Azovstal defender’s wife speaks of anguish over her husband’s fate

At 7.04am on 6 April, Anastasiia Gondul received a message from her husband, a defender at the Azovstal steelworks in Mariupol, who told her he was “alive and healthy”.

The next day, she was told he had suffered a severe wound to his pelvis when a mine exploded during fighting at the steel plant which has become the last bastion of resistance in the besieged south-eastern city of Mariupol.

Ms gondul ,45, said she is“terrified” her husband Art em ,39, might die as she described the dire conditions the soldiers from the Azov Regiment are living in.

She said wounded troops are “rotting alive” due to the lack of antibiotics, painkillers an do ther medical equipment. Operations are having to be carried out with“dirty” water and there is no food. All her husband is surviving on is tea.

Mr Gondul, who spent ten years with the fire brigade before joining the army, desperately needs surgery as a fragment of the mine is still inside him but an operation is impossible without an X-ray.

It is thought a nerve has been severed as he cannot feel his legs.

“He dreams they will be helped, but he is losing faith,” she said.

Ms Gondul is a Russianspeaking Ukrainian, like many people who live in the region – but for the interview she chose to speak Ukrainian.

Speaking through interpreter Maiiahabruk, she said her husband never complained about the wound but feared he would be unable to see her and their seven-year-old son again, so he had sent them a farewell letter.

“I had to reply. I spoke of in the future, of flying to travel and of our coming years ,” she said.

“For two days, i gave him back his faith in the future and the hope of salvation. if he dies, i die too, because I really love him.”

Their child is aware his father is with the Ukrainian army but he has been kept from the what he is living through.

Ms Gondul has appealed to leaders around the world to help the defenders of the steelworks but claims there has not been any response.

“I don’t know what else to do,” she said.

“My husband is my sense of life. I don’t know what I would do in the future if he dies.

“I shout to the whole world to help Azov.”