A city that little by little is healing its wounds. Resumed at the end of September after the escape of Russian soldiers, Lyman looks like a “ghost” town, where most of the buildings still bear the scars of the violent fighting that took place there a few days ago.
If the Ukrainian flag floats again on the pediment of the town hall, the danger is never far away and the BFMTV journalists who went there could notice many sounds of explosions.
“It is a missile sent from the occupied territories” that are a few kilometers away, details Vichitslav, a humanitarian worker who has become responsible for the evacuations of the city.
traumatized residents
Before the Russian invasion, 30,000 people lived in this city located in the Donetsk oblast, about 100 kilometers from Kharkhiv, where the Ukrainian army has made significant advances these last days. Only 3,000 inhabitants are still present, deeply traumatized by the Russian occupation.
“The Russians forbade us to go to the cemetery, surely they had their military equipment there. They told us ‘you bury your dead in the gardens, or in the patios,'” explains Sacha, who was forced to bury his grandmother in his yard
Neighbors tell of living in their basement for several weeks to escape the incessant shelling. “Five missiles hit the garden, and another in front of the fence. The windows, the tiles, everything was broken. If we weren’t in the basement, we wouldn’t have survived,” they say.
Another man explains that he has not heard from his wife, who was allegedly kidnapped in the eastern territories occupied by Russian soldiers, after a simple argument.
a strategic city
Like the city of Kherson, about to fall back to Ukrainian soldiers, Lyman was a strategic position for Moscow. The town is an important railway hub that allowed the Kremlin to supply its men or send reinforcements to various parts of the country.
After two weeks of step by step progressthe capture of this city also allows Kyiv to show a new positive dynamic, hoping to mark a turning point in the conflict, while almost the entire Kharkhiv region has been reconquered.
On Wednesday, the Ukrainian governor of the Lugansk region, located to the east of Lyman, until now under the almost total control of Moscow, proclaimed a significant advance of the Kyiv soldiers.
“Now it’s official. [reconquête] of the Lugansk region began. Several localities have already been liberated”, said Sergiï Gaïdaï.
Source: BFM TV
