Help a refugee from Mariupol and his family

"A father-of-two who had part of his arm blown off by a bomb in Mariupol said he got to a point where he was so convinced he was going to die that he did not bother getting into a bomb shelter but just pleaded: “Kill me, but please do it fast.”

Sergey Zozulya, 47, was one of the hundreds of thousands trapped in the besieged city of Mariupol without water, food or power before he managed to escape less than a week ago.

Recollecting the moment he suffered life-changing injuries in an explosion just outside his home on 9 March, he told i: “It was a nine-floor building and there was no gas, no electricity, no water, so to cook food you had to go outside, cut the tree to make a fire for a kind of barbecue outside."

“As I was walking with a plate of food, the entrance of the building was only five metres from me but I didn’t reach it because I felt my arm being struck and then fell to the ground. I then heard a sound of a bomb around 20-30 metres from me,” said Mr Zozulya, through a translator. He said part of his arm was left hanging on “two centimetres of skin”.

Sergey is a close family friend who is now in Zaporizhia with his wife and two children. I translated his interview with iNews and heard him recounting his story. Days before that, he called my father and could only repeat "I have nothing left" on the phone. On the 7th floor of the building you see in the photo is their home. It's gone.

They escaped Mariupol with nothing except their passports and birth certificates. There are rumours the city is about to get attacked in the same way Mariupol did, so the family needs money for gas, food and shelter as they make their way to Europe. More critically, his arm, which doesn't function at the moment, is being treated in a local hospital — but it needs an experienced European surgeon.

Any money donated will be sent directly to his bank account. We are eager to help him rebuild his life in a safe and peaceful place.