Stories of resilience: a chaplain, pastor from Mariupol, and a volunteer who survived Russian captivity

Gennadiy Mokhnenko and Azat Azatyan shared their memories with Espreso TV.

“They turned our city into a cemetery. They just killed more than 100,000 civilians. By the way, almost no one in the world knows this. About 100,000 civilians were killed in my city. Every fifth person in a city of half a million.”

Gennadiy Mokhnenko is a legendary man. He is a father of many children, a public figure, a pastor from Mariupol, and now a chaplain. He recalls his last sermon in his hometown.

“I opened the Bible to the parable of the Good Samaritan. I said, Look, what did he do first? When he saw a man beaten and injured, he stopped, bandaged the wound, and stopped the bleeding. And I said, 'That's the end of my sermon, and now we have a guest — a tactical medic. And for the next hour, instead of the usual service, this medic taught people in Mariupol,” he recalls.

Gennadiy was preparing his community for the invasion because he knew that the war would come to his city. So before the Russian occupation of Mariupol, he and his sons organized the evacuation of 8,000 people.

“We left the city at the last moment. And we evacuated children from Mariupol. It was a competition between Russian tanks and our convoy. On the way, I got a call from the intelligence: Chaplain, speed up! They are very close; they are about to cut the road. Therefore, we jumped out at the last moment and evacuated everyone from the orphanages,” he said.

Residents of Mariupol, unable to flee to Ukraine-controlled territory, sought refuge in Berdiansk. Russian troops swiftly captured the city, but unlike Mariupol, they did not destroy it.

“When residents of Mariupol started coming to us, we had filtration at the entrance to the city; there was a checkpoint where fugitives from Mariupol were forced to wait for several hours. They stripped them, took off their shoes, and generally checked them very carefully. And these people did not eat anything for several days.”

Azat Azatyan is an ethnic Armenian. After the declaration of independence, he moved to Toretsk, Ukraine. He relocated to Berdiansk in 2014, the year the war broke out. Before leaving the coastal city, he helped others escape the Russian occupation. Thanks to Azat, more than 1,000 people were evacuated.

He organized convoys that traveled through the fields using back roads. "Even if the city was closed for entry and exit, I knew some passages through which I could not only leave myself but also take other people out," he recalled.

Azat paid for his volunteer activities in occupied Berdiansk with captivity and beatings. The man was kept in the basement for several days. He was starved and tortured with electricity.

“They were torturing me with electricity and beating me while I couldn't do anything. Your breathing stops, and you start to suffocate. At the same time, they beat you with sticks or a pipe. Or with their hands or feet. You have a tarpaulin bag over your head. They also pour water on the bag to make you suffocate even more,” Azat recalls.

After several days of torture, Azat was expelled from Berdiansk. Today, he and his wife have organized 11 educational centers for children and one school in Zaporizhzhia.

“I was gluing wallpapers with one girl. And the children called this classroom Harripottern. They call it Harry Potter because there is a library here, like in Harry Potter's room.”

Chaplain Gennadiy Mokhnenko also did not leave the displaced people. He continues to evacuate children from the front-line areas to safer regions in the country. And he dreams of returning to pastoral ministry.

“I dream about the time when I will take off my military uniform, hang it up somewhere, collect handfuls of awards for my grandchildren, and hang them in the family museum. And I will put on my pastor's suit. I will buy nice shoes, a nice suit, and a pastor's shirt,” he hopes.