Mariupol: The 80 days that left a flourishing city in ruins

"Daily life was being stripped down to bare essentials.

"We lived like primitive people," he told the BBC from Lviv, where he has now fled. "We broke trees, made fires, cooked food on fires. I even heard of people eating pigeons."

He watched as order gradually broke down all around him. He kept a vivid diary, later published online.

"The Stone Age has arrived," he says in his 6 March entry.

But is this, he wonders, how the fittest survive? After a while, each day became a "combat mission"." 

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Mariupol: The 80 days that left a flourishing city in ruins - BBC News

By Paul Adams in London and Hugo Bachega in Dnipro