February 24, she and other relatives moved to us. Every day the shelling became more frequent. High-rise buildings were burning all around. We almost never left the basement of our private house. Already in the first days of March, her stomach began to pull. I myself could not help Nastya give birth, I am not a doctor. Therefore, we ran to a regular hospital, which was located next to our house, but it was no longer working, there were no doctors. People from nearby high-rise buildings were hiding in the basements of the hospital. Then I told my son-in-law Vladik to take Nastya and go to hospital No. 3, to the maternity hospital. This is the city center, there is a whole medical town there. They went, but then Vladislav returned and said that Nastya needed support and that the hospital had a safe basement. He insisted that we pack up and go there, but we did not agree.
Oleg Gusak: But he came for the second time. He said that a green corridor would be organized not far from the maternity hospital, in the area of the Ilyichivets sports complex, which means that we could all leave Mariupol safely together. This convinced us and we went to the hospital. We would have left earlier, but we were afraid that Nastya would go into labor right on the road. We also knew what happened in 2014, when cars driving unaccompanied were shot. It was dangerous to leave.
EP: Did your relatives go with you?
Olga: On February 24, we called our relatives who lived in high-rise buildings and offered them to move in with us, because our house has a basement, it’s safer there. On March 5, out of eight people, seven went to the hospital.
Oleg: Olga’s brother didn’t want to go, he decided to stay. The house was subsequently bombed and he died.
EP: How did you find out about his death?
Olga: The neighbors reported it a few months later. On our fence it was written: “There is a corpse here.” He died in the first days of April. And they took the body from there on the 26th.
Oleg: There was already a strong smell. That's why they wrote that there was a corpse there.
EP: Let's go back to the hospital.
Oleg: We were in this hospital, in the basement, from March 5 to March 9. On the night of the 8th, somewhere from the 2nd to the 4th night, she was fired upon from Grad missiles. The shells hit a building nearby where tests were being taken. I went there in the morning - iron shrapnel from shells was lying around. That is, the Russians expected to kill a lot of people.
EP: How do you remember March 9?
Oleg: In the morning we were on the street, that is, in the courtyard of the maternity hospital, where my wife was preparing lunch for all the residents. A few minutes before the air bomb arrived in my Lanos, I was listening to Ukrainian radio on medium waves 87.3. Most of the people were in the basement, some pregnant women were still on the second floor.
Olga: When the people who were responsible for cooking left, we took it upon ourselves. The men carried wood for the fire. Water was heated from snow. We were just preparing food on the street when shelling from Grads began nearby. We went down to the basement, and after a while we went outside again, because we had to continue preparing food. After 15-20 minutes the air raid began.
EP: What did you hear?
Oleg: This sound cannot be confused with anything. Bombers are supersonic. They buzz piercingly and very loudly. We had four seconds. One, two, three, four... b-u-u-u-h.
EP: Did you start running to the basement?
Oleg: From the fire where they cooked food to the entrance to the basement it was about five meters. I started running after Olga - she was already going down the stairs - when there was an explosion. The shock wave threw her against the metal door. I fell at her feet. The left side of my down jacket was torn to shreds. Blood was flowing from his left ear and chin. Now there is constant noise and ringing in my head and left ear, I have trouble hearing. He suffered a shoulder joint injury, which is why his left arm up to the elbow does not work. We were covered with glass, metal and concrete. Olga's face was cut. Our ten-year-old son Vladislav was then with Nastya in the basement.
In the first seconds of the video, Olga and Oleg Gusak after a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol.
Olga: I only remember the explosion.
Oleg: They say there were two explosions, but I only heard one. For some time we lay among all this unconscious. Then I crawled to my wife. I was overcome with horror. Thought she was dead. I screamed her name. There was a continuous wall of dust. After a few seconds, maybe minutes, she opened her eyes. Her face and head were covered in blood. My brother-in-law and I managed to drag her into the basement. They sat me down on a chair. I took a piece of cotton wool from the first aid kit hanging on the wall and pressed it hard on the torn wound on my wife’s cheek. It seems that very little time passed before we heard: “Are there any wounded?” These were Mariupol police.
