An all-formats AP team delivered the first extended account of life in the warren of bunkers under the Mariupol steel plant where war raged overhead. Reporter Cara Anna, photographer Francisco Seco and local translator Valerii Rezik were determined to capture the stories of evacuees from the the bombarded Azovstal steel plant, the last Ukrainian holdout in the ruined city of Mariupol.
In Zaporizhzhia the team staked out a car park for days with a growing number of journalists poised for a “safe passage” operation evacuating civilians from the plant. The stakeout was complicated by coy United Nations officials who did not want to share details of the operation for fear that it might be jeopardized. Only by asking directly if they needed to sleep in the car park did the team prompt off-the-record hints on timing of the evacuees’ arrival.
When the buses arrived, Anna spent nearly two hours transmitting live video via the Bambuser app, and Rezik, joined by video journalist Yesica Fisch, sought out contacts and, crucially, determined the hotel where the evacuees would be staying. Seco and fellow photographer Evgeniy Maloletka contributed photos.
People walk through debris at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, eastern Ukraine, in an image from undated video provided May 1, 2022 by the Azov Special Forces Regiment. The steel plant has a maze of more than 30 bunkers and tunnels spread out over its 11 square kilometers (4 miles), and each bunker was its own world. Evacuees had little or no communication with those elsewhere in the plant.
Azov Special Forces Regiment / Ukrainian National Guard via AP
Serhii Tsybulchenko, left, and his son-in-law, Ihor Trotsak, right, who fled with their family from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, arrive to a reception center for displaced people in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, May 3, 2022. The family was among the first to emerge from the steel plant in a tense, dayslong evacuation negotiated by the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross with the governments of Russia and Ukraine. A brief cease-fire allowed more than 100 civilians to flee the plant.
AP Photo / Francisco Seco
Elina Tsybulchenko, left, and family members have a meal with others after arriving at a center for displaced people in Zaporizhzhia, May 3, 2022, after evacuating with other civilians from the besieged Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol.
AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka
From left, Serhii Tsybulchenko, Elina Tsybulchenko, Ihor Trotsak and Tetyana Trotsak, who fled from Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, pose for a family photo in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, May 4, 2022. The family was among the first to emerge from the steel plant in a tense, dayslong evacuation of civilians.
AP Photo / Francisco Seco
In Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, May 4, 2022, Elina Tsybulchenko holds fragments of an Easter basket used to carry fruit into the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, where the family took shelter underground for two months before a negotiated civilian evacuation.
AP Photo / Francisco Seco
At right, Anna, 29, and her son Ivan, 1, who fled from the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, arrive to a reception center for displaced people in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, May 3, 2022.
AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka
Smoke rises from the Azovstal steel plant, the only Ukrainian-held position in the ruined city of Mariupol, Ukraine, May 5, 2022, as Russian forces continued their assault.
AP Photo
The following day, in that hotel lobby, they bumped into the very woman Anna had been hoping to find after filming her the previous day. Elina Tsybulchenko sat down with the team for about two hours. “Imagine four concrete walls …,” she began, and with some help from family members, patiently described life below ground. When she described the feeling of emerging from the bunkers on occasion and “visiting the sky,” Anna knew she had her lead. She wrote the narrative — both harrowing and inspiring — the next morning after taking an overnight train back to Kyiv, completing her last assignment before leaving after seven and a half weeks covering the war in Ukraine.
The story understandably scored near the top of AP’s reader engagement for the week.