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| A zoo in the middle of hell. How people saved animals in the destroyed Mariupol |
| 2023-10-14 |
| Direct Translation via Google Translate. Edited. by Tatiana Steshenko [REGNUM] A stubborn man Savely Vashura saved his menagerie from war twice. He began creating it in the Greek village of Sartana in 2008. At first there were birds and small animals, such as monkeys, then larger animals were added, lions and tigers. By the start of hostilities in the Donbass in 2014, there was already a full-fledged zoo, and a year later the fighting near the village sharply escalated. Shells began to fall into the area where the animals were located. In this situation, the owner could distribute the pets to different menagerie-circuses, and even go to a quiet place. But Vashura decides to expand and build a large zoo in the then relatively calm Mariupol. In 2022, the Mariupol Zoo again found itself at the center of a war. Animals died under shelling, some were torn to pieces. Camels, ostriches, talking parrots, and a young leopard died. Some of the birds simply froze, because until the end of April the temperature was below zero, reaching 12 degrees below zero. However, Vashura refused to abandon his creation. During the days of terrible urban battles in February and May, the menagerie also became a shelter for people. “Twenty-six people lived on my territory at that time, we provided shelter and fed them. We lived in a restaurant, without a bomb shelter - there was a fireplace, we lit it and escaped. Everyone was busy: some were preparing food, some were helping around the zoo, some were guarding. This is how we survived,” recalls the director, who had not yet fully realized that everything was behind us. He again has a lot of plans and a bountiful offspring from his beloved pets. The Mariupol Zoo is the largest in Donbass and plans to develop further. But all this would not have happened if a year and a half ago people had succumbed to fear and betrayed the animals. ANIMAL DAD The massive Vashura, himself a bit like a bear, leans close to the huge brown animal in the cage, calls him “good Potapushka” and strokes him on the head. “Potapushka” happily opens her mouth in response (bears, it turns out, can smile too) and graciously accepts the affection, but I feel uneasy. It seems that he is about to wave his paw - and... But for Savely Anatolyevich he is like his own son, raised in his arms, fed with semolina porridge. “Potap and Nastya bears bring me offspring every year in January. Potap ran after me like a child. Then I walked with the bears every day and swam together. Just like Amur tigers - they have been in the zoo since childhood. Now you don’t pay much attention: you come, hug, kiss - and that’s it,” says Vashura. All his animals are good, the main thing is to treat them kindly and never hit them. Assault is strictly prohibited here. This sincerity and attachment to the beast is probably what kept people here during the most difficult times. The director's assistant, Natalya, who gave us the tour, is a restoration artist by previous profession. And when I saw how lovingly Savely Anatolyevich was hugging the little bear Gerda, she asked him to hold her in his arms and that’s it, she disappeared. Since then she has been working here, even enrolled as a zootechnician at a Kaluga university. We walk along spacious enclosures and approach one of them, where two young lions live. “These are our “refuseniks,” Caesar and Odysseus. Born on November 3 last year, they will soon be one year old. The mother lioness, after stress in the first months, refused to feed them. And, by the way, you should have seen how Savely Anatolyevich got up all the first nights, how the responsible dad filled up the mixtures, washed the bottles, checked every time that everything was fresh,” Natalya recalls, smiling. She enters the cage, and the huge animals caress like kittens and offer their muzzles. It is unsafe to be in a cage with two predators at the same time, so the woman takes Odysseus to another cage and calmly strokes and hugs him there. She also treats everyone like children: many had to be taken home and fed, nursed, and given IVs. “On the sofa” she grew up with leopards, lion cubs, and the bear cub Balu, the son of Potap and Nastya. In the new location, where everything was built from scratch, the economy of the Mariupol Zoo developed rapidly. Some animals bred continuously (for example, Amur tigers gave birth two or three times a year), while the director bought others: for example, he went to Odessa to buy white tigers. The total number of animals and birds was never counted. But at the beginning of February 2022, there were more than forty lions and tigers, other felines, fifteen bears, ungulates, monkeys, and countless birds and small animals. Vashura could not take them and leave them to the mercy of fate. ANIMALS IN THE MIDDLE OF WAR “If I hadn’t been here, the zoo would have been taken away. War is war: looting and famine began in the city. But after all those events, it’s still hard for me to believe that you and I are sitting here, giving an interview... All the metal in the enclosures was damaged, there were fragments everywhere. Here we are sitting, next to each other, there was a direct hit, and two camels and two of their children died,” he says bitterly. It’s painful to remember: I brought them from Sartana, raised them, and then had to feed them meat from both animals and people. There was simply no other way out; we had to take care of the living. It’s good that there was enough other food for two months, “it’s customary for us Greeks to live with a reserve.” The well on the property and the nearby river came in handy. Mariupol residents came here for water. In other places they were hit by snipers, but here it turned out to be relatively safe, perhaps because of the trees. Although when the employees were able to turn on two generators to pump water, it immediately “arrived.” Two cars burned down, and the small house that Vashura built so that he could spend the night at work was destroyed. The battle for Azovstal, where the fiercest battles took place, is a separate page in the life of all the inhabitants of the zoo. “The plant is only four kilometers away. When they (Armed Forces of Ukraine servicemen in the Azovstal dungeons - editor's note) began to surrender and began throwing heavy shells at them, the mattress on my bed just bounced,” said Vashura. Then the life of the Mariupol Zoo consisted of daily important concerns: it was necessary to feed and water the animals under intense shelling, and clean up after them. Therefore, the servants and their assistants chose a short period of time - around 7-9 o'clock in the morning, when there was not so much shooting - and at this time they looked after the pets. When the front line moved away from Mariupol, it turned out that the animals had not lost weight, but had even gained weight. But those who died are still missing. Natalya admits that when she walks past places where animals were, she always has the feeling that they are still there, alive. They are gradually being replaced by new ones. For example, a pair of adult camels were delivered from Kalmykia through the mediation of the DPR government. The destroyed enclosures are being restored with the help of our sister city, St. Petersburg. The governor of the Northern capital, Alexander Beglov, visited Mariupol, stopped by the zoo and gave instructions to provide the necessary assistance. But so far the question of “how to live further” has not been generally resolved. The ticket price here is symbolic - only two hundred rubles, there are few visitors, and you need 300 kilos of meat per day. Vashura is thinking of taking aim at elephants and giraffes, returning the monkey nursery and opening a terrarium (a room has already been built for it). He believes this is important for everyone: “Schools and kindergartens can come to us, we have many disabled people. Of the half a million residents of Mariupol, more than 300 thousand people have returned, and the number of schools and kindergartens is growing. If Mariupol continues to develop like this, we can even become a million-plus city!” And if so, we need a zoo so that children can see little tiger cubs, learn interesting things about the lives of different creatures, learn to take care of and love all living things. “I want the Mariupol Zoo to be the best not only in the Donbass. There is a lot of territory, about five hectares are now developed here, maybe we’ll add a little more, it will be enough for the animals. In the future, it may be necessary to build warehouses, if necessary. Now we need to make large, modern enclosures according to Russian standards. But here, if only the state helps,” says the director. The main core on which he continues to rely is very simple - the desire to live and do what he loves. Then, in his opinion, it is possible to find a solution where there seems to be no way out. And turn even the most terrible nightmares of military life in Donbass for good. |
| Posted by:badanov |
| #1 Mmmm...barbequed giraffe backstrap. Enough to go around. |
| Posted by: Skidmark 2023-10-14 21:18 |