MYRONIVSKY, Ukraine – This is one place the cease-fire missed.
The Donetsk Oblast town of Myronivsky, located along the so-called “road of life” that connects the besieged railway junction Debaltseve with the rest of Ukrainian-controlled territory, has been shelled non-stop since the Feb. 15 cease-fire began.
The local residents who are staying in the city — with a pre-war population of 8,000 people — are forced to live in bomb shelters or regular basements because no peace came after the Feb. 12 Minsk agreement reached by the leaders of Ukraine, Germany, France and Russia.
On the morning of Feb. 16, a crowd of people gathered by the local cultural center, queuing for a new portion of humanitarian aid delivered by the International Red Cross.
“We have neither electricity, nor water, gas or heat,” says Natalia Filiayeva, a teacher turned leader of other residents. “People tend to live in basements, as it is warmer there.”
Filiayeva holds an onion in her hand, as she gets ready to start cooking over open fire, the only way she can cook in this town.
Myronivsky was originally built to service a hydroelectric power plant. Most adults were employed there. But now, only an estimated 2,000 adults and 800 children remain in town, Filiayeva says.
“I also wanted to leave the town in the very beginning, but than decided to stay because everything would be robbed here otherwise,” Filiayeva said.
People use minutes of relative calm to get out of their shelters to get some fresh air, cook and check the scale of destruction. Several houses burned down to the ground, many others were partially destroyed. Destruction and shelling are so common that locals no longer even blink to the sound of artillery. They say the fire is coming from Ukrainians who shell the Russia-backed separatists. They fear counter-attacks.
“It will be scary when the response comes here,” said a teenage boy who stands by the makeshift bomb shelter set up in the basement of a five-storied apartment building.
The Donetsk Oblast town of Myronivsky, under the control of Ukrainian forces, has been constantly shelled since the Feb. 15 cease-fire, residents say. The town with a pre-war population of 8,000 people has lost more than half of its residents, who fled the fighting. It is also only 20 kilometers northwest of the embattled city of Debaltseve, where thousands of Ukrainian soldiers are facing bombardment from Kremlin-backed separatists.
A local retiree who identifies herself as Nadiya took the initiative to set up this shelter and says that she and some 40 other people have been living in these since Jan. 22, when the heavy shelling started. She did not give her last name because of fear of retribution for her pro-Ukrainian position in case the Kremlin-backed separatists take over the town.
About a dozen civilians were killed by shelling since then. “A shell killed an 11-year-old girl, a classmate of my daughter,” says a tall woman with long white hair, who lives in the basement together with her child.
The basement is dark, narrow and dirty. The only heating comes from a clumsily made wood-burning oven, which the residents call a “burzhuika.” There is no electricity here, so everyone nurses a torch in their pocket.
Nadiya carefully helps the Kyiv Post reporter to dodge the water and gas pipes crisscrossed inside the basement, which was never meant to be lived in by humans. She is worried about the muck and shows off her grubby fur jacket that was once blue.
Her other worry is the corpse of a man which has been in the yard for days. “Why doesn’t anybody pick him up? He has been here for about 12 days. Someone just covered the body with a blanket and took off his boots,” she lamented.
One of the most common subjects of discussions in the basement is who to blame for the horrors of Myronivsky. Many people here continue to believe that it’s shelled from Ukrainian positions, despite the fact that the village is controlled by the central government’s army, and serves as a checkpoint for the armored personnel vehicles that travel to and from Debaltseve.
“Many people have been zombified by the Russian TV here, but I never watch it,” Nadiya says.
She is sure that the separatists and Russian regular army are to blame. She takes a cartridge from Grad multiple rocket launcher, which flew into the yard from the eastern suburb. “There is DNR (self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic) and Russia in the east, it’s their job,” she says.
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from www.mymedia.org.ua, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action. Content is independent of the donor.
