DONETSK, Ukraine – A puddle of fresh blood remained on the ground next to a small food kiosk at Donetsk's central bus station. A leather shoe covered in blood also remained from one of the victims killed on Feb. 11 as a series of shells struck the separatist-controlled provincial capital of Donetsk Oblast. According to separatists, six people were killed. The shoe belonged to the bus driver of bus no. 11.
Bus no. 11 was destroyed as well as a part of the bus station’s roof. Some workers cleaned the area. One of them was Tatiana Kobernik, wearing a bright orange jacket and holding a broom in her hand.
“Look at what Poroshenko is doing!” she desperately shouted, blaming Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko for the strike.
It is not the first time Kobernik has arrived at a scene of horror and death. “How can I leave Donetsk knowing that Kyiv is bombing us? I’d rather die in Donetsk than in Kyiv,” she angrily said.
More people gathered at the bus station in the early morning on their way to work or school as a line of undamaged buses stop in front of the station.
Some people witness the scene in shock while others pray. “Why is this happening?” an 18-year-old student who only identifies herself as Olena asks. She grow increasingly uncomfortable speaking to a journalist as more Russian-backed separatists arrive on the scene to remove the wreckage.
Some government workers swept up pieces of glass and threw it into a truck. Armed men gathered on the street and directed traffic. It was a chaotic scene as also some tow trucks arrived to remove the bombed bus.
One young tough separatist fighter nearly lost his temper as he sent gawkers away. He even pushed some teenagers trying to photograph the gruesome scene. “‘This is not a place for kids. Get inside your bus, and wait for it to leave,” the separatist commanded.
The remains of a bombed-out commuter bus in Donetsk after a shelling on Feb. 11 that killed six people.
Combined with violence elsewhere in Ukraine’s eastern war zone, killing more than 45 people in a 24-hour period, death overshadowed the peace summit in Minsk among Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko, Russian President Vladimir Putin, German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande.
On Feb. 10, Kramatorsk – now the military headquarter of the Ukrainian army – was struck by a rocket that killed 15 people. The city is located 80 kilometers from the front line. The Ukrainian government accused pro-Russian separatist to have fired a rocket from the separatist-held city of Horlivka.
A spokeswoman from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic accused the Ukrainian army of shelling the Donetsk bus station. “The station is nowhere near the front line. It is in the center. We have no reason to shell our own civilians in the center. This must stop,” she explained.
Stefan Huijboom is a freelance Dutch journalist.