Olga: They took me out by the arms, put me in a police car and took me to hospital No. 2. The children (as we found out later) remained on the territory of Hospital No. 3, in the building of the surgical department. So we got lost and didn’t know anything about each other for a long time. True, Vladik found my bag with all our documents after the explosion.
At hospital No. 2 they stitched up my face without anesthesia. I came to my senses, then passed out. I only had one dressing done. They anointed me with brilliant green and that was it, because the hospital no longer had any medicine. Then they took me on a stretcher to the third floor. Since I lost a lot of blood, they didn’t let me sleep, because I might not wake up later. I didn’t understand anything, I didn’t know where the children were, what was happening to them. Two days later I began to walk slowly.
EP: Was it already March 11?
Olga: Yes. When we were brought to the “second” hospital, this territory was still controlled by Ukraine. In the evening, our military took their wounded and left the hospital. The next day, March 12, the Russians entered. They placed a tank at both ends of the hospital. On the 13th, one of them turned the barrel and shot at the hospital.
EP: So they already captured it.
Olga: Yes, the occupiers have already even managed to bring in their wounded. They ended up between the fourth and fifth floors. We were lying on the third floor, immediately rushed out of bed and started running to the basement. We've been sitting there ever since.
EP: The Russians were constantly in the hospital. Did they talk to you?
Olga: We lived with these freaks until March 25th. They said that they had come to free us from the Nazis. Mostly they were “Denairists” and Chechens. “Deneerites” are like homeless people - their uniforms are shabby and dirty. They had not only AKs, but also Mosin rifles from 1943. Such “liberators” came to liberate us. They idiots cannot even compare what is good with us and what is bad with them.
Oleg: They came to free us - from work, houses, life.
EP: How often did they come into your basement?
Olga: They came in and took people away. There was an occupier there, himself from Donetsk, but everyone called him Ossetian. One day he walked two girls past us. He had a pistol in his hand. They walked along the basement corridor: the girls in front, he behind them. When we turned the corner, two shots rang out immediately. Of course, no one ran to see what happened to them, because they would kill you too.
EP: They wanted to shoot you too.
Olga: Somewhere they had information that a woman with a damaged face was getting stretch marks. They considered me a saboteur and wanted to kill me.
EP: How did this happen?
Olga: Apparently, the same Ossetian sent a soldier to our basement who was looking for this alleged saboteur. I sat after being wounded, wrapped in a blanket. He came up to me, reloaded the machine gun and said: “Open your face!” I opened it, and it was in my scars from the explosion. "Went". Oleg stands up and says: “I am her husband. Where are you taking her? - “This is a saboteur.” We were taken to our three captured terrorist defense guys. They had to identify the woman who allegedly placed the stretch marks. The occupiers put me in front of them. Then the guys said: “No, it’s not her.” If they had answered, “Yes,” they would have shot me on the spot. It was very scary.
EP: And all this time you didn’t know if your children were alive.
Ukrainian soldier and Vladislav Husak after a Russian airstrike on a maternity hospital in Mariupol. Source: warmonolog.com.ua
Olga: Once a priest of the Moscow Patriarchate came to the basement of the hospital and said that there was a second arrival at the maternity hospital and everyone who stayed there died. I immediately became hysterical because we believed that our children were still there. Marina grabbed me (we became friends as families in the basement) and asked how I felt. I said that my children could not die, they are alive! And she replied: “So they are alive. Until you see their bodies, they are alive!” We didn’t know that after hospital No. 3 they were taken not far from Azovstal, to another maternity hospital, on the left bank of Mariupol.
Oleg: You can’t imagine what it was, how she was shaking. We men react differently, but women - they are mothers, they have very strong emotions.
Olga: I understood that if, God forbid, my children were no more, I would not be able to live. And it’s very easy to die there, because we were shelled non-stop.
