“Do you understand that this is a battlefield?” A police officer despairs as a young woman with her two children refuses to leave the Ukrainian city of Lysychansk, which is too close to the war front.
A few minutes earlier, bullets had hit the buildings in the war-ravaged industrial city.
Enraged police officer Viktor Levshenko points to the sky and tries to persuade Angelina Abakumova to get into an armored car.
The vehicle is expected to take the family past Russian artillery posts to a slightly safer part of Ukraine.
“Seriously, tell me what you’re still doing here with the kids,” asks the professional athlete who heads the regional traffic police.
“Do you understand that this is a battlefield?” she insists.
The 30-year-old woman listens quietly and stands firm. However, Levshenko continues to say that he could die with his children.
He explains that his presence undermines Ukraine’s efforts, as the military should focus on civilians rather than fighting the Russians.
He gives up at the woman’s insistence.
“We’ll be back tomorrow and hopefully see your stuff ready. These kids should be taken to a safe place,” the police say.
“I won’t change my mind,” Abakumova whispers as she returns to the bunker.
“It’s dangerous here now. Then things change and it gets dangerous elsewhere. What’s the point of going back and forth?” he asks.
Like Abakumova, some civilians in eastern Ukraine decided to stay in their homes in hopes of incessant shelling by Russian troops and ending the war.
Among the reasons for his stay were the lack of money to start a new life in another city and the fear of losing his home. But these reasons do not convince Levchenko.
“I don’t think people understand the whole situation,” she says after meeting her young mother.
“To reach these people, feed them and try to get them out of their homes, we must avoid bombings and pave the way in very difficult conditions,” he explains.
“People here think everything will be okay,” he adds, referring to the dozens of people hiding in the underground corridors and interconnected basements of one of the city’s buildings.
“But unfortunately, all is not well,” the 33-year-old continues.
“Ball Bait”
Volunteers distributing food in shelters estimate that about 20,000 of Lysychansk’s 100,000 residents are still trying to survive in the besieged city.
There is no electricity or telephone service. The water supply has been cut off since April and the gas supply should be cut off in the next few days.
Civilians still marching through the city streets seem almost unaware of rockets and artillery fire from Russian troops trying to isolate this mining basin from the rest of Ukraine.
When retired Volodymyr Dobrorez awoke, he counted more than 30 artillery hits near a bridge leading to Severodonetsk, a nearby town now partially under Russian control.
“The last three days have been particularly bad,” the 61-year-old said.
But many who stay in the city understand that their lives will never be the same as they were before the Russian invasion on February 24.
Abakumova said that she should weigh the fate of her children with the fate of her husband and brother.
“Men of war-age are immediately summoned and sent to the front like cannon fodder,” he says as his son and daughter play on the bunker floor.
“I won’t let my husband and brother go. They die the first day,” she concludes.
source: Noticias
