in Nikopol, Ukrainians have been living for months to the rhythm of anti-aircraft alerts

In the streets of Nikopol, the first alarm of the day sounded. A dozen women go down to the largest shelter in the neighborhood built under a school. They are mostly teachers or employees of the establishment. This is the case of Ludmila who says that “when there is an alert, you have to take your things and go down to the shelter“.”They can bomb all day“, she says, while Nikopol, a town separated from the Zaporijjia nuclear power plant by the Dnieper River, has been under the threat of bombing for more than two months.

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In recent days, Ukraine has been targeted by drone attacks which particularly affect the capital kyiv. Moscow is putting pressure from above and is also focusing on energy installations. In Nikopol, we know this threat well. “Every day, from 5 or 6 p.m., people come here to spend the night and some even stay all weekend“, adds Ludmila, who believes that “About 200 people gather there“, nightly.

“They have no choice, the houses are targeted. There are pensioners, the disabled, young people and families with their children.”

Daily threats that do not demotivate Ludmila: “We can’t sleep, there are explosions and it’s very scary. But we women, we work, we get busy. We will never get down on our knees. Never !“The alert lasted 45 minutes this time. But last weekend, Ludmila stayed underground for almost 24 hours to escape the shells. With her was Oksana, the school principal, who says: “These are war crimes committed by Russia.“

“There, you see a crater, it’s a shell fire.“In the school playground, Oksana points to a wall riddled with shrapnel and a large hole in the floor.”It happened on Saturday morning between 7 and 8 a.m., when the shelling started“, she says. “There were a lot of people in the shelter. One of the shells fell on the school grounds, you can see the damage”specifies the director, adding that “this is the fourth time this has happened here.“

Since mid-August, artillery fire has been fired from Russian positions, located four kilometers away as the crow flies. Just in front of the six reactors of the Zaporijjia nuclear power plant. Faced with this difficult situation, 80% of Nikopol’s population left. This city deplores a dozen deaths since the beginning of the conflict.