Fleeing Mariupol

May 1, 2022, 7:25 AM EDT By Mo Abbas, Matt Bradley and Yelyzaveta Kovtun

DNIPRO, Ukraine — Facing potential conscription into Ukraine’s military, ballroom dance instructor Nazar Shashkov, 32, says he would be “useless” with a gun.

But the soft-spoken Shashkov has already faced more danger than some army recruits, having made repeated journeys behind enemy lines to rescue his students and others trapped in his besieged hometown of Mariupol.

A pro-Russia soldier “took a gun in his hand and told me to get on my knees in the corner,” he said, describing an encounter at a checkpoint in the city.

As he kneeled with his arms in the air, the soldier put the gun to his head and held it there for about a minute, Shashkov said.

“I was silent. I didn’t say anything,” he recalled, adding that the soldier eventually let him go but only after robbing him of his money and warning him that his next trip to Mariupol would be his last.

Up to that point Shashkov had beaten the odds in avoiding such a confrontation. He had dodged shrapnel that tore into his van and swerved around craters, landmines and dead bodies to rescue a total of around 100 people on nine trips in and out of the beleaguered city.

Before the invasion, Shashkov said he had used his van to ferry his students to dance competitions. Shrapnel has since torn a hole in the bodywork near his dance school logo on the side of the vehicle.

“I was terrified,” Shashkov said, describing his first trip out of the city. “I wasn’t driving very carefully.” Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has fractured the country, sending more than 11 million Ukrainians fleeing for safety farther west and at times splitting families, with many civilians remaining stuck in cities behind Russian lines or in the midst of Russia’s military push in the east. Humanitarian corridors have been stop-and-start, leaving some Ukrainians to stage their own rescue efforts.

Except for a pocket of Ukrainian soldiers holed up at the Azovstal steel plant, Mariupol is now almost completely occupied by Russian forces after weeks of heavy bombardment. Power, water and gas were cut off soon after the Russian invasion began in late February, and there is no cellphone service.

Click here to read more.