“I’m so scared”: Confessions of Ukrainians in destroyed houses due to constant bombing

Galina Chernaya sobs, remembering bombardment Russian who devastated the apartment right above hers, leaving behind a trail of destruction that also erased the meager patch of security that this 75-year-old woman in Ukraine clung to.

This woman is the only remaining resident of a 9-story building located in Saltovkaa residential area of ​​Kharkiv that has been under constant bombardment since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“I’m so scared because I’m alone here, I’m very lonely,” says a shivering woman who lost her daughter to alcoholism last year.

Sitting in a tub, she says that when a rocket falls, it throws itself to the ground. “Maybe that’s why I’m still alive,” he says.

Saltovka it was a suburban city built in the 1960s for industrial workers and once had a population of half a million people.

After the start of the war on February 24, already in the first days, Iskander missiles began to randomly hit these residential buildings, destroying some and leaving others intact.

But as the war drags on area it is increasingly damaged, and most of the building now lies in ruins.

In the first days of spring, Galina’s hands went numb, her fingers froze to blackness. During It had no electricity for the first six weeks of the war. This week again went gas.

return of nature

Every street is lined with charred houses with broken windows and holes in the masonry, testifying to the intense siege.

In many buildings, the cracks are so deep that it seems that they are about to collapse.

Blocks that survived the bombing are more common inside condominiums, but there really is no place that is really safe, due to the random nature bombardment.

According to accusations from organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch that Kremlin denies.

In some parts of this neighborhood nature it gains strength, and some herbs reach waist height. With most of the children gone, the cherry trees are left untouched, and the fruit is waiting to be picked or falling to the cratered ground.

Some of Galina’s neighbors have taken up residence in a gloomy cavernous hideout under the school.

Antonina Nikolayeva, 71, left her home with her husband and about 40 others when the war began. But her husband died of a heart attack a month later.

“70 Bombs a Day”

His son, soldier of the extinct Soviet armyHe died decades ago. The woman could not bury her husband next to her son, as the cemetery was dusty with earth. bombardment.

“It always scares me when I hear explosions because I’m afraid the building will fall on us,” he says.

This was announced by the governor of the Kharkov region Oleg Sinegubov. AFP that Saltovka is almost “completely destroyed”.

The most urgent task is to restore heating before the onset of winter and the temperature drop to -7 degrees.

The task of protecting residents falls partly on Vladimir Manzhosov, a 57-year-old plumber who is part of the city council’s brigade.

He lives alone in Saltovka, having sent his wife and two children to a relatively safe place in western Ukraine, the city of Lvov.

“The hardest time was around March because it was cold and there were about 70 bombs falling in the area,” he says.

Regardless, he hopes the future will be better, with the return of public transport and the reopening of some businesses.

“I live on the first floor, so if they hit my building, I will be fine,” he says.

“If something happens to me and I find myself under the rubble, I have a bottle of water and a flashlight by the bed,” he concludes.

AFP