The war is still on: new destruction in Donetsk

The night of November 6 in Donetsk was very disturbing. Without closing their eyes, the residents of the shelled areas "listened to the air" and shared information about hits through house-to-house reports. In military news, information was constantly updated with addresses of destruction and hits, which mainly fell on the long-suffering Kiev district of the city. The shelling, which turned out to be one of the most serious recently, was conducted from heavy guns, including the use of Grads. An EADaily correspondent visited the shelled area in the morning and communicated with the owners of the affected houses.

Several hits fell on the cozy Nametkina street located at the foot of a mine waste. Here, the car and the facades of two cottages suffered from a shell. As Elena Nikolaevna, owner of one of them said, a shell had arrived some minutes prior to her returning home. Her relative’s car was also hit by it.

“Everything happened unexpectedly. In 2015, this street was also hit by artillery shells, but it did not affect us directly, even the windows remained intact. Yesterday my godmother came to visit me. We were sitting and playing with the children, then we went to the store for a short time. We came back three minutes after the attack. My husband and children (my goddaughter has three small children) were at home, and already managed to go down into the basement.”

Splinters also damaged a gas pipeline near their cottage, from which gas came out whistling. As Elena Nikolaevna explained, the repair team arrived the same evening, half an hour after her call. At about the same time, on the other side of their house, there was another hit, leaving a huge crater on the vegetable beds.

For Elena Nikolaevna’s next door neighbors, this bombardment was also unexpected:

“We sat watching TV and suddenly there was such a big bang that sent us rushing under the stairwell as we have a basement there. While my husband was opening the basement, glass poured from above. We sat for about 20 minutes in the basement, until things got a little quieter. It did not use to be that way. If they start shooting in the distance, then somehow you do not pay attention to it. If they start to shoot closer, you have time to hide in the basement. And that evening we were not even alerted, everything happened so suddenly.”

In the house of a retired miner Anatoly Ivanovich, who lives on Kiev Avenue not far from the bus stop destroyed on the same day, window glasses were smashed by the blast wave.

“The house was hit at 18.45, I know that because I just looked at my watch. I was sitting at the table, in front of the window, when glass flew from there almost at me. Interestingly, the outer window pane remained intact, and the inner glass was broken to smithereens.”

Anatoly Ivanovich has already replaced the broken windows for the tenth time. Speaking about the constant shelling of the district, he does not hesitate to express himself. Approximately the same opinion the pensioner expressed with respect to the local public utilities service provider that once refused to help him.

“Now I'm going to write a complaint. Once the projectile exploded on the other side (nods toward the house - EADaily), the glass was broken on the balcony. Then I wrote a complaint to the public utilities service provider. No response! Appealed to the head of housing and communal services of Donetsk Litvinov. He immediately sent me a man who installed the glass. You should write about this.”

This evening, a school was hit in Donetsk. The facade of the building of the Donetsk restaurant and trade college is scarred by splinters, windows are broken, and an uneven hole from a direct hit is gaping from the rear. Asphalt and the walls of nearby houses are spotted with hit marks and traces of splitters. People stroll and, coming closer together, talk among themselves, anxiously looking at the fresh destruction.

Kiev Avenue suffered not only from the side close to the front-line airport (in the vicinity of building No 63), but also at the start towards the center. Here the shells reach only during the most severe shelling.

Here, a shell struck the roof of a high-rise apartment building at number 56. Pensioner Lyudmila Anatolyevna lives nearby, she loudly informs her companion that after the night events she is afraid to go for a pension. She speaks emotionally and indignantly:

“How long can our city and our region be shelled? It is necessary to identify those commanders who gave orders to fire and punish them with all severity. We had to sit in the basement, the child was so frightened that he could not open his mouth, he began to stutter!”

Wherever there was devastation, now there are communal workers and local residents. In a couple of weeks, the recent hits will be reminded only by potholes in the asphalt and markings on the walls. People will take out the debris, make repairs, replace the glass, patch the holes and continue living in the hope that all this will someday end, and the war will be left in the past along with the destruction, losses, hardships, and sufferings it has been daily bringing for almost three and a half years to the residents of Donbass.

Kristina Melnikova