It isn't yet dusk, but the sky to the south is darkening with an approaching storm as Denis Dragusevich and Zhenya Kucheryavaya play with their three small boys in a dusty apartment-building playground in Slavyansk. When a loud rumble breaks through the air, their neighbours jokingly wonder if it is "thunder or hail" – a reference to the BM-21 "Hail" rocket launcher that government forces have fired into the city, along with howitzers and mortars.
"The three-year-olds, when the bombing starts, they point to the bathroom. They already know," Zhenya says, explaining that the family hides there during the frequent shelling. "In the future, these will be the children of war."
After pro-Russian rebels declared their own republics in eastern Ukraine in April, Slavyansk quickly became the focal point of the fighting between government forces and the steadily growing militias. Since the end of May, Kiev's "anti-terrorist operation" – even the name is repulsive to the people of the east – has shelled the city on a near-daily basis, hitting dozens of residential buildings and reducing most of the suburb of Semyonovka to rubble. One local firefighter told me his brigade works five times as much as before because of the shelling. The conflict has now killed at least 423 people, both fighters and civilians, and displaced 46,100, according to recent United Nations figures.
"Everyone talks about the same thing, about when the war will end," says Katya, who lives in a two-room apartment with her mother and her eight-year-old son, Gleb. The distribution centre where she worked has closed down, and instead she spends half the day hauling water to the apartment. In the afternoons and evenings, she sits and talks with neighbours.
"Kids draw tanks and planes when earlier they drew flowers and trees… My kid wakes up every day and asks, 'Did they bomb us?' He's scared," she says, telling me how last month they came under heavy shelling at the children's hospital where they were getting a doctor's note for Gleb's summer camp to say he was in good health.
Complete story at - Life in a war zone – Ukraine | World news | The Guardian
"The three-year-olds, when the bombing starts, they point to the bathroom. They already know," Zhenya says, explaining that the family hides there during the frequent shelling. "In the future, these will be the children of war."
After pro-Russian rebels declared their own republics in eastern Ukraine in April, Slavyansk quickly became the focal point of the fighting between government forces and the steadily growing militias. Since the end of May, Kiev's "anti-terrorist operation" – even the name is repulsive to the people of the east – has shelled the city on a near-daily basis, hitting dozens of residential buildings and reducing most of the suburb of Semyonovka to rubble. One local firefighter told me his brigade works five times as much as before because of the shelling. The conflict has now killed at least 423 people, both fighters and civilians, and displaced 46,100, according to recent United Nations figures.
"Everyone talks about the same thing, about when the war will end," says Katya, who lives in a two-room apartment with her mother and her eight-year-old son, Gleb. The distribution centre where she worked has closed down, and instead she spends half the day hauling water to the apartment. In the afternoons and evenings, she sits and talks with neighbours.
"Kids draw tanks and planes when earlier they drew flowers and trees… My kid wakes up every day and asks, 'Did they bomb us?' He's scared," she says, telling me how last month they came under heavy shelling at the children's hospital where they were getting a doctor's note for Gleb's summer camp to say he was in good health.
Complete story at - Life in a war zone – Ukraine | World news | The Guardian
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