Oleg: Then we started cooking food in the backyard of Hospital No. 2 and lit a fire. We saw tanks, armored personnel carriers, and cars with “Z” driving nearby.
Olga: Oleg tried to walk at least a hundred meters, but it was impossible. There are snipers everywhere, flying in. When we saw someone being brought to the hospital, we asked them where and how they were hurt. Someone went for water, someone stood in line for bread. The Russians covered the crowds of people. I was very afraid of airplanes. One of the occupiers saw me flinch from them and said: “What are you afraid of, don’t be afraid, he has coordinates. He just runs out in squares.”
Oleg: If the square is controlled by the Ukrainians, the occupiers will erase it to zero. They didn't hide it.
Olga: In our Cheryomushki microdistrict, out of several dozen high-rise buildings, only two remain.
Oleg: Therefore, when the UN says that 20-30 thousand people allegedly died in Mariupol, don’t believe it. I believe more than 100 thousand died there. For example, our family: four people lived in the house, one of them was killed. And so it is in many families. There are acquaintances who were killed by the family. There are friends whose children were killed, who played and grew up with our son. I think every fourth Mariupol resident died.
Olga: The Russians dragged a dead Ukrainian soldier to the place where we were preparing food. They laid the body right at the entrance - we had to walk past it and look. So they put pressure on us morally. Even when we left, the body was still lying at the entrance.
EP: How did you get out of there?
Olga: Suddenly a connection appeared. We don't know why or how this happened. Oleg’s phone rang for the first time in a month. A real miracle. We were sitting outside, the weather was good, and suddenly a ringtone sounds. During this time we even forgot what it was like. Oleg’s classmate contacted us - he saw a video from the maternity hospital, recognized Vladik in it and was looking for us. He said that the whole world saw these shots.
EP: How did you charge your phones while you were in the hospital?
Olga: A nurse helped us. She took our phones and charged them somewhere. We used them as flashlights.
EP: Where did you go?
Olga: We didn’t want to leave this hell until we found the children. There were boarding houses outside Mariupol, no flights were arriving there, so my relatives and I went in that direction. On the way, at the first checkpoint, Oleg was almost shot.
Oleg: I had no documents, only a driver’s license. The occupier began to demand documents. I didn’t hear it the first time - after the explosion, I can’t hear very well in one ear. He asked about the documents a second time. While I was trying to get them, he had already aimed the machine gun at me. Then he told me to get out of the car. He took the phone and started rummaging through it. In a telegram, he saw how I wrote to someone that the Russians will come and then you will find out what it is. “Oh, so you’re one of these people,” the occupier began, “Your grandfather fought against the Nazis, and now you are for them. Don’t you know what they did to Ukraine?” He said that now he would shoot me and everyone would blame it on the war. I took out a cross, held it in my teeth, and thought: well, let's go. But then some senior Russian, who was nearby dealing with detained Roma, said to him: “Leave him alone, let him go.” I thought: “No shit.” I was miraculously lucky.
Olga: Then we more or less had a connection. We started learning about children. They found out that they were on the left bank, that Nastya gave birth to a boy on March 22 and everything was fine with him. But they knew nothing about us. Now there was a new problem: how to transport the children from there. There is no way through the city - between the left and right banks the bridges are destroyed and Azovstal is constantly under fire. The only way was a detour through the “DPR” to Novoazovsk, and from there to Mariupol, and this meant filtration and a high probability that we would not be allowed to go anywhere else.
I called my children every day and wrote SMS. No answer. But there was hope: suddenly they would have a connection, suddenly they would somehow read it. People often ask me how I haven’t gone crazy. To be honest, I don’t like to read, but I read five books in seven days.
EP: Which ones?
Olga: Detectives. They were lying around in that holiday house. So I was distracted.
Oleg: My wife sat by the window from 5 in the morning and read.
Olga: I once noticed a group of children on the street. One of the boys looked very much like Vladislav. The same hat, the same jacket, the same gait. I looked at him constantly. The kids probably thought I was some kind of crazy aunt. Then I found out that this guy’s name is also Vladislav. Once I bought him sweets. I thought that someone was giving my child a treat now.
