By the time a rocket fell that set fire to the market, “I had gone home, thank God”, said the 38-year-old man while expressing his concern, as Russian forces gained ground. ground.
“I believe that what awaits us is going to be even worse, I have already thought of leaving” from Sloviansk, where the front line is approaching after the fall of Lyssychantsk on Sunday evening preceded by that of the twin city of Severodonetsk, located at fifty miles to the east.
Both towns fell after weeks of fierce fighting and shelling that largely destroyed both city-states.
In an alley of the almost deserted market on Monday, Viktoria Koloty, a 33-year-old woman, says she has already evacuated her children from Sloviansk, but says she did not have time to take all her belongings.
That’s why “I came back to take everything we can at home. Nothing good is going to happen, she says, the best thing is to leave” from Sloviansk, pounded by the Russian army since more than a week.
On Sunday alone, a deluge of rockets and other explosive devices killed at least six people and injured 19.
Natalia Boutok had just left the market when the explosion occurred: “I heard boom! boom! and saw a fire”, says this woman who was among the few sellers returning to the market on Monday, with ginger, lettuce and a little tobacco on his stall.
Doubtful, she wonders how the situation will evolve and what to do. “I hope the future will be better,” she says, smiling, big glasses on the tip of her nose.
– “Show that to Putin” –
In the meantime, residents continue to pick up charred debris in the alleys of the market, as others are working in other parts of the city where rockets fell the day before.
In the yard of her small burnt-out house, strewn with rubble after the roof and part of the brick walls collapsed, Valentina Stelmakh recounts having been saved because she was in the basement of the building with her brother and her sister-in-law at the time of the violent explosion.
“What are we guilty of? But why do they want to kill us? Stop!”, shouts this 64-year-old woman, bursting into tears. “The hens, the dog and the cats were killed, but what did they do?”, she says not far from a lifeless rooster in the middle of debris.
His neighbour, whose house was spared, opens the gate and takes out a large piece of metal with the end deformed by the heat: “It’s a Hurricane”, he says in reference to a category of Russian rockets, of which he says he found part of it after the explosion of the device on his street on Sunday.
In Kramatorsk, residents were also busy Monday picking up debris in this city of the Donetsk region coveted like its neighbor Sloviansk by Russian forces, where several rockets have fallen in recent days.
The fall of a rocket on Sunday evening caused a three-meter crater in a small street where several houses were damaged and where workers are repairing electrical cables. Passing by, a man lets go: “You have to show that to Putin”.
