While the Russian army pounds the center of the city taken up by the Ukrainian forces, its inhabitants brave winter and the shells.
by Emmanuel Grynszpan (Kherson, sent special)
Russians and Ukrainians celebrate the arrival of winter with the first big snow. The Russian artillery celebrated this event on Thursday 1 er December, by a rain of shells on the inhabitants of Kherson and the right bank of the Dniepr. The shelf lasted all day Thursday, killing at least one and two injured, according to a provisional assessment of the Ukrainian local administration. The fire came from multiple rocket launchers, tanks and mortars installed on the left bank of the river, sometimes camping less than 10 kilometers from their targets.
In downtown Kherson, dozens of buildings have been affected by shots. “I heard four explosions around midnight. I was already sleeping,” said Olga Sitka, 67, between two broom to clear the broken glass on the sidewalk on the street Illi Kulyka. “You see my apartment on the fourth floor? The ceiling is pierced by bursts of shells. Electricity had just been restored on Wednesday. Now, he made a freezing cold again,” complains this woman of puny constitution .
“It always falls on civilians!”
Thursday morning, a host of neighbors observed the damage caused by the night bombing. Four buildings are strongly damaged, all the windows are broken, some vehicles riddled with bursts have burned. Two shell impacts dug the bitumen of the counter-alley, two others have each punctured the facade of a building. “It is a miracle that no one was killed,” notes a passer -by. “We were lucky that the gas tube was not hit. The municipal services immediately cut it and the firefighters quickly extinguished the burned cars,” said the retiree, who confides in not having slept of the night.
But neither fear, nor fatigue, nor the cold will throw it on the road. “I do not want to leave because I refuse to abandon my three cats, more that which my neighbor told me. My children left at the start of the war. I understand them, but I am different. I want to die at home, “she says in a tone of challenge.
Volodymyr, a forty-something man who lives on the ground floor, listened to the conversation while he was busy, sawing a board maintained on a bench by a neighbor. He has already finished clogging his windows. The evocation of a departure touched a sensitive string in him. “I supported the spines [commonly used assembly of the words” Russian “and” fachists “] for eight months, it is not to flee now, he says between the teeth. It’s my earth, I will stay until ‘At the end, even if I have to die of cold! sooner or later, our army Boutera the occupants outside Ukraine. “
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