I also went to places to look for relatives. We knew where the children were, but they knew nothing about us. Nastya later told me: “Mom, I was sure that on March 18, wherever you were, you would find us, even if you had to crawl, because Vladislav’s birthday is on the 18th.” She was convinced that if I was alive, I would find them on March 18th. They celebrated Vladik's birthday in the basement, then they gave him gingerbread - there was nothing else.
“And when this day came, and you still didn’t find us, I said goodbye to you,” Nastya told me later. Then she also remembered what I always taught her: “Remember, parents are parents, but if there is a question of parents and their own children, then you always choose the children.” That's why she decided to leave. And the next day, the Russians threw a chemical bomb at Azovstal.
EP: When did you first get in touch?
Olga: On April 11, at about 12:00 at night, according to tradition, I dial all of them one by one. And then Vladislav picks up the phone. I don't believe my luck. "Son, son." He screams: “Mommy, mommy. Nastya-ya-ya, mom is calling.” Then Nastya said that they were at the border.
Oleg: I start screaming because I understand that this is the Russian border. And they are in that same video from the maternity hospital, they are witnesses to Russian war crimes.
Olga: Oleg was afraid that they would be killed, he started shouting for at least Vladislav to be returned. Vladik shouts that he doesn’t want to die, that he’s afraid to go there. Then I shout into Nastya’s phone: “Do as you see fit. Get out, I’ll find you!”
EP: Who took them out?
Olga: Some French people who came to report at the hospital. They promised Nastya that they would help her get through without queuing or filtering. And that’s how it really was.
Oleg: If the Russians had taken Vladyka’s phone, that would have been the end.
EP: What was on that phone?
Oleg: Before the war, I gave my phone to my son. There were numbers of ATO participants and more. The phone has not been cleaned. Since I was the chairman of the independent trade union of the Mariupol commercial port, I also contacted and corresponded with employees of various investigative bodies and structures. I and my comrades fought corruption in the port.
Olga: They were very lucky that the Russians didn’t check the phone.
EP: How did you plan the trip?
Olga: The daughters from Oleg’s first marriage, together with Nastya, began to look for someone to help us. They found a driver who was ready to take us from there to Russian-controlled territory for five thousand dollars. But the driver didn’t come, so we decided to walk. We didn’t go along the shore above the sea, because we were told that everything there was mined. Although our friend rode a bicycle to Crimea.
EP: From Mariupol? To Crimea? By bike?
Olga: His nickname is Suicidal.
Oleg: He is a very kind person, but without inhibitions. He was riding a bicycle to Crimea and on the way he saw a tank, next to which the military were fiddling - the tank would not start. At first he could not make out whose they were, and only later it turned out that they were Russians. The suicidal man came closer and asked if he needed help. And he has golden hands. He dug, dug, dug, and the tank started up. The Russians ordered him to go with them to headquarters - they say, we need people like you. Well, he goes on a bike and through the fields to run away from them. Moreover: then he returned from Crimea back to Mariupol, saw his broken home and went back to Crimea.
EP: Do we know now what happened to him?
Olga: He is a Crimean Tatar. Ours, Ukrainian. Most likely, in Crimea, where his relatives are.
Oleg: So we decided to walk, but we learned that nearby volunteers were taking people by bus to Berdyansk. We didn't know anything else. We decided to find them - me, my wife and Evgeniy, a friend and work colleague, who also left Mariupol and lived with us in a boarding house.
It was April 14th. It was pouring rain, there was a terrible swamp underfoot - the Mariupol mud was terrible. We walked about five kilometers, saw a minibus, there were a lot of people around. They said they were taking me to Zaporozhye. We were ready to kiss their feet. The driver asked if we would go standing? So at least on one leg.
EP: How did you pass the checkpoints?
