The few inhabitants still present in Lyman remained mostly holed up in their homes awaiting the end of hostilities. A life of deprivation. Andreï has taken out his watermelons and onions which he sells on the sidewalk in front of his house, partly blown up by the explosions. “I never stopped selling my fruit and vegetables, despite the bombings and the fighting. What can I do? We have to live well. We were alone, unprotected, abandoned. It was war. Besides, tell me, it’s also war in all of Ukraine, isn’t it?
Ukraine announced on Sunday October 2 that it had taken over Lyman, in the newly annexed region of Donetsk. For months, this strategic city, a regional railway hub, was literally cut off from the world. Today she is released. But the detonations in the distance are a reminder that the fighting is continuing further east. It was in this direction that the Russian soldiers fled in haste. Svetlana met their gaze. “They were terrified. You could see the fear in their eyes. They fled by all means on motorcycles, on bicycles, in the middle of the shelling. There were burning tanks on the road. It was very dangerous. They were afraid that they wouldn’t come out of there alive.”
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Russian soldiers who left behind them a city in ruins where the smell of death hovers. Igor, driving his red Lada, has just been driving around town. “Today I saw something horrible. I passed by the bodies of Russian soldiers. They were eaten by dogs. Why are they left in the street? They should be buried further , even if they are Russians!”
The Russian occupation lasted four months. Sufficient to make himself undesirable in the eyes of certain inhabitants, like Oleksander, relieved by the departure of the soldiers from Moscow. “They all stole me, my electric chainsaw, my tools, my gas cylinders… They took everything they could take. When we saw them in the street, they were always drunk. They behaved like if the city was theirs.” Freed from the Russian army, the inhabitants of Lyman will now try to heal the wounds of the war, without water or electricity, as winter approaches.