(Stanitsa Luganska) The director of the kindergarten bombed Thursday in Stanitsa Luganska, on the front line in eastern Ukraine, spent a sleepless night, forced to hide in the face of new heavy gunfire.
Posted at 12:10 p.m.
Destroyed high-voltage lines hang from their wooden poles and heavy artillery fire was still audible Friday in this small town of 12,000 inhabitants, whose images of the school with a hole in the wall were found Thursday at the in the news and in the conversations of world leaders.
This escalation, at a time when the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists accuse each other of bombing and “provocations”, is seen as a further sign of an upcoming Russian invasion of Ukraine feared for months by Westerners. .
According to the NGO Vostok SOS, which helps people in eastern Ukraine, more than 20 apartment buildings were damaged by the bombardments.
“In one of these houses, a family slept in the open air. It has nowhere to go,” Kostiantyn Réutski, its director, told AFP: “Residents need housing.”
The headmistress of the school, Natalia Boutenko, 38, returned there in the morning “to clean up a bit”.
The floor of the gym is strewn with a thick pile of bricks. Three soccer balls lie on debris in a corner decorated with posters.
“The children are scared”
“Children are scared, adults are also anxious. In our homes, we are not safe either, we have to hide,” she said, adding that her family had to go down twice to a bomb shelter in the night from Thursday to Friday.
Three adults were slightly injured by the shock wave, but the 20 children inside escaped unscathed: they were having breakfast in the canteen when the shell fell.
Furniture is used to plug holes in walls or windows with broken panes. “If there are new shots, we will run and take refuge in the house next door,” explains Natalia Boutenko.
Part of the locality is still without electricity on Friday and some shops and gas stations remain closed. Cars of the mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), responsible for observing violations of the ceasefire supposed to be in force, and humanitarian organizations drive in the city.
The operation of mobile telephone networks is disrupted in Stanitsa Luganska and Severodonetsk, not far from there, noted AFP journalists.
“Destabilize Ukraine”
“Acts of sabotage”, according to Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior who believes on Telegram messaging that “this is part of Russia’s plan to destabilize Ukraine”.
“Villages around Stanitsa Luganska, including Artemove, are under fire. It will be like that in the days to come. We want to force Ukraine to surrender,” Yuri Zolkine, mayor of Stanitsa Luganska, told AFP.
100 km south-west of there, on the front line in Novolouganské, Ukrainian soldiers have also observed more intense fighting in recent days. “It’s been quiet for a few hours,” a soldier who gives only his first name, Andriï, told AFP.
“But in the morning, around 7 a.m., first from the right, then from the left, they were shooting at us with prohibited weapons,” he adds, referring to the heavy weapons supposed to have been withdrawn from the front, under the 2015 Minsk peace accords.
Do not respond to “provocations”
“Before, they fired with small arms, conventional grenades, grenade launchers. But now they are using more serious weapons: artillery and anti-tank missiles,” adds Andriï.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Oleksii Reznikov told parliament on Friday that the armed forces were extremely careful not to do anything that could incite Russia to launch the dreaded offensive.
Andriï ensures to follow these instructions.
“We’re not fighting back,” he said. “If they launch a direct offensive, we’ll have to hold them back. But, otherwise, we do not respond to provocations”.