Olga: The journey, which usually lasts 2-3 hours, took us 12 hours. I prayed all the time. In total, we passed 25 checkpoints. At each one the men were stripped. We looked to see if there were any bruises from rifle butts or any tattoos. We drove past tanks. At three checkpoints, the Chechens did not undress Oleg, they said: Dad, get back on the bus. They thought he was about 80 years old. This is what he looked like then.
At one of the checkpoints, a De-Enerist saw a message on my phone that my salary had arrived. “What kind of money is this?” I look at him and think: “Are you an idiot?” They probably don’t know that salaries can come to a bank card. Savages. They saw a group of condominium associations on someone’s phone and thought that it was somehow connected with the SBU. People spent a long time explaining to them that this was simply an association of co-owners of the house. At one checkpoint, a former Ukrainian, now a “de-Enerist”, a freak, approached the men and asked questions in Russian. And then he abruptly switched to Ukrainian with the question: where did he work?
Oleg: If you answered in Ukrainian, you could at least get your kidneys beat off. In the worst case, shoot.
Olga: Near the last Russian checkpoint we drove along a mined section of the road. Then I saw a pole with small bluish-yellow flags. Ukrainian checkpoint. Happiness! Our military man, a Westerner, got on the bus and said: “Everyone is alive, everyone is healthy? Welcome!" I couldn't believe we got out of that hell. When we arrived in Zaporozhye, we looked like homeless people. The first thing we did was buy shawarma. I was so hungry. The next day we went to Cherkassy, Oleg’s mother lives there.
Oleg: But on the bus we took from Mariupol, there were also those who were simply going on some business to Zaporozhye, and then returning back. Everything was fine for them.
Olga: Yes, there are those who were waiting for the Russians.
EP: Even after what you saw and experienced?
Oleg: I don’t believe that something like this can come to this.
Olga: Some people are already getting it. They will not directly say that they are idiots and did not understand what Russia is. “Olya, this is not the same city, this is not the same life.” I feel what they mean. I think since you waited, now live there. I don't feel sorry for them.
Oleg: At my work, in a team of 59 people, in 2013, 20 people, if not more, were clearly against Ukraine. That is, against the fact that the Ukrainians were heading towards the West. 5-6 were for the Ukrainian future in community with European states. The rest of the “quiet people” are “waiters.” But whose fault is it? In our neighborhood, when my daughter went to school in the 90s, there was only one Ukrainian class. For 30 years, almost no one dealt with the issue of language and the transformation of the Soviet mentality into a conscious Ukrainian one, especially in our region. Yes, there were sober people, but a very small percentage. In Ukraine, they did not care about their native language and did not eradicate Russian television and websites that had captured the brains of a significant part of the population.
New democratic independent trade unions, which would also explain a lot to the workers, did not develop. They were simply destroyed. Leaders at various levels, chairmen of “pocket” trade unions with Soviet roots, having their own departmental media and websites, did not hold relevant meetings, did not tell or explain to their subordinates (and these are tens of thousands of Mariupol residents), neither about the goals of the Maidan, nor about the war of conquest, which Russia unleashed against Ukraine back in 2014. A striking example of this is the Mariupol port. This is what it led to.
EP: What are your moods now?
Olga: I myself am a Russian speaker, but I think that in Ukraine the Russian language should not be heard at all. We need a reinforced concrete fence with Russia so that the Russian Federation is not even visible because of it. Since 1991, Ukraine has not participated in any wars, and the Russians have stuck their noses everywhere - Transnistria, Chechnya twice, Georgia, Syria, Ukraine.
Oleg: They tell us something about Donbass, but they themselves traveled through Chechnya twice, killing people with their own Russian passports. They know nothing about their own history, how everything really happened during World War II and who helped the Soviet Union win. They don't understand this.
Olga: One of our friends, a Muscovite, asked why Nastya didn’t get a birth certificate for her child in Mariupol in March. There is no city, what evidence? And she started asking why the DPR didn’t do it then. I answered her: “DPR” is not Ukraine. "DPR" are your Russian bastards." And she told me: “I don’t understand anything anymore.”
EP: Do you keep in touch with her now?
