In Sievierodonetsk, “a ghost town” located in the Luhansk region, the Frenchman Henry Camenen, co-founder of the NGO Road to Relief, is orchestrating the evacuation of Ukrainian civilians, after having already participated in the evacuation of Mariupol and Kharkiv.
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“When we arrive, sometimes people have already left or are dead”, he testified at the microphone of the international editorial staff of Radio France. For a week, he has been living with the bombardments, the Russian threat and the civilians who refuse to leave their city. “It’s a battle to convince them that it’s not about being pro-Russian or pro-Ukrainian but about making a choice between life and death“, says Henry Camenen. Monday evening his organization evacuated seven people from the city hospital to take them to Kramatorsk.
franceinfo: In what state is the city?
Henry Camenen: It’s a ghost town. It’s quite stunning. It’s something post apocalyptic. All the streets are destroyed. One in two buildings collapsed. There are blown up cars all over the place that serve as checkpoints or roadblocks. There are cables all over the ground, debris, shards. The city is empty, you can’t see a living soul. We only hear the shelling.
How are evacuations going for you?
We know this from Mariupol. Any foreigner does not last long against a Russian.
“Meeting a Russian, for us, is certain death.”
Henry Camenen, co-founder of the NGO Road to Reliefat franceinfo
In terms of security, there is quite intense shelling in the city and a few days ago there was street fighting close to us, towards the hospital from which we are evacuating civilians, which is near from the front line. There it is common to hear gunshots and fighting. There was even a helicopter flying over the area a few days ago.
How do you work with the population?
In Sievierodonetsk there is a humanitarian center, where we go first, under the escort of the Ukrainian police. This is where a coordinator gathers people who want to be evacuated. There is an underground fallout shelter right next to it, where the living conditions are quite frightening. We also have addresses where we try to pick up people. This is often a problem because there has been no connection in the city for weeks, so when we arrive sometimes people have already left or are dead. There is this somewhat unpredictable side. Finally, we also evacuate patients from the hospital. We’ve had to go from bombardment to bombardment before trying to recover people from buildings that had just been hit.
Do the people who remain wish to be evacuated?
No. People have nothing left to eat.
“What they want is humanitarian aid, not evacuations.”
Henry Camenenat franceinfo
If there are 6,000 who remain, they are the last 6,000 resisters and they are not in favor of evacuations by foreign organizations. They are rather favorable to Russia and tell us moreover that they are waiting for the release of the Russians. There is a great general distrust, a great fear, and when you arrive with the Ukrainian police, it is a battle to convince them that it is not a question of being pro-Russian or pro-Ukrainian but of doing a choice between life and death.