Donetsk, Petrovka: children play in shell craters, people live in basements (PHOTO)
Donetsk, August 17 (Navigator, Mikael Chagalyan) – The combat zone is expanding, and Donetsk is getting more and more every day. It has already become commonplace for shells to hit residential buildings in central areas, and the sounds of cannonade can be heard throughout the city.
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But there are areas, some of which, apparently, are simply uninhabitable: most houses are destroyed or damaged, life support systems (water supply, sewerage, heating and electrical substations) are destroyed.
These include the Petrovsky district of Donetsk, or, as the locals call it, Petrovka. To give the reader an idea of the scale of what is happening, let’s say that Petrovka is approximately one and a half (minimum) times larger in area than the city of Slavyansk, and the same in population. Speaking of population. Many residents spend most of their time in basements and bomb shelters.
Due to the lack of electricity and gas in many parts of the region, food is cooked over fires, right on the street. The life of these people resembles a plot from a horror movie. During the day, they try to find food and prepare food, charge their phones and carry out some hygiene procedures. At the same time, you are always on edge because shells are flying during the day, and a random mine can explode anywhere.
And at night - everyone goes to the basement, because something terrible begins. Massive mortar attacks, volleys from GRADs, shots from heavy guns. According to residents, they also experience horror in air-raid shelters, because even there the walls are shaking, and people are afraid that they will be buried alive.
Unfortunately, we cannot show all the destruction, we cannot convey the scale of the entire tragedy. What you see is only a small part, literally a few streets of one or two microdistricts. But this is also impressive. Direct hits from shells into residential buildings, in some cases directly into people’s windows and apartments.
Completely destroyed private houses, completely burned houses. In some cases, the impacts were so strong that the concrete floor slabs simply turned inside out. After two or three hits, multi-storey buildings are simply unsuitable for habitation: the load-bearing walls are completely displaced, and the house becomes unsafe.
Near one of the houses we see a children's playground riddled with shrapnel from an exploding mine. Near the playground, about 50 meters away, there is a funnel, and a boy of about 10 years old is playing in it. He is very busy, with a businesslike look, collecting fragments from a shell, choosing larger ones. He says with a serious look that he is not afraid, he is not afraid. But we became scared.
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