One of the main front lines in Donbass, eastern Ukraine, separating the Ukrainian army from Russian forces, was stable on Tuesday, but under pressure in expectation of an imminent offensive from Moscow.
The Ukrainian soldiers were firmly established in their defensive positions in and around the village of Krasnopillia, where the near sound of artillery detonations echoed at regular intervals.
In a slightly hilly and wooded plain, this town is located on the road leading from Izium, a town recently captured by Russian troops, to the towns of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, under Ukrainian control.
The front line holds, and has stabilized over the past two weeks on this stretch of the road, about 25 km north of Sloviansk.
On Tuesday, no exchange of automatic weapon fire, synonymous with ground fighting, was audible from the village of Krasnopillia.
All the sources questioned in the area, however, evoke an imminent Russian offensive that could begin at any time.
“We know that the Russians are strengthening and preparing to attack,” an officer told AFP, referring in particular to an increase in Russian helicopter flights over the front, usually heralding a large-scale attack.
“We are ready. (…) We have prepared a few surprises for them,” commented, with a smirk, this senior officer.
– “We are waiting for them!” –
Faced with the fighting ahead, the soldiers seemed focused in their preparations, but also confident. “We are waiting for them!”, Launched a lieutenant, smile and thumbs up, whose section was busy reinforcing trenches and positions with logs around the road axis.
Artillery pieces and other more or less buried armored vehicles dot the approaches to this stretch of road. The forest is full of positions and other camouflaged equipment.
As winter is over, and the sodden black earth limits the possibilities of progress in the countryside, this Izium/Sloviansk road axis promises to be one of the main axes of this major Moscow offensive that everyone is waiting for. in the Donbass.
Since Russia announced that it wanted to “concentrate its efforts on the liberation of Donbass”, this eastern region, a historic mining basin of Ukraine and the former USSR, has been living in fear of this attack.
The Ukrainian army has been deployed there since 2014 along a front line running along Donetsk to the south and Lugansk to the east – capitals of the two pro-Russian separatist “republics” of the same name – and which now goes all the way to Izium in the north. -Where is.
De facto regional capital, since October 2014, of the territory still under the control of kyiv, Kramatorsk and the twin city of Sloviansk are located in the center of this cauldron.
Many residents fear a pincer movement of Russian forces to seize this entire region, historically and predominantly Russian-speaking, which would then be surrounded, like what has happened in recent weeks in the big city of south, Mariupol.
The military-civilian authorities in Donetsk and Lugansk have asked civilians to evacuate to the west of the country.
– Evacuations –
Tuesday morning, a line of nearly three kilometers of cars, filled with families and sometimes suitcases on the roof, waited at the checkpoint to return to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, then take the road west.
Most of the evacuations have been made in recent days by train, with nearly 2,000 to 3,000 departures from Kramatorsk station.
Rail traffic was halted on Tuesday morning, however, after damage to the track during overnight shelling, the Ukrainian railway company said.
At the end of the afternoon, a train was finally able to board passengers and leave. In the station, where hundreds of candidates for departure – women, children and the elderly – waited like the previous days – these evacuations continue, in order and calm, supervised by volunteers.
One of the night’s bombings, most likely missile or long-range rocket fire, destroyed a school in the city center, adjacent to a police building, an AFP journalist noted.
Emptied of a large part of its population, ghost Kramatorsk and under night curfew now lives to the rhythm of airborne warning sirens. Fuel is very hard to find there, and most shops are closed.
“The atmosphere is getting tense, everyone is nervous, we have to leave now,” commented a volunteer at the city’s train station.