Fearing rape and death, this woman carried evidence out of Ukraine
Missile fragments remind Alina Beskrovna of those 'murdered in Mariupol'
She risked her life, was strip-searched by Russian soldiersand constantly fearedbeing pulled aside andraped. And still, Alina Beskrovna says she believes she had it "very easy" getting out of Ukraine.
Beskrovnaand her mother were among thehundreds, maybe even thousandsof people from Mariupol, who took shelter in underground bunkers when the Russians started bombarding the strategic southern port city at the end of February.
She says they wanted to get out of the city from day one, but immediately realized thatwas not an option.
"The city was quickly besieged and it was very dangerous to leave, even if you had a vehicle full offuel, just because there was active fighting all over," she toldCBC's Suhana Meharchand.
Instead, they took shelter in a basement, livingunderground for more than a month, before on March 23, takingthe chance against missiles and bombs trying to escape.
Beskrovna would get out with evidence ofRussia's relentless bombardment.
She describes a journey marked by unusual luck despite its many terrors.
"We went through16 Russian checkpoints where we were, you know, stripped naked and searched. And our pictures, our contacts, were checked, the belongings were checked," she said.
And every time she was searched, she says, she feared the soldiers would discover what she had in her backpack.
"I had two pieces of missiles in my backpack that I really was hoping to get out as some factual evidence," she said.
"And I kept thinking, what if they check my backpack? What are they going to do to me?"
She says the soldiers, in fact, seemed more concerned with the menchecking them for tattoos or anything that identified them as soldiers.
ButBeskrovnasays, for her and the other women,the checkpoints were about"hoping to not be shot point-blank, not be taken to the side and raped."
She said she was forced to smile andto speak in Russian to the soldiers, who "behaved like they owned Ukraine [and] openly mocked us."
All along, she worried the two fragments in her bag would be discovered.
One, she said, is"supposed to break off into thousands of tiny, very sharp metal pieces and kill everyone," in the area where it is dropped.
She says she took the second, larger piece of twisted metal from a missilewhich hit her house on March 8.
"It also has some markings on the factory in Russia where it was produced," she said, "so I decided to take it with me."
They are jagged reminders of whatBeskrovna and her mother survived, and, she says, of her neighbours who weren't as lucky.
"When I look at those pieces, I think of the civilians who were just murdered in Mariupol. The estimates are around 22- to 25,000 civilians over a two-month period in my hometown. I can't comprehend it," she said.
Beskrovna and her mother are now safe in Copenhagen, with hopes of coming to Canada. Beskrovna'sfather wasin his apartment inMariupol the last time she was able to reach him.
They last spoke on Feb.26, two days after the invasion started, but she has not heard from him since.
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