This city in eastern Ukraine has been emptied of its inhabitants, many of whom are fleeing the arrival of Russian troops. franceinfo met volunteers who chose to stay there, despite everything.
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Moscow makes no mystery of its objectives: to take, in the coming weeks, total control of southern Ukraine and the Donbass region two months after the start of the war. In the sights of the Russian forces, there is in particular the city of Sloviansk, 100,000 inhabitants before the conflict, less than 30,000 today. And among them, civilians who have taken up arms but are not worried by the threat, like Pavel, who wanders around the city that is barricaded.
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This civilian who has joined the army reserve is confident and does not want to hear about the Kremlin’s call to lay down their arms. “No one will surrender, he assures. We will fight until victory. Our country needs offensive weapons and heavy artillery, tanks and planes.”
At his side, his friend Dmytro rejoices in the setbacks of the Russian army which has been struggling for several days to break through the Ukrainian lines. “They don’t have the means to surround us or launch a big offensive, he indicates. They have redeployed troops in the Donbass, but it won’t help!” And when asked what he thinks of the Russian army, presented as infallible, he answers: “She sucks! We saw her fight! Compared to us, the Russian army is worth nothing. The Soviet army was made up of many Ukrainian soldiers. That’s why it was powerful. Today , Ukrainians are fighting for their land.”
For this soldier from Sloviansk, the Russian army has already paid a heavy price in this war, even heavier than in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
“It’s a hundred times worse! Afghanistan was nothing! Death awaits the Russians here.”
“They lost more than 10,000 men in ten years in Afghanistan, while here, 20,000 are killed in 52 days, that’s the truth”, he concludes. A humiliation that Vladimir Putin tries to hide from his people.