The head coach of FSK "Mariupol" (new name "Yaruda") spoke about how his team was evacuated from the city.
“Our guys who were in Mariupol experienced something that is hard to describe. Not only them, but in general the people who lived in this region. Now for them, anxiety is not scary, the worst thing for them was when helicopters flew overhead. On February 22 and 23, we played control fights. On the 24th we had a day off. Someone decided to go home to their relatives after the match, and on the 24th a full-scale invasion began, Russia attacked Ukraine. We started calling all the guys who remained at the base. We consulted with them what they think, how everyone sees it. We had guys from Chernihiv, from Kyiv, from Lvov. Traveling across Ukraine when Kyiv was attacked, how to get there... We discussed all these points and were not ready for this. Someone, at their own peril and risk, left Mariupol in the first days. After 3-4 days, we evacuated the bus and whoever wanted to, left too. Whoever didn’t want to, then on their own - then, it seems, I still had trains with evacuation to Kyiv or Lviv ...
Someone decided to stay in Mariupol and did not believe that everything would turn around to the extent that it did. No one could have thought that the city would be bombed so hard... Both the coaching staff and the president of the club remained in Mariupol until the last. Somewhere else three or four weeks after the start of the invasion, they were there. The first window appeared when they started to produce cars, then the guys left. First to Berdyansk, and from there to the controlled territory of Ukraine.
All members of the club are alive and well and managed to evacuate. Someone went abroad, someone went to Ukraine. All the guys who were at Yaruda have now signed contracts with us with FGC Mariupol. What they went through is very scary. Of course, after they moved to Ukrainian-controlled territories, they more or less calmed down. They had a difficult psychological condition, but now they have coped with it and common sense is in their head. They now understand better than anyone what life is and appreciate it, because they were under bombardment, shots, ran through the corpses on the street to escape, the coach said.