DONETSK, Ukraine – For 67-year-old Lyudmila and many others, the harsh reality of war means living in a smelly bomb shelter with no electricity because they've got nowhere else to go and little money.
Lyudmila’s tiny flat in the Kyivsky district of Donetsk was severely damaged by shelling nearly five months ago. Since then, she has lived in the bomb shelter with others. Nothing has been the same since.
“Everything that I once loved reminds me of war,” she said, wiping tears. “There’s no light. It’s cold at night. Why is this happening to us?”
Lyudmila still fears for her life, but not because of more shelling.
“I cannot express my opinion about my situation. There are traitors everywhere,” she said, still crying, explaining why she would not give her last name. “If the authorities here find out that I tell this I might get into more trouble.”
Others in the bomb shelter also have nowhere else to go.
Anastasia, a single mother of three children, said that the humanitarian aid they receive is not enough.
“My children are hungry.” she said, referring to her two boys and one girl, all lying under a thick coat. “Why is DNR (the Kremlin-backed Donetsk People’s Republic) not helping us? Why does Ukraine keep bombing innocent civilians?”
The bomb shelter Lyudmila and Anastasia live in is a few hundred yards from the ruins of the Donetsk Airport, the center of many fierce battles for months between Russian-backed forces and Ukraine’s soldiers. The district is destroyed. Shops and kiosks that were once selling food are closed and damaged. Outside life is nowhere to be found other than the few people that still commute by trolley bus that still connects to the city center of Donetsk every 30 minutes.
“Going by bus cost me at least four hryvnia per day!” Anastasia said. “Usually I walk three to four kilometers, because I don’t have a lot of money. I can only be lucky that I don’t have to pay for my children on the bus.”
Anastasia tries to find her way through the dark shelter, but daylight can’t get through the thick walls of the shelter. With a little flashlight, she walks through the shelter.
“The bathrooms are dirty. There is no water here. We have to buy water to flush it. Because of the horrific sanitary situation many of us have become sick. Our skin doesn’t get enough sunlight. We don’t get enough vitamins. Sometimes I wonder if being dead would be better after all.”
The desperation is multiplied hundreds of times in other bomb shelters where other civilians live.
The separatists blame Ukraine’s government for the humanitarian crisis, but say they are helping these civilians with adequate humanitarian aid. “It is untrue that aid is unequally spread,” she told the Kyiv Post.
The civilians in the bomb shelter in the Kyivsky district say otherwise.
“I wish that I wouldn’t be dependent on the authorities. If I would have enough money, I could be a good mother. Now it feels as though as I have failed my children,” Anastasia said. “I hope there will come a day that my children have prospects. For now I pray to God for a miracle to happen.”
Kyiv Post contributor Stefan Huijboom is a Dutch journalist.
