The haggard-eyed man walks slowly, the left sleeve of his gray tracksuit folded at armpit level, down the hallway of a shelter on the Dnipro, the large city in central Ukraine, which has become one of the country’s major humanitarian hubs .

This former conductor, however, struggles to explain what happened to him. Who fired the shell that knocked him down in Avdiivka, an industrial center in the Donetsk region, which Moscow has made one of its priorities? What war did he fall victim to?

I can’t understand what’s going on. In a week I had to change clothes at Myrnorad hospital. (in the middle of the conflict zone, where he was cut off, Editor’s note). But here they told me I had to leave in three dayshe repeated over and over.

” Maybe I better go to the cemetery. I don’t want to live anymore. “

Suffering, physical and/or mental, seemed to be everywhere among the elderly the AFP met at the home of Dnipro, an old maternity hospital that quickly reopened in March to temporarily accommodate internally displaced people.

When a van arrived from the east front, three elderly people were crying in pain, while volunteers doubled their precautions to get them out of the vehicle and make them sit in wheelchairs.

The behavior of other passengers is changeable. An old man, who looked stunned, rushed to his cigarette as soon as he stepped on the ground. He then hurriedly gathered his belongings, as if he had to leave immediately, so that he had reached a place that was finally safe after weeks of hell.

The hardest are those who spend a lot of time in cellarsobservation by Olga Volkova, the volunteer director of the center, where 84 residents are accommodated, 60% of them are elderly. Many people were left alone. Before the war, we helped them, but now they are left to organize themselves.

The elders are often forgotten, very vulnerable during the conflicts, confirmed Federico Dessi, the director for Ukraine of the NGO Handicap International, which provides equipment and financial assistance to the Dnipro home.

Usually separated from the rest of their family at sometimes unable to use the telephone or talkespecially they naghihikahos because of the uncertainties associated with the war, he emphasizes.

Aleksandra Vasilchenko, a Russian from Ukraine who celebrated his 80th birthday last week, was luckier than usual. Solid on his legs despite many illnesses, his grandson came to fetch him as soon as he arrived at the Dnipro home.

An obvious comfort for this charming elder, after the weeks spent alone in [son] three pieces Kramatorsk, where a Russian strike at the railway station recently killed at least 57 people.

Foresighted, the octogenarian would make provisions for food. But I always hide in the bathroom [….] I cried constantly. I was trapped in the househe said, as he wished the death ng Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin and his children.

Zoïa Taran, sitting on a bed, her hands clasped to her walker, is also one of the favored adults, despite only one working stone, a more shaky standing position, diabetes and very difficult sight.

His son Vitali, a former rocker, gave up ang show businessin his words, almost two decades ago to dedicate himself to his mother. I am an old babushkahe smiled, he is my eyes, my hands and my legs.

So when the bombs approached Sloviansk, he who wanted to stay home until finally decided to leave save his son. Why do we need this war? What do they want from us?he sobs.

According to international disability, citing figures from Ukrainian authorities, about 13,000 elderly or disabled people have lived in the Dnipro region since the Russian invasion began, and more than half a million have passed through there.

Ang dear housea former dispensary that became a shelter for the needy, has since welcomed evacuees from Mariupol, the martyred city in the South, along with their children, but also seniors from the east of the country.

If you create 10 new establishments like us, they will immediately fill upstatement by Konstantin Gorchkov, who holds the center with his wife Natalia.

Thirty new residents were added to one hundred or more residents. Among them, Yulia Panfiorova, 83, from Lyssytchansk in the Lugansk region, is considered a priority of Moscow.

The former economics professor recounted three shells that fell near his home, which blew out his windows.

This is my third warafter 1939-45, the conflict began in 2014 in Donbass, of which Lugansk and Donetsk were part, and that was just the beginning, he recalled.

In 1943 Lysychansk was liberated from the Nazis, and I remember it vividly […] Our country is under attack, as it is today. His freedom was threatened, as it is today. Our freedom and liberty is in danger. We have to fight for themhe says. But very scary.