In the dilapidated buildings of downtown In Severodonetsk, on the front line of the war in Ukraine, civilians live holed up in their underground shelters and only go out for a few minutes a day. Here, the bombardments were particularly violent in mid-April. We deplore the death of 450 inhabitants of this city of Donbass since the beginning of the war, on February 24. And the announcement by kyiv and the Kremlin of the start of “the battle for Donbass”, feared for weeks, does not reassure them.
>> 56th day of war in Ukraine: follow the evolution of the situation in our live
In a street, a huge crater is visible. “It was about two weeks ago. The shelling was extremely violent. It hit here and there”, remembers Yura, 43 years old. The emaciated face, a red tracksuit, he smokes a cigarette nearby. “VSome neighbors were injured, others died and many fled. There are only six inhabitants left here…”
Around him, potholed streets, strewn with debris and sometimes unexploded rockets. “It’s dangeroussays Yura. You go get bread and you don’t know if you’ll come back.” He himself has seen it during his outings.
“I happened to see bodies that had been lying there for two or three days. No one had picked them up.”
Yura, 43 year old Ukrainianat franceinfo
Yura spends most of his days inside his shelter. “We sleep here, we eat here… In fact, we spend almost all our time here. It’s been almost two months, it’s crazy.” Yura shares this underground shelter with his friend Alexandre. “It’s incomprehensible. Why are they attacking us like this?”he gets angry, anger in his eyes. “So much destruction for nothing…Brothers never go to war. Now we’re not brothers anymore. It’s better they leave Ukraine.”
/2022/04/19/phpornmPn.png)
Yura and Alexandre took their wives to safety in the west of the country: “Only the men remained to fight, if necessary.“The two men in their forties say they are ready to fight, with increased motivation after the recent atrocities committed by Russian forces.