under the deluge of Russian bombs, the border village of Velyka Pysarivka became a field of ruins

This village located 5 km from Russia experienced a rain of bombings at the end of March. Within ten days, Velyka Pysarivka was reduced to nothing.

In eastern Ukraine, about a hundred kilometers from the front line, another war is being fought: that of the border and the attrition of the inhabitants. After a series of incursions into Russian territory, Moscow bombed Velyka Pysarivka, a village of 4,000 inhabitants located very close to Russia, a few days ago and reduced it to ruins. The Moscow army literally attacked this village located in the Sumy region.

It is a carpet of rubble that we see in what remains of the school corridor and under the broken glass, in the dust, the photos of the students. A landscape of desolation. In the center of Velyka Pysarivka, the Russians destroyed everything at the end of March and in just ten days. “More than 500 strikes, a real deluge”says Arthur, the police chief. “They used the full range of their weaponry, the missiles, the glide bombs, it was continuous and of such intensity”he remembers.

“Even the soldiers who saw Bakhmut say they had never experienced anything like that.”

Arthur, the police chief

at franceinfo

And indeed nothing resisted: neither the school, nor the hospital, nor the library. The miracle is that there were no victims. The police had organized the evacuation as soon as the first explosions occurred. “The Russians do not know how to fight honestly against our soldiers. So they attack civilians, terrorizing them”, judge Victor, 60 years old. The bombs seem to have fallen on his house. The man looks tired of those who have lost everything. The attic fell in his living room and the radiators were torn out by the blast, everything had to be redone. For him it is “a great shock, and tears”.

The frenzy of strikes took place just after a series of incursions, carried out on the border by Russian fighters allied with kyiv, but Victor ignores these explanations, and sighs: “They targeted us, just because we are Ukrainians. I say to these stupid Russians: ‘You saw where you threw your bomb. You threw it at peaceful people.'”. Victor slips that his Russian neighbors are no longer “brothers” for a very long time. “They ruined everything”he regrets.

Velyka Pysarivka had 4,000 inhabitants before the war, there are only a few hundred today. The only light in this field of ruins, the storks return for the season. They reached their nest, at the top of the high chimney, just after the strikes stopped.