“I walked and walked (…) I suffered a lot.” Lidia Lominovksa, 97, fled alone and on foot from the village of Ocherétine, bombed and taken by Russian troops in the east of Ukraine.
“Only God knows who bombed. I didn’t see anyone, I just heard that something had been shot. “I don’t know where it was or who it was.” explains this blue-eyed woman to AFP. Sitting on a bed in a shelter in Pokrovsk, she slowly recounts her departure amid the chaos.
Dressed in a pink sweater and a flowered skirt, she fled the town of Ocherétine with nothing after a bombing. The town, which had about 3,000 inhabitants before the war, is located about 12 km north of Avdiivka and has been heavily bombed in recent days.
Russian troops now control a large part of the town and continue to advance in other towns in the east of the former Soviet republic, invaded by Moscow in February 2022.
When Lominovksa decided to leave, he crossed a town almost in ruins with corpses of soldiers abandoned on the ground. “I walk and there is a soldier lying there, already dead, at least [su cuerpo] I was covered. And another one was lying there, but it wasn’t covered.”remember.
“Almost everything was on fire. Today, I heard it said that [los rusos] They already control half [del pueblo]. I don’t know what’s going on there. They set it on fire. “They burned so many houses.”he continues.
“Grandma, where are you going?”
“I suffered so much! But you know, I was walking and there was no one. I only heard gunshots. “I thought they were going to shoot me while I was dragging my feet.”account.
Using a piece of board as a cane, Lominovksa advanced along the small road that leads to Pokrovsk, about thirty kilometers west of Ocherétine.
“I don’t have a watch, I don’t have anything. I walked for a long time. “I walked, I walked, without turning around,” describes the woman, with a streak of gray hair peeking out from under a colorful shawl.
“I walked and walked and I was tired (…) Oh my God!” repeat, reflecting.
After several hours, Lominovksa said that she ran into two Ukrainian soldiers in a vehicle and that they helped her.
“Grandma, where are you going?”They Asked. “I answered: I will go as far as I can, then I will fall on the grass and spend the night there.”says the old woman.
“The soldiers gave me two sandwiches. I ate one. “I no longer had the strength to eat.” points out.
After feeding her, the soldiers called police who took her to Pokrovsk. According to Pavlo Diachenko, spokesman for the armed forces in the region, the nonagenarian “he traveled a distance of about 10 kilometers.”
According to the spokesperson, Ocherétine is destroyed and the old woman is one of the last people to have left the village.
“There are still some people, but we don’t know how many, or who is still alive or dead,” Explain.
In the surrounding villages, the situation is extremely difficult because “The enemy bombings do not stop”, the policeman points out.
The Ukrainian army, which failed in its major counteroffensive launched last summer, faces the unstoppable Russian push since the fall of Avdiivka in February.
The commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian armed forces, Oleksandr Syrsky, acknowledged on Sunday that the situation on the front had “worsened” and that the Russian troops, superior in soldiers and ammunition, had managed “tactical successes” in several areas.
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Source: Gestion
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