(Mykolaiv) A district of bars of sad and gray buildings, in the suburbs of Mykolaiv, a city in southern Ukraine under Russian fire. The shell left a gaping hole on the second floor, the metal door was torn off, the windows blown out. “Bastards”, breathes Liliana, resident of 4and stage.
Posted at 9:45 a.m.
The bombardment occurred around 5 a.m. on Monday. Miraculously, there are no casualties. “I was sleeping, the windows started to shake, I stuck myself against a wall,” says Vitali Sobolev, a septuagenarian whose devastated kitchen adjoins the point of impact.
In this very poor neighborhood, there are no military targets, just civilians, “people who have nothing and whom no one is helping”, says Liliana Sidorska, the resident of the fourth. “What is the Ukrainian government doing? Why are the Russians coming here to bomb us? They are bastards, bastards, ”she repeats.
Mykolaiv and its region have been the scene of heavy fighting and shelling for several days. The city of 500,000 inhabitants, which paid a heavy price under the Nazi occupation during the Second World War, is the last lock on the Black Sea before the great port city of Odessa, 130 km further west, strategic objective for the Russian forces.
This Tuesday, the situation seems relatively calm, sporadic bombardments resound. But above all, people flee. Miles and miles of cars wait to cross the bridge over the river that crosses the city, to go west. A little further at the exit of the city, another Ukrainian checkpoint, and still these cars, many with a ridiculous poster indicating “children” on board.
“Let our planes bomb the Russians!” »
In front of the city’s central hospital, where doctors are mobilized to deal with a possible influx of victims, Sabrina, a 19-year-old young woman is waiting for her mother, who has come to be treated for a sick kidney. “Afterwards, we leave, as quickly as possible, by bus. We can’t stay any longer, it’s too dangerous, ”said the young woman, a small dog on a leash, a cat taking refuge in the cutout of her down jacket, and bags scattered around her. She has no news of her husband, gone to the front.
Several young soldiers are hospitalized here, like Olexandr, in his twenties, his leg broken and riddled with shrapnel after a Russian bombardment of his barracks on Monday. According to the young man, eight of his comrades died, eight others disappeared and 18 were injured.
Impossible to verify his statements, anyway, even the chief surgeon, Doctor Dmytro Sykorsky, does not take into account the wounded and the dead. Too complicated. He knows that in the early days of the war, 160 soldiers were treated in his hospital, and that many civilians are now arriving.
Wounded Russian soldiers? “There were a few, but we can’t approach them, it’s the soldiers who take care of them”, answers the Dr Sykorsky.
On his floor are mainly treated civilians. Like Vira Pismenna, a beautiful sixty-something woman with blue eyes and white hair, her face covered in dried blood and a big bandage on her temple. She was the victim of a bombardment in the village of Snegirovka, about sixty kilometers from Mykolaiv. His nephew and two children are still there, holed up in a shelter. “Let our planes bomb the Russians for what they did to us!” exclaims the woman with the sweet face.
In another room, Maxime Sokol quietly allows his head to be bandaged.
On the torso and arms of the young man are tattooed a dragon, a Kalashnikov, a wolf and a hound. Maxime was throwing a Molotov cocktail at a Russian tank when he was injured by gunfire. “It was two, three or four days ago, I can’t remember,” said the young man, who has “a very bad headache”. His mother, of whom he is the only son, explains that he could not join the army for health problems, and that he therefore joined the civilian volunteers of the Territorial Defense.
In a weak voice, Maxime jokes with the nurse, asks her if she has ever been on a safari. “We’ll go after the war,” she promises him kindly. ” When ? he replies. ” I do not know “.