War in Ukraine | An end-of-the-world atmosphere hovers over Siversk

(Siversk) The grave was dug on a sidewalk, in front of one of the only buildings still standing in Siversk. Pounded relentlessly by Russian forces for weeks, the small town in eastern Ukraine, located right on the front line, exudes an end-of-the-world atmosphere.

Siversk breathes fear and death. It is a combat zone, the Russian troops are on the edge of the city, and the Ukrainian artillery fires relentlessly.

The streets are riddled with huge craters, the buildings destroyed or blackened by fire, a dog and a cat are playing around a rocket planted in the sidewalk.

Through the broken windows of the first floors of the buildings, one sees the relics of a life left in haste: dressers, family photos, overturned armchairs.

The grave of Oleksiï, born on February 19, 1976 and died on June 30, 2022, was dug quickly, next to the cultural center of Siversk. A small mound of earth covered with two concrete barriers that act as a tombstone. A bouquet of yellow flowers placed by a benevolent hand. And an inscription, on a cardboard: “rest in peace, my brother, we love you, we remember, we mourn you”.

“What can I tell you? He was sitting there in front of his house, there were two missiles and he was killed instantly,” says Valeri, a 56-year-old neighbor. About the victim, nothing more will be known, it is not necessary to linger more than a few minutes in the same place in Siversk.

empty coffin

The missiles fly over the city, fired on either side by the Russians and the Ukrainians.

Despite everything, a few people circulate in the streets, on bicycles or on foot, with this indecipherable expression of those who are beyond fear.

“I would like to leave, of course, but I have a 90-year-old mother who told me she would die here, I can’t leave her,” said Olexandre, a man in his sixties.

“We have our house here, it’s the job of a lifetime, and we don’t have the money to leave,” says Anjela, a 50-year-old woman, frantically.

At the exit of the cellars where the civilians who remained in this city, which previously had some 10,000 inhabitants, take refuge, braziers are installed for cooking.

Some, however, evacuate. They waited until the last moment to flee, like this family in a car dragging a trailer in which a fridge and a bicycle were piled up.

A torn Ukrainian flag flies over what remains of a building blackened by flames, probably a hotel for workers.

And in front of a house half reduced to ashes, appears the ominous vision of an empty wooden coffin, partially destroyed. Nobody had time to put the person for whom it was intended.