War in Ukraine | In Izioum, “if nothing is done, we will still have to spend the winter in the cellar”

(Izium, Ukraine) Three weeks after its liberation, the town of Izium, in the Kharkiv region, lives in expectation. Without gas or electricity, the inhabitants dread the coming winter.

On a rainy Tuesday morning, the muddy road to Shakespeare Cemetery is empty. For the past few days, the hordes of journalists have deserted the city. Only a soldier bars the entrance to the pine forest adjoining the cemetery where hundreds of corpses were discovered. “You can no longer enter here, there is nothing more to see. The exhumation of the bodies is over.

In total, 471 corpses of Ukrainians were discovered, according to the town hall of Izioum, some bearing traces of torture. More than 1000 Ukrainians are said to have lost their lives in this city during the months of Russian occupation. Now, a long work begins: autopsies, DNA samples, identification and return of bodies to bereaved families. In the distance, hundreds of anti-personnel mines laid by Russian forces all over the city continue to explode at regular intervals. In Izioum, it is still too early to say that life has resumed its course.

On the town’s main square, where all the buildings were destroyed, around thirty people are sheltering under a tree while waiting for the arrival of humanitarian aid. No one knows when it will arrive. Apart from a band of teenagers crossed in what remains of the city center, young people seem to have deserted the city.

Irina and Svetlana, in their fifties, have been waiting for several hours. “There is no more electricity, no more gas. We would like at least some candles. Who will take care of us? “, worries Svetlana, a blonde woman with blue eyes and drawn features. The banks have not reopened, she cannot withdraw her retirement pension, which has not been paid since the beginning of the Russian occupation seven months ago.

As for its stock of wood, it will be insufficient to survive the winter. “We asked the administration for permission to go get some in the forest. But we were told it is too risky because of the mines”, regrets her friend Irina, whose neighbor was killed in the bombardment of her house.

Since Izioum was liberated three weeks ago, residents’ relief has been short-lived. After months spent in the damp underground, cut off from the outside world, subject to the goodwill of the Russian occupier, people must continue to face scarcity and uncertainty. However, the release brought hope for Irina: “A neighbor came to tell us that it was over, but I couldn’t believe it. Then we heard Ukrainian speaking, we saw soldiers passing with their blue bands on their arms and we knew it was over., she remembers fondly. “But we are still afraid that the Russians will come back. We live day to day. We need peace now. »

“Where have the beautiful promises gone? »

Further on, in a residential area with demolished facades, two women are boiling water in an improvised stove under the gaze of a starving cat, soon to be kicked out.

The two babushkas have not taken off since the liberation. “No gas, no electricity, where have the beautiful promises of the town hall gone? Katarina, a 71-year-old woman, pretends to wonder, loading the hearth with a few twigs. “If nothing is done, we will still have to spend the winter in the cellar. »

The first time she came out of this makeshift closet she shared with her neighbors, and where a few mattresses are always installed just in case, she did not recognize her garden. “It was at the end of March. There was smoke and fire everywhere, our roof and that of the building next to it were destroyed, the walls riddled with impacts,” adds Katarina, who says she lost 22 kilos during the occupation.

Paradoxically, she seems less angry with the Russian army than with the town hall of Izioum. According to her and the few neighbors who crowded the garden, the Russians who occupied the neighborhood were polite and respectful.

“At least, when the Russians were there, we had bread regularly and it was shared fairly among the people, not like with the Ukrainian humanitarian distribution,” said one of them. “It seems that there is even a bus that was set up by the Russian army,” adds a neighbor, who concedes that she has never seen it with her own eyes.

At the town hall, we assure that the situation should improve in the coming weeks. “Within 10 days, we hope that the electricity will be back as well as the gas and the internet connection. Then the banks should be able to reopen. The most important thing for everyone now is to anticipate winter, ”explains the first deputy mayor, a thirty-year-old in a tracksuit. Suspended on his telephone, he seems bent under the requests of the inhabitants of Izioum.

Crossed by chance in front of what remains of his house, bombed in March, the former mayor of the city until 2006, Bogdan Sydor, rolls his eyes: “I hear all these criticisms from the release. People complain that they weren’t evacuated in time, but the reality is that they didn’t want to leave. Neither do I, by the way, ”explains the 79-year-old former city councilor, blue cap screwed on his head, before passing a bottle of cherry eau-de-vie hidden in a bottle of soda with a band of soldiers inspecting surrounding houses.

He has lived in Izium for 60 years, recounting the time when the city housed the largest factory of optical devices in the Soviet Union: 8,000 employees, and 400 subsidiaries throughout the empire. The factory was a shadow of its former self since the fall of the USSR, it was finally bombed at the start of the war, after surviving the German invasion during World War II.

Two houses further on, in his street, the Russians had established one of their headquarters in a requisitioned house.

“They stole my things and my washing machine. It’s the first thing I picked up when they left, ”says Bogdan Sydor, in a light tone.

At the end of the day, a van finally stops in the town’s main square. Twenty residents scramble to collect the few winter clothes distributed by an organization of Ukrainian volunteers. Further on, soldiers patrol and check the passports of passers-by. “Apparently, there are still Russian soldiers who have not managed to evacuate and who are hiding in Izioum”, slips a resident.