Escape from Mariupol: the man who swam to safety from Russian terror

Yurin said he went back to the garage where he had been sheltering with his mother, Nadezhda, lit a cigarette and swallowed some tablets. He decided he had to get out of Mariupol, which for two gruesome weeks Russian forces had attacked and besieged. The city was cut off from all directions.

He came up with an extraordinary plan. Yurin decided he would swim to safety.

A keen fisherman, he had spent hours on the Sea of Azov with his father catching a local mullet known as pelengas. He found his fishing waders, previously used for digging up worms. He took two rubbish bags to tie around his socks, some string, and four 5-litre plastic bottles, for use as buoyancy aids.

He swam for two and a half hours. The 2.5-mile route took him past the Russian position at Rybatske and to the village of Melekine, which before the war was a beach resort. He staggered out. He found an elderly couple who took him in, gave him a shot of vodka and a bowl of borsch.

The government in Kyiv has accused Moscow of kidnapping thousands of Mariupol residents, including children. They were forcibly taken from city hospital number four to Russia via neighbouring pro-Russian separatist controlled areas. Video on Thursday appeared to show soldiers deporting doctors and patients at gunpoint from a city hospital.

The Mariupol city council says separatists are now trundling through the ruins in a white van, collecting bodies lying on the streets. These are being burned in a mobile crematorium. The aim, it says, is to avoid the embarrassing photos that came out of Bucha, north-west of Kyiv, showing executed and bound civilians.

Speaking from the western city of Lviv, Dubovitskaya said 1,500 people had been living inside the theatre. She said she arrived on 5 March after gas, heat, water and power inside the city were all cut off. One of the actors, Damir Sukhov, showed her a place to say on the first floor.

Later she moved to the second floor and was in the projector room when the bomb fell. It was unclear how many people died or what happened to Sukhov, the actor, who had been organising the relief effort. She was reunited on 23 March with her husband, Dmitry, who had returned from Poland to look for her and found her in a red cross camp.