LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine (AP) – After months of rebel occupation and weeks of Ukrainian liberation, the residents of this shell-shocked border town say they hope simply to rebuild their former lives – but fear that war could return to their doorstep.
Many homes and entire neighborhoods bear scars from the two-day fight for Lysychansk, a down-on-its-luck industrial town on the western bank of eastern Ukraine’s largest river. Three weeks after the fighting ended in a rebel defeat, residents still are waiting to regain access to essential utilities in their homes, if they still have any. Hundreds of houses and apartments were gutted, or blown to smithereens, by tank and mortar shells while their inhabitants cowered in reinforced basements.
“We still don’t have running water or gas. We only have electricity. How are people supposed to live?” said Alexander Tretyakov, 53, who emerged from his own basement shelter last month to discover that a tank shell had collapsed the entire top floor of his home.
Tretyakov said some neighbors fared worse. “They went into the basement in slippers alone and came out to see that nothing was left of their house,” he said.
Many in this predominantly Russian-speaking town of 105,000 are sympathetic to the rebels’ cause but have accepted the Ukrainian army’s victory as the better option because they don’t believe they could live peacefully under rebel rule.