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In the town of Siversk, near Donetsk, residents are on their own, deprived of gas and electricity. They therefore have to cut wood to be able to stay warm as winter approaches.
Find wood to warm up and better resist the coming cold. For Valery, it has become an obsession. He lives with his mother in the town of Siversk, near Donetsk, in eastern Ukraine. There is no more gas or electricity, so every day with his chainsaw, he identifies the trees to be cut to the sound of the cannon. “I prepare the wood, a lot of wood. We have no other choice. We can only survive thanks to the wood that I cut, that’s all we have”, he explains. The front line is very close. The Russians are only a few hundred meters away. Since last summer, fighting has been incessant in Siversk. Today, many of those who chose to stay feel abandoned.
Because of Siversk, there is not much left. The town of 12,000 inhabitants is now deserted and disfigured: “Look at this crater. Our school and our technical high school were there. It was bombed six times at least”. In the few buildings that are standing, there are still a few inhabitants. They are waiting for the fighting to end but they are especially afraid of winter, when they have already lost everything. This is why, here, we organize ourselves and cut wood as much as we can. You have to fend for yourself in this chaos and rely on solidarity. But for three days, optimism seems to be back in Siversk. The reconquest of Kherson undoubtedly has a lot to do with it.