in the liberated territories of eastern Ukraine, staying despite the winter

by time news

A fine rain falls on Lyman, its station bristling with cables twisted by the explosions, its streets adorned with craters, its old apartment buildings pierced with gaping holes and thousands of shrapnel, with windows patched with plywood and plastic film. A fine rain, and soon snow. At the foot of one of these buildings, Leonid Ivanov, 65, places a log of wood on a block and drops his ax with a tired gesture. He will then have to go down into the dark, narrow and sooty cellar, where the pensioner and a dozen other inhabitants can enjoy the warmth of a wood stove. This is where he will spend the whole winter.

Lyman and its inhabitants are still far from having recovered from the furious fighting that devastated the city in the spring, then this fall when the city was taken over by the Ukrainian army. No electricity, no heating, rarely drinkable water only accessible by pumps scattered throughout the locality, and massive destruction. “We recommend not to return to the city”, says Mayor Oleksandr Jouravlev from the neighboring town of Kramatorsk, where he has set up his office. But despite calls from authorities to leave Lyman, most of the approximately 10,000 residents who remained in and around Lyman refuse to leave.

“All those who wanted to leave have already done so, those who stay have their reasons”, eludes Irina, a 41-year-old resident who will also spend the winter in the cramped cellar of a building without electricity or heating. His own apartment burned down after a strike by the Russian army, which did not prevent him from sending officials and humanitarian organizations to offer him a free evacuation.

“We are at home here”

The story is similar to Izium, 45 kilometers northwest of Lyman, one of the first towns the Ukrainian army liberated during its September counter-offensive in the Kharkiv region. “We had 28 evacuation requests after the liberation of the city”counted in mid-November Valerii Marchenko, the mayor of Izium, from an office plunged into darkness after Russian strikes on the electricity infrastructure in the Kharkiv region. “But when the electricity was restored, 15 of these 28 people withdrew their request. All in all, there may have been about fifty evacuations. » At the same time, nearly 3,000 inhabitants would have returned to Izioum.

“Psychologically, we can understand those who do not want to leave, says Natalya Horbenko, a resident of Izium who returned after the departure of the Russian forces. Her husband remained throughout the occupation. They survived and kept their home. Some have no money, others are afraid to go to a place they don’t know, and still others have never left Izioum, they don’t know how to travel, where to sleep, how to feed the children… “

Not far from there, Oleh, a shy 19-year-old boy, is busy making wood for the winter. Sticks rather, remnants of an ammunition box abandoned by the Russian forces in their retreat. He will spend the winter here with Evdokia, his grandmother. The old woman tells how they managed to survive the bombardments, trapped in the city by the Russians who prevented civilians from fleeing to Ukraine. Going to Russia was the only escape. ” Now we don’t want to leave because we are at home here, and we want to stay at homeshe says in a broken voice. But of course we are afraid of winter! »

You may also like

Leave a Comment