(Bakhmout) For three months, Oleksandra Pylypenko, 67, and her husband Mykola, who suffers from cancer, have been living in Bakhmout without water, electricity, gas, but also without basic foodstuffs, while the city, on the eastern front of Ukraine, is crumbling over the Russian bombardments.
Posted at 2:53 p.m.
Once inhabited by 70,000 people, the locality, known for its wine and its salt mine, found itself at the top of the targets targeted by Moscow in July, after Russian troops captured Sievierodonetsk and Lyssychansk, in neighboring Donbass.
Three months of shelling did not overcome the resistance of the Ukrainian soldiers, when Bakhmout, on the other hand, was emptied of its population… or at least of those who could flee a now very calm city, when the shells are silent , and largely destroyed.
Oleksandra and Mykola couldn’t. Like all the inhabitants of eastern Bakhmout, they now have to cross the Bakhmuta river on unstable planks to get to the city center, Kyiv troops having blown up the bridge in the event of a Russian advance.
Mykola, a former furniture factory worker with lung cancer, “isn’t even able to go down into the basement” of their small house when the guns rumble, according to Oleksandra. Crossing the river is simply unthinkable for him.
” Nothing to do ”
As the cold and winter approach, as does the Russian army, Oleksandra bursts into tears, recounting her misfortunes to AFP: “Firewood, how can I get it? There’s no way to get any here. I have no money to pay for a delivery. »
While the couple currently have more bunches of sweet purple grapes around the house than they will be able to eat and they have been able to harvest buckets of nuts, there is a lack of basic products, starting with potatoes and onions, she laments.
And to list: “No gas, no electricity for three months, no water”, except that which the rain brings, which Oleksandra says “to use for cooking. »
The sky was rather rainy at the start of the week, turning the dirt roads used by military convoys into fields of mud. The steep banks of the Bakhmuta, which lead to the makeshift pontoon, prove to be more slippery than ever.
The couple, whose children and grandchildren have fled, feel trapped. “Now it is dark. What to do ? Nothing. We can not do anything. And these explosions, we can’t stand them anymore. When will this be over? », Panicks Oleksandra.
Their tete-a-tete is all the more distressing as Mykola, 66, risks not making it through the winter, even if the war spares him. “They told me to get ready, that’s all,” sighs his wife. I go out and cry so he doesn’t see me. »
“Hysterical”
From her house, with its roof damaged by shrapnel, Oleksandra sees the church of Saint Mykola, also hit by the war. The fountain in front of the door has been covered in plastic, the stained glass windows condemned. The bell tower appears perforated by a shell, the walls marked by fragmentation bombs.
In Bakhmout, residents are reluctant to give their surnames to AFP, a Russian force, presumably led by mercenaries from the Wagner Company, seizing villages south of the city. The fighting intensifies. Exchanges of artillery fire break out every day.
“I have no idea who is bombing,” said Gennady, 66, a jerry can of water on the rack of his bike.
“From here, from there, from there. Automatic weapons, heavy machine guns. You never know what they’ll shoot next,” he told AFP, returning home to his adult son. His wife fled the city. “She was hysterical, she was shaking.”
Fatalistic, he adds: “What happens, happens. I go to bed and I sleep. I don’t hide in the cellar. His neighbour’s house was hit by a bombardment…”.