If on the Ukrainian front, the fighting rages and intensifies, the rear is also mobilized and the soldiers try as best they can to take care of each other. Report at the Konstantinivka military canteen, in the east of the country.
Russian and Ukrainian reprisals continue to follow, on land and in the air. kyiv claimed responsibility for a drone attack on Mocou on Monday July 24, after a tense weekend in Ukraine. Sunday, a new Russian attack on the port of Odessa left at least two dead and more than twenty wounded.
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Ukrainian soldiers remain strongly mobilized on the front, but not only. In this canteen, installed in a small communal hall, in Konstantinivka, in the east of the country, 130 soldiers are fed every day. Today, Valera is in the kitchen and offers on the menu: “Vegetable, rice and meat soup, surimi salad, dried fruit infusion.”
“Here, we lack nothing”
Mykola loads the heavy pots into the back of his van. A former truck driver, he is the one who goes back and forth to the front to feed the soldiers. “We drop them off at a place where they left the voids. We pick them up and we leave.”
The journey is 40 kilometers and Mykola is systematically targeted. “Of course, every day. Sometimes we get out of the van in a hurry. We wait for the shooting to stop and we go back. But if it doesn’t hit too hard, we don’t stop and we go on the gas.”
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In the storage room, with walls covered in faded children’s drawings, there are heaps of boxes, jars, cans and even French rations. Food, water, equipment, “here, we lack nothing”explains Ivan.
“Volunteers help us a lot with cars, spare parts. But we also have the means to buy them. We have a good salary. The post office is two minutes away. You call the family, you ask them what you want. The package arrives, you take it.”
“If we have weapons, if we treat the guys well, in my opinion, in a year, it’s over.”
At regular intervals, soldiers push the door of the room to eat or discuss. David arrives from the front, where he participated in the evacuation of the wounded. “I had the blast effect three times. The last was yesterday. I’m deaf in my left ear.”
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His unit is responsible for keeping its position against the Russians. “I won’t leave here. If I leave, either I’m dead or the war is over. If we have weapons, if we treat the guys well, in my opinion, in a year, it’s over.” That will be enough, because the price to pay, adds David, “is already far too high”.
Report in a canteen run by Ukrainian soldiers in Crimea – Isabelle Labeyrie and Gilles Gallinaro