Babouchka Tania and her neighbors at 158 ​​Ceverinivska

Former journalist and MP Paule Robitaille has been traveling across Europe for several weeks to report on the concrete impacts of the Russian invasion in Ukraine.

(Irpin, Ukraine) In a district of Irpin, an old lady emerges from a devastated building between two charred carcasses. It is cold, wet and the ground is covered with a thin layer of snow. She walks slowly in felt slippers, leaning on a stick and holding in her other hand a small bag full of potato peels which she places with difficulty in a container that serves as a garbage can. Wrapped in a turquoise shawl, she wears a thick gray factory jacket that hides pajamas the same color as her scarf.

Babouchka Tania sketches a smile at the sight of the stranger who comes to break her daily life. But joy quickly turns to sadness when asked how she is. Unable to say anything, she wipes away her tears with the back of her hand. She takes us into her home. About forty people live in this disused building marked by shrapnel both outside and inside.

From the balcony of babushka Tania on the second floor, we see the remains of fierce battles; buildings blackened by flames and gaping holes in the facades. In February and March, the neighborhood was the front line between Russian and Ukrainian soldiers. Tatiana Kashouba (babouchka Tania, for friends) saw the artillery fire. There was no electricity, water or heating. She describes the mutual aid of the residents of the building who exchanged the little food they had. But the fighting intensified. A resident had been killed in the yard. It was necessary to evacuate on March 17.

In May, M.^me Kashouba has found his neighbours. The district, transformed into a field of ruins, had to be rebuilt, but his building still stood.

The gas pipes that were used to heat the building and to cook had been severed, but we could still live there. The municipality wanted to destroy it. But she and the other residents opposed it. They even sent a letter to President Zelensky. They prevailed.

Why stay here? ” To go where ? We are offered temporary shelters, but what will happen next? We’re at home here,” the upstairs neighbor explains to me. An Austrian organization has since replaced the windows. Electricity, reconnected in September, has become intermittent again since Russia began destroying the country’s infrastructure. There are approximately four to six hours of electricity per day.

Alexander Derbigov, at 8^e floor does not even have electricity and therefore no heat. This machinist who earns $350 a month cannot afford a generator. So he spends his days at the factory, which she has one. At night, he slips under three blankets and… “I’m fine! »

“You are brave, Alexander!

— No, it’s our guys at the front who are brave!

M’s guesthouse^me Kashouba is not enough to feed herself. Humanitarian aid that passes irregularly could be more generous. She relies on her canned pickles and tomatoes lying around the living room. Plates and pots pile up in the kitchen. There’s a dish of freshly made mashed potatoes on the counter. A tiny electric stove sits on top of the old gas one.

Right in the middle of this landscape of world war, Tatiana Kashouba explains to me that she was born in 1937 in Kyiv. His father died fighting for the Soviet Union in 1942.

At the end of the war, she must have been 6 or 7 years old, she remembers being captured with her mother by Nazi collaborators. A battalion of the Soviet army had heroically rescued them. Now Vladimir Putin’s post-Soviet army is trying to kill her. She shakes her head in incomprehension. “Why this war? Every morning, I listen to the radio hoping that we will be told the end of it. And she bursts into tears. She explains to me that she fears an attack from the north via Belarus this winter. Everybody talks about it. We are only a few hours from the border.

Life has never given Babouchka Tania a gift. She started working at age 12. She had the first of her three children at 17; he died of an aneurysm at age 31. His daughter, employed at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, victim of the 1986 accident, is disabled. But when she talks about the Soviet years, her eyes shine. He had been given this large three-room apartment. She received state medals of courage for her hard work at the Irpin Brick Factory. “Before, Russians and Ukrainians worked together. Now we are enemies. And even though the Germans killed her father and almost took her mother away, she argues that the Russian soldiers are much worse.

M’s face^me Kashouba finally relaxes when she talks about her seven great-grandchildren, including the 21-year-old who is now at the front with Ukrainian forces.

In Kherson, in Kharkiv, in Mikolaiev, all over this country, there are millions of Tania babushkas without heat, electricity or water when temperatures could drop below -20 degrees. For Vladimir Putin, winter is a weapon of war.

“But Tania, why don’t you move to one of your own people?” She nods and nods. She will stay here. In this corner of the world, Tania is no exception. It is simply one of those harsh destinies in a disproportionate history of human tragedies, victims of fascist, totalitarian or ultranationalist despots who legitimize themselves by claiming to defend the people, but for whom the human, the individual, counts for nothing. And it continues.