While Restoring Houses after Shelling, Residents of the Outskirts of Avdeevka Do Not Know Who of Them Will Be Lucky To Survive Tomorrow

On Zavodskaya Street in the old part of Avdeevka it is difficult to find a house that has not suffered from shelling. Every day, local residents, who were lucky to survive after the attack, start to restore houses – this is how people live for the third year, the correspondent of IA “Vchasno” reports from the scene.

It is never quiet here - the sounds of volleys and explosions are audible nearby, but while they are at a distance, people do not pay attention. They are alarmed when it bangs heavily and loudly very close. For years of a war, everyone is so tired that even after that they no longer run to the basement.

“Basement is there, but what's the point to hide in it, if you can be trapped anywhere”, Nadezhda, a resident of Zavodskaya Street, says - The other day, a shell hit right in a neighbor’s basement, everything was smashed. After the bombardment not a single window remained unbroken, everything is flying, both windows and doors”.

The woman herself did not suffer from the shelling by a miracle. At this time, she was going to go out into the yard, feed a small household. A successful combination of circumstances and the won shares of seconds saved her life.

Now the relatives help Nadezhda to clear the rubble, to set window panes, to insert the frames. For three years that the war is going on, they learned to do it quickly and professionally - from everything that is at hand, people patch holes in fences, roofs and houses. Who does not have the opportunity to insert new frames, clogs the windows with plastic wrap or blankets.

People already do not count for the help from the outside, the destroyed houses were helped to restore only at the very beginning of the war. Now the issue of saving their property lies solely on the shoulders and wallets of the victims.

“No one reaches here, there is no help,” local people complain. – Houses are messed up and you should live how you want ... all our life we collected, built something, and now who is to blame? Who will help to restore it or compensate? How can we move on?”

Victims almost daily calculate losses, but there is no sense in this. They go to the executive committee with statements, ask for help. Maximum with what they can help - give a plastic wrap for the upholstery of windows. Now there is no sense to restore the destroyed houses - tomorrow the shell can hit again. If the shell destroyed a part of the house, people move to live in the remaining rooms.

Local people say that it's hard to find pets that hide because of fear as far as possible. Frightened cats do not leave the basements for several days.

The street is almost always empty. Every day the number of destroyed houses on it increases.

Here you will not meet representatives of humanitarian missions, therefore, when local residents see strangers, despite the danger, they immediately gather together on the street.

For them, this is an opportunity to share their problems with someone, to talk about the horror that they gone through, to throw out what has boiled up, and thus to share resentment and indignation.

Nobody knows to whom a shell will arrive tomorrow, and who of the neighbors will survive. Periodically, they are buried those with whom they lived for many years on the same street. After the morning bombardment on February 1, a woman died in the old Avdeevka.

At the time of the morning shelling, Lyudmila was in another city - she went to Mirnograd to execute documents, and her adult son stayed at home.

The woman learned that her house was destroyed during another shelling from a friend who called from Donetsk and said: “We read on the Internet –the shell came to your address”.

It's hard for a woman to tell what feelings she felt, and with what thoughts she struggled on her way home. The fact that her son managed to survive was a real miracle.

“I do not know how he managed to survive ... I do not know,” says Lyudmila. - The shell hit right into the house, everything that was inside was smashed into chips, and the iron doors were melted. It was lucky that the daughter-in-law stayed for the night at her friend’s house. This is all a combination of circumstances, and what if this time was not as lucky as it was? And what if next time will not be lucky?”

People are angry at all: some accuse the militants, others - the Ukrainian authorities. They do not believe anyone, there are pain, hate and fatigue in the conversation.

For every resident of the old Avdeevka, regardless of political convictions, the primary goal is to survive, often at any cost and under any conditions. And it does not matter to them who specifically will bring the long-awaited silence, for them the main thing is that it, finally, will come.