In Ukraine, faced with bombings affecting gray areas along the front line, the authorities have ordered new evacuations of civilians in the Donetsk and Kharkiv regions. In the latter, on the border with Russia, seven villages in the Borodukhiv sector, northwest of the city, are affected, and more than 7,000 people, including more than 1,300 children, have been ordered to leave.
From our special shipping to Kharkiv,
For several days, this transit center for displaced people in Kharkiv, in the east ofUkraineis in full swing: daily, between 100 and 150 evacuees arrive there, in complete destitution. Yevheniia Kozun, from the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, specifies: “Recently, we have seen a steady increase in the number of people evacuated. Our partners continue to provide them with all necessary assistance, including psychological support, essential items, registration for financial aid, as well as help in reconstituting their documents. »
This assistance is essential due to the vulnerability of the evacuees. Liudmila Oleksandrivna, around sixty years old, comes from Prudyanka, just five kilometers from the Russian border. With her paraplegic husband, she is one of around 300 people with reduced mobility affected by the evacuation order. “There were strikes on our house. We were about to leave, following an agreement with the volunteers “, she says.
Since their arrival a few days ago, Liudmila and her husband have been waiting to receive a place in a specialized accommodation center. They who had never left their village have, for the moment, no prospects for the future. « It is unlikely that we will be able to return there. There are only two people left there. Well, maybe they’ve already left, I don’t know. This is our life now. I don’t know how we’re going to live, we didn’t take anything with us “, she confides.
Katia, 34, and her little boy Sasha, six, also arrived at this center a few days ago. They come from Zolochiv, northwest of Kharkiv. HAS” We left last Sunday, because it had become impossible to live there. I am a mother with a child and drones are flying over the area, destroying all the houses, play areas, cars. Children are either confined at home or in shelters “, she explains. Employed in a DIY store, Katia, whose parents refused to leave the family home, hesitated for a long time before leaving.
« Even if you have a car and want to leave, it is impossible to reach Kharkiv and evacuate by road: they (the Russians) shoot at civilian cars ”, she adds. Despite this threat, Katia took her chance: she drove at full speed towards Kharkiv. Like thousands of other uprooted Ukrainian families, she and Sasha have to start from scratch, without work, without school, without housing and without their family left at the mercy of the bombs.
Also read“We’re used to it”: in Ukraine, life continues in Kharkiv, despite Russian bombs and drones
