in Groza, hit by a Russian strike, desolation, death and suspicion

A pile of stones, scrap metal, car wrecks, debris fifty meters away, and blood stains everywhere in the grass. This is the landscape on Friday October 6 in the morning in Groza, in the Kharkiv region, in eastern Ukraine, where a Russian missile fell on Thursday October 5, causing the death of 51 people including a six-year-old child.

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This pile of stone and scrap metal was previously the village café. There is almost nothing left this morning, only ruins, around which around ten completely dejected residents have gathered. Many did not sleep all night.

The missile hit the cafe while a funeral was being held there. Kolia, 71, was in his garden at the time, about 100 meters from the cafe. “I was picking apples in my yard. Because of the explosion, I fell to the groundhe says. I went out because my wife was at the funeral. Everything was in smoke, in flames, destroyed. I walked all night.” His wife did not survive.

“I have no words. I’m alone now.”

Kolia, 71 years old

at franceinfo

Among the victims, the vast majority were residents of Groza. It is estimated that approximately one in seven village residents died in this strike and that every family in the village lost at least one of their loved ones. “I knew everyoneconfirms Valentina. Look at this house: it’s Natasha’s. In this family they are all dead. Yesterday around noon, Natasha texted me to invite me to the funeral, saying ‘we’re going’. But my husband and I didn’t go there, otherwise we would have died.”

Valentina’s husband Vadim didn’t sleep all night. He looks at the ruins of the small café and expresses his anger: “I I would strangle them with my own hands… These Russians are not human. The people were gathered, they were peaceful people and the Russians targeted them.”

DNA analyzes are still underway to identify the 51 bodies, including that of a six-year-old child. Some were unrecognizable because of the violence of the explosion. Three days of mourning were declared in this region of Kharkiv.

The trail of an informant

The preferred track at the moment is therefore that of an Iskander ballistic missile, which would have struck the village. This same type of missile had already struck civilians last June in Kramatorsk. A pizzeria was destroyed and the explosion killed twelve people.

Yesterday, the strike was very precise since it directly hit this group of 60 people at the exact moment when these people were gathered in a café for a funeral ceremony. This is why investigators are working on the trail of an informant, someone who would have informed the Russians just before the strike.

“Here in our village we never had any missile strikes, nothing. So for sure someone informed them. They knew there was a funeral. They knew there was going to be a good part of the village.”

It must be said that, in this region of Ukraine, very close to the border, part of the population leans more towards Moscow. So, after death and desolation, it is also time for suspicion in this small village.