"Early still glass"

The surroundings of Mariupol under fire. Who shoots is not important local. The result is one

The surroundings of Mariupol under fire. Who shoots is not important local. The result is one

Burning cemetery. Photo by the author

The governor of the Donetsk region Sergey Taruta said that Mariupol’s safety is not threatening anything - and left the city where the Donetsk administration is now located in Slavyansk. Mariupoltsev did not reassure this. While the Ukrainian military digs trenches on the eastern outskirts of the city, local residents buy gasoline and line up in line for ATMs. The shelling of Novoazovsk continues-cities 40 kilometers from Mariupol and 10 kilometers-from the Russian-Ukrainian border.

August 25. Odessa bus station. A pensioner with a granddaughter of about 15 years takes aside the driver of the Odessa -Donetsk bus.

- We were not sold at the cash desk to the final ticket, they said that it was dangerous to go there. I had to buy before Mariupol. Will you go to Donetsk?

- Yes, I have only a third of the passengers per Mariupol. The rest are all there. So we’ll have a title to me, and let's go.

The bus is full. At each stop - in Nikolaev, Kherson, Berdyansk - a crowd of people who want to leave for Donetsk will surround it. Some are lucky, and the driver will put them on the steps or in the passage.

Friends and relatives are escorted with the words: “God will give, see each other”; “Protect yourself”; "The main thing is to end." All, without exception, wish each other good luck.

The station escorts the retreating bus with careful glances: who are the “those” who go “there”?

“Those” are women with children and old people. There are almost no men in the bus on the bus. People are returning from the sea. Someone had enough money for a couple of months on the Black Sea coast, for someone-for two to three weeks. Everyone hoped that in Donetsk during this time it would somehow resolve. It did not resolve. But they go anyway - there is a house, but "there is nowhere else to go." Especially the academic year on the nose. “Yes, we know that the first day of the school will not open. But someday it will happen. ”

But now it seems that going to Mariupol is almost no more dangerous than to the territory controlled by the DPR. What is happening in Donetsk has long been known. But what will happen to the second largest city in the Donetsk region, to the end is not clear to anyone.

- Do not leave the house, hear? Pull the fat into the basement and do not go out. Fires charge - remember, I bought batteries? All phones are also necessary for charging. Water in the bathroom. With gasoline, if it turns out - well, it will not work - God with him.

Stanislav is a sailor. He was not at home, in Mariupol, six months. On the way, on the bus, he nervously flogs the pile of fresh newspapers and calls up with his wife. The wife is in line for refueling. As it turns out later, gasoline is not enough for it.

On August 25, when Governor Taruta stated that there was no reason for panic, the 95th gasoline ended in Mariupol (though the next day appeared). On the 26th, long lines lined up for ATMs.

Fires at the entrance to Novoazovsk, photo of the author

August 26. At the entrance to the western outskirts of Novoazovsk, it smells of burning. Fielding fields are burning. Dry reeds burn in the distance, and the wind from the sea drives thick caustic smoke on the road. With a crunch, a burnt acacia trunk breaks - a tree falls literally five meters from us.

- Was it shelling for a long time? - We ask the guy passing by.

- Two hours ago.

- And often do you have it?

- Every night is slowly. Only here, “on the ground”, did not get.

- And where did it go?

“There was a checkpoint there,” the guy waves his hand towards the border, “and one more along the bypass road.”

- Where do they shoot?

- Yes, it is incomprehensible. It usually occurs at night. Some say that they are bombing from Russia, some are from the DPR. There is no exact information. Go to the center of the village, look - in the morning you fired at the hospital.

As the locals say, shelling, as a result of which the hospital was injured, began at 9.20 in the morning. How many volleys were, we could not tell us. A shock wave in the already smashed by the life of the small two -story buildings of the hospital, the glass was picked up. One of the shells exploded next to the corps of the infectious department - it suffered the most. Five hospital employees were injured. The condition of one of the nurses is extremely serious, her leg tore off her. Patients were not injured. The wounded employees are operated on here, on their own.

The head physician does not let go of the phone from his hands - he is looking for blood for the victims. I ask if the wounded military and border guards are often entered the hospital. Briefly replies: "There is anything." On the run, he throws that now it’s not clear how to work further: “We need to save people, look for new employees and somehow restore the hospital. How? "

Opinions about which side of the hospital flew to the territory of the hospital were divided. Someone shows a hand towards the Russian-Ukrainian border, someone in the direction of the village of Sedogo, located on a sandy spit leaving in the Sea of ​​Azov. A middle -aged man in a baseball cap with a Russian tricolor assures that they shoot from Ukrainian checkpoints outside the city.

Following the locals, we go down to the basement of the canteen that suffered during the morning shelling near the hospital.

- I have already counted 38 shots. There was no such shelling yet, one of the women shares.

- For a long time you are fired?

- We have heard shots for a month and a half. Recently - often. They usually start at two in the morning, and once again - early in the morning. As on a schedule. Fights on the border are going on. Already five of our border guards were killed.

From somewhere in the depths of the basement, a girl with a cat comes out on our voices. The cat also knows what shelling is. As soon as he hears the next salvo, he immediately hides in the bag.

- We came here from Makeevka ( Makeevka begins immediately behind the eastern outskirts of Donetsk. - Z.B. ), then we decided to escape from the war. We arrived here, and here it began. We already want to go home - we had even quieter there.

After an hour and a half, people begin to leave the basement. Locksmith Alexander Ivanovich sits on the porch of the workshop. It is literally 15 meters from a broken infectious casing.

- Ivanovich, insert new windows! - men jokeslessly jokes.

“It's too early to glass,” others shout.

“Well, yes,” agrees Alexander Ivanovich. - We should wait a couple of months.

The shells launched during the daytime shells lay in one of the quarters on the western outskirts of Novoazovsk. The cemetery and fields are burning next to him. The hangars bombed. Residential buildings were practically not injured, there are no wounded and killed among the civilians. Locals collect fragments of shells in the yards, sweep glass. Someone runs to help firefighters-extinguish the cemetery.

People say that the Ukrainian military stood on the road on the other side of the cemetery and private houses. Therefore, apparently, shells