Olga: No. I have another Russian friend who lived in Mariupol. After February 24th she does not communicate with her relatives from Russia. He tells them: “You are zombified idiots.” She once told me: “You can’t even imagine how much I hate Russians.” And I honestly answered her that I thought that she had left the occupation for Rostov, and not Odessa. “What are you doing? Yes, when I was leaving Marik, these freaks at the checkpoint asked if I had tea. I threw it on the ground for them - here it is. If they didn’t have machine guns, I would claw their eyes out.”
EP: How did Nastya with her husband, child and Vladislav leave Russia?
Olga: They were not allowed to leave Russia because the baby did not have a birth certificate. The Russians forced Nastya to give a Russian certificate, and this infuriated her. She shouted at the Russian border: “Remember: my son was born in Ukraine, he is Ukrainian!” A Russian customs officer approached her husband and said: “Calm down your wife.” He answered him: “You need it, you can persuade it, but I won’t risk it.”
Before the war, Nastya had a mediocre attitude towards Russia. She said that there are also people there, children, and that we also have our drawbacks. February 24th changed everything. Everyone in Russia is a zombie, a freak. She hates them. Her worldview was turned upside down. The realization that she was Ukrainian came instantly, with the outbreak of a full-scale war. To be honest, I was even afraid that Nastya and her husband would decide to stay in Russia. When I told her this, she replied: “Mom, how could you think that about me?”
EP: They are now in the Netherlands. How did they manage to leave?
Olga: When she called, I felt that she was on the verge. On it is a two-week-old baby, a brother. So we took our feet in our hands and went to the Cherkassy registry office. When I flew there, everything was written all over my face. Oleg explained that Russians do not let their daughter leave Russia due to the lack of a birth certificate. And they made this document for us in Cherkassy. We scanned and sent Nastya the birth certificate of her son and our grandson, Ukrainian Damir.
Oleg: They found a color printer already in Belarus and printed the certificate there. After the Russians did not allow them to enter Latvia, they went to Belarus. There was a small ordinary post between the border of Russia and Belarus. They were allowed into Belarus without even looking at all the documents.
EP: And the Belarusians let them into the EU?
Olga: Yes, they were released into Latvia without any problems. The car was not particularly checked. The only thing they asked Vladik was whether they would take him out by force, because his last name was different.
EP: When did you first meet Nastya?
Olga: From Cherkassy, after treatment in a local hospital, I went to Lvov. Then German volunteers took me from the Polish-Ukrainian border to the Netherlands, who distributed Ukrainians among EU countries. On May 7 they brought me to my children in Rotterdam. Nastya, her husband and Vladik were just on the street. And we were already approaching. Suddenly I scream: “Whoa-oh-oop!” The Germans slam on the brakes. The car stopped in the middle of the road. I jumped out of it and let's run to the children. This was our first meeting almost two months after the divorce in Mariupol.
EP: Would you like to return to live in Mariupol?
Olga: No. I really want to go there - my parents and brother are buried there. But I can't live there. It'll blow my mind. And secondly, I won’t be able to communicate with these freaks who were waiting for the “Russian world”. They will either kill me or imprison me. We would like to earn money, buy an apartment somewhere in a small town in Ukraine and live peacefully, but after February 24 we no longer make plans. We wake up every morning and thank God for that. Warm, not hungry - we don’t need more.
Husakov's house after the Russian bombing.
Source: Personal archive of the Gusakov family EP: It’s probably very difficult to tell each time what you experienced.
Olga: Yes, but we are ready to shout about it. So that this horror does not come to other countries. Russia must be stopped. We want the whole world to know: Russians are criminals. We want them not to even be given the right to speak.
Oleg: Leave them there behind the fence, let them live in their own world and devour each other.
Olga: I really want Putin, Lavrov, and their whole gang to be tried in The Hague. And then to give them to the Ukrainians. We would tear them apart piece by piece. There is not a family in Mariupol that has not experienced some kind of horror or lost one of their relatives. The Russians must answer for this.
