Debaltseve residents flee for their lives amid separatist bombardment

“Why am I here? You should go to Debaltseve and see what is happening,” he said. “There’s nothing left. We came here with the whole family, so now we live, four adults and one child, in one room. We have one bag – the only things we could take with us.”

Despite calls by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe for a three-day ceasefire and the announcement of fresh peace talks in Moscow for Feb 6., Russian-backed separatists were showing no mercy on Feb. 5 to beleaguered inhabitants of Debaltseve, a strategic railway town of 25,000 people held by Ukrainian troops, surrounded by hostile forces but for a single fiercely contested supply road.

While Ukraine has been pouring reinforcements into the fields around the embattled city to prevent complete encirclement by the Russian-backed militias, it was clear by Feb. 5 that Ukrainian forces had lost control of the neighboring village of Vuhlehirsk. Some 10 kilometers west of Debaltseve, Russian-backed fighters can now use the village to concentrate artillery fire on the road.

Pro-Kyiv units are determined to retain the city, however. A thaw in the weather caused snow to melt earlier in the week, revealing miles of excavated earth where Ukrainian troops had dug in to fortified positions outside the town.

Yet Russian-supplied rockets and howitzer shells continued to be lobbed not at Ukrainian positions, but into the town centre, keeping residents hunkered down in their basements, trapped for almost two weeks without electricity, heating or water.

Although a combined government and volunteer evacuation effort has rescued an estimated 2,000 people from the strategic railway town, several thousand still remain, often not even realizing a rescue effort is under way.

“People are sitting in their basements, without a telephone connection, they don’t even know that there is evacuation,” said Yulia, a bright blue-eyed evacuee from Debaltseve who had escaped the city the son with her mother and 5 year-old son.

“Corpses lie on the road, nobody takes them away anymore. People have psychosis, they are afraid to leave the cellar. There is no water, electricity or gas… people have no opportunity to prepare meals or wash their children. They’re melting snow to get water to drink.”

Yulia and her mother, Zoya, 52, were at a loss as to why pro-Russian forces were targeting the civilian areas of the town so relentlessly.

“Why do they destroy the city?” Zoya said “The military positions are not in the city. They know where the soldiers are, they have spotters in the town, who tell them the positions. They are out in the fields, but instead they destroy the town, the houses and the residential districts.

“It’s like the apocalypse!” she added, holding back tears. “There are many small children in the city, children who now have the eyes of old people.”

Vladimir, Yulia, Zoya refused to give their last names because of fear of persecution from either side of the conflict. They and hundreds others like them were rescued from the city by volunteers from across Ukraine, who brave heavy shelling in rickety old school buses to give desperate residents a chance to flee the daily rebel bombardment. The volunteers stepped in when it became clear that a government-backed effort to evacuate the town with a handful of coaches a day was abandoning hundreds to dehydration, starvation and artillery fire.

But as long as the fighting continues, volunteers can only speed into the city, collect passengers from the center and speed out, leaving no time to look for those too elderly and infirm to make the rendezvous point.

For many still stuck in Debaltseve, their best chance of survival is for a new cease-fire, one that holds long enough to allow a meaningful evacuation attempt.

All eyes are now on the upcoming meeting on Feb. 6 in Moscow, where German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Francois Hollande say they will present a new peace initiative to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meanwhile, U.S.  Secretary of State John Kerry reiterated on Feb. 5 that the U.S. is not yet planning to send lethal arms to Ukraine.

Kyiv Post editor Maxim Tucker can be reached at tucker@kyivpost.com or via Twitter @MaxRTucker

Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from www.mymedia.org.ua, financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action. Content is independent of the financial donor.