The daily bombings that hit Kramatorsk and the surrounding cities – in the north of Donetsk– they do not stop increasing. Russiawhich uses in this part of Ukraine the dreaded KABs – highly destructive guided aerial bombs – combined with suicide drones and artillery, is crushing neighborhood by neighborhood of what was once a prosperous town linked to blast furnaces and metallurgy.
The objectives are not barracks or trenches. It is about attacks on residential buildings, hospitalsgrocery stores. Attacks like the one that hit Kramatorsk early this Sunday, when Russia blew up a residential neighborhood with three aerial bombs weighing 250 kilos each.
The explosions reverberated in waves just as the clock struck 5 a.m. And although the air raid sirens had not stopped bellowing all night, the roar of the explosions caught the residents unexpectedly of the city, who were still sleeping.
A resident of Kramatorsk empties the buckets she has filled with glass from her house, bombed by Russia on Sunday morning.
Later, upon reaching the impact zone, the only thing that could be heard was the sound of broken glass as people dumped buckets into garbage containers. The whole block was like a apocalyptic scenariowith burned cars, fallen trees and remains of windows and doors torn off by the explosion.
And the transfer of men and women loaded with those buckets, from their homes to the containers, over and over again. With a confused expression, some still in robe and pajamasdespite the subzero temperatures and the snow that kept falling.
“I was sleeping with my grandson. There was a loud bang, the house shook hard and I heard a man shout outside“, says Halina, one of the neighbors. “I got dressed and ran out, the man was sitting here, completely naked, and there was a lot of blood. I saw that everything was collapsing around me, and then there was a second explosion and absolutely everything blew up.”
A 78-year-old woman died. Three men between 77 and 85 years old were also injured. That is the average age of the people that Russia kills every day in Donbas, in the face of the passivity of an international community that looks the other way, while night after night Putin bombs civilian targets.
Run away, where?
With Russian troops just 15 kilometers from Kramatorsk, civilians are feeling more anguish than ever. Every day there are evacuations, people leaving their homes and embarking on a one-way trip to other parts of the country, or even to other countries in Europe.
“At the moment we will go to my husband’s town“says Natalia. The windows of her kitchen have been torn out, and she sweeps up the pulverized glass that covers the floor in one of the seven buildings hit by the Russian bombs. “We can’t sleep here today, we’ll think later.”
Consequences of the bombing that Russia carried out against a residential neighborhood of Kramatorsk early on Sunday.
The situation is similar in the nearby cities of Slavic y Druzhkivka. In the latter, NGO volunteers dedicated to evacuating residents who cannot leave on their own have to be equipped with bulletproof vests and helmets, and with frequency jammers, because FPV drones constantly attack their humanitarian convoys.
People try to stay in their homes until the situation is unsustainable. And the majority is very old peoplewho has nowhere else to go. When asked why they wait until the bombs fall on their houses, most of them respond the same: “Go, where? With what money? How do I start from scratch?”
Some have their children refugees in other European countries; and others already fled at some point during the last four years of large-scale invasion, but have had to return because they did not find a way to make a living elsewhere, and the only thing they had left was their home in the Hilly.
Basements and sirens
These two provinces of Ukraine, Lugansk and Donetsk, are ground zero of a war that began here almost 12 years ago. Lugansk is already completely occupied by Russian troops; northern Donetsk still resists. But the cost of this resistance is very high for its inhabitants, bombed daily and exhausted.
Because listening to air raid sirens more than 20 times a day It is exhausting, because here when the electricity goes out there are no parties with music in the middle of the ice – like in Kiev – to alleviate the torture of not having more than 3 or 4 hours of electricity supply at home.
In the cities of Donbas there is no space for cultural resistance, nor for Instagram videos. Here you only hear the drone of suicide drones and the roar of explosions, which keeps them awake half the night. And there are not even bomb shelters in all buildings.
A resident of Kramatorsk tries to access her home after a heavy Russian bombing of her neighborhood.
So most people stay at home during the nightly bombardments that repeat daily. And that every day they leave a drip of dead that no longer opens the television news.
While the international news talks about rounds of negotiations, in Abu Dhabi and Miami, the inhabitants of Donbas are trying to decide whether to hold out one more day or put their belongings in plastic bags and ask an NGO to take them out of here. During the last week, only in the small town of Druzhkivkamore than 3,700 residents were evacuated, including 29 families with 41 children.
As the Russian Army advances, Donbas is reduced to rubble. It is the same still photo that was seen in Bakhmutin Avdiivka or in Toretsk when the Russian siege against them began. Now Putin’s troops fight in the streets of Pokrovsk and Mirnograd, while they fight to enter Kostyantinivka and bombard Kramatorsk without rest, with its civilian population inside.