Nicolas Tonev (special envoy to Kramatosk), edited by Gauthier Delomez 11:48 a.m., June 19, 2022
In eastern Ukraine, residents of the city of Kramatorsk remain traumatized two months after the bombing of the train station, which killed 50 people in early April.
The intense fighting only takes place a hundred kilometers away, in Severodonetsk.
The special envoy of Europe 1 Nicolas Tonev met residents who remain hopeful.
REPORTAGE
On April 8, in the city of Kramatorsk in the Donbass, the station was bombed by the Russian army, killing more than 50 people.
A date that resonates painfully for the inhabitants, traumatized by this tragedy while the Russian invasion of Ukraine has lasted for more than 110 days.
Inhabitants who live permanently in the din of the sirens of alert to the bombardments, as reports the special envoy of Europe 1 Nicolas Tonev.
This siren translates into a haunting, invading, mind-numbing sound.
The front comes by loudspeaker in the streets of the city.
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Yet Irina stands in front of her open grocery store, dapper and indifferent.
"It's from morning to night, 24 hours a day, these bombing warning sirens", she describes at the microphone of our special envoy in Ukraine.
"I don't notice them anymore, I don't hear them anymore. It's been going on for three months," she breathes.
More and more customers
At the head of this grocery store, Irina has a front row seat to observe what is happening in town.
A first paradoxical remark is that there are more and more customers.
“Over the past two weeks, there has been a strange trend: the closer the front gets, the more people come back to town”, explains a resident at the microphone of Nicolas Tonev.
"I think people who left two or three months ago, according to my assumption, they come back home because they have no more money to pay for exile," she adds.
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The reassuring words of Ukrainian soldiers
A second note: soldiers on leave go to this grocery store.
"They always reassure us and say 'Don't worry, we won't let them get to Kramatorsk. Everything will be fine', and we believe them," Irina said.
"We hope because if you don't hope, and if you don't believe in such moments, what's the point of living?" she wonders.
As night falls, Irina returns home.
In the distance, you can still hear disturbing rumblings, while Severodonetsk, plagued by heavy fighting, is only a hundred kilometers from the city.