For several days, the Donbass authorities have been increasing calls to ask residents to flee in order to avoid death. This region of eastern Ukraine is the new military objective of the Russian army whose offensive is about to begin.
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And in Kramatorsk, civilians have fled en masse: the city which, before the war, had nearly 220,000 inhabitants now has four times fewer, but it is not enough to want to leave for power.
Also, since the call of the authorities to evacuate the city, Alexander, a young volunteer, helps the most fragile. “Yes, we are helping people to evacuate to Dnipro, he indicates. It is mostly very old people who find it difficult to move around. There are also many people who don’t have money and our buses are free.”
Volunteers from #Kramatorsk offer free buses to allow the evacuation of the most vulnerable #Donbass #WarInUkraine pic.twitter.com/KiJfx904Q9
— Gilles Gallinaro (@GallinaroG) April 12, 2022
Together with other volunteers, they have chartered an old yellow bus that crisscrosses the city to meet those who cannot flee. Olga lives with her mother on the first floor of a building from another age. Bedridden and disabled, it takes several pairs of arms to carry this elderly person to the bus.
“I don’t have the strength to carry her alone. In addition, recently my mother fell and she hurt her back. We must at all costs evacuate her and bring her out of death and of the war.”
These are very old people, but also families who cannot afford the journey to the town of Dnipro, a four-hour drive away.
“It’s hard to leave, but you really have to save the children, emphasizes Ira, who travels with her two teenagers and her 8-year-old daughter, red-eyed and in a vacuum. I’m too afraid of the bombings. I’m ready to go anywhere, as long as it’s safe. I took the bare minimum: underwear and a pair of socks. And then my papers.” Ira left behind her husband, who is of fighting age. Everyone flees, fear in their stomachs, so as not to find themselves trapped under the fire of the Russian army.