Vougledar, a mining town in southeastern Ukraine seems to be totally deserted. But a simple honk of the horn from the chaplain Oleg Tkachenko brings out of the ruined buildings dozens of bloodless inhabitants who have escaped the intense Russian bombardments.
In his red Fiat van, equipped with bulletproof windows but with a smashed bumper, Oleg brings supplies: huge bags of fresh bread, crates of peaches or raspberries and bottles of water and cooking oil. cooking piled up in the back of the vehicle flocked with the inscription "chaplain".
Without the weekly visit of this volunteer chaplain, the few hundred inhabitants who still live in Vougledar, out of the 15,000 that the town had before the war, would have to survive solely on food donated by soldiers and rainwater.
Oleg Tkachenko is not in the army but wears military clothes and a tactical vest. He is warmly greeted at each roadblock in this city located in the heart of the front.
Here, the war has destroyed everything.
The coal mine is idle, flooded since the drainage pumps stopped working; schools and administrative buildings are in ruins; water and electricity were cut off and the hospital, on the edge of town, was abandoned because it was too close to the Russian lines which are less than 3 kilometers away.
The whistle of Ukrainian surveillance drones is incessant, and even on what locals call a calm day, artillery and rocket fire can be heard frequently.
In January and February, Vougledar made headlines when Ukrainian troops repelled a Russian assault there and allegedly destroyed one of their armed columns.
This victory comforted the troops but had little effect on the inhabitants of the city, still forced to cook by the light of headlamps, taking refuge in cellars or stairwells.
Far from the front line, Ukraine is buzzing with rumors about a possible Kiev counter-offensive to retake territories conquered by the Russians.
But in Vougledar, the concerns are more pressing.
When a rocket attack devastated their sixth-floor apartment, 53-year-old former nurse Svetlana, her husband and their cat had no choice but to move into a hallway in their building, remnant of the Soviet era.
They now live in a cramped space under the stairwell, deprived of windows and painfully lit by reading lamps recharged using a car battery. During the night, Svetlana takes refuge in the cellar.
During the day, she coordinates Oleg Tkachenko's deliveries -- humanitarian aid and a few specific orders -- and spends the rest of her time sewing pretty sweaters and playing chess.
In front of his building, the remnants of Ouragan rockets are embedded in the road and shrapnel from cluster bombs dot the sidewalk.
One of his neighbors was killed in November and buried under a wooden cross in an apartment destroyed by flames. But Svetlana gave up leaving.
"Where can I go? I don't want to be homeless anywhere but here," she told AFP reporters who were there on Wednesday.
In the city, the presence of Ukrainian forces is discreet: we sometimes see an American-made Humvee armored vehicle or drones near the upper floors of buildings.
Residents sometimes receive food from soldiers but say the state does very little to help them survive.
"There are no firefighters, no sanitary facilities, nothing," laments Yéléna, a cosmetics trader who survived the Russian strike that devastated her apartment.
Smiling, she reveals, under her right eye, a scar caused by shrapnel and which is fading, according to her proof of the effectiveness of the luxury creams she sells.
For Mykola, an irascible 63-year-old retired miner, however, the setbacks began long before the war.
He fondly remembers the 1980s when the Soviet regime in Moscow allocated state-owned apartments to families like his.
Now those buildings are in ruins and Ukraine's progress since independence will mean little if the bombs continue to rain down.
"A bad peace is better than a good war," he said.
08/06/2023 13:43:17 - Vougledar (Ukraine) (AFP) - © 2023 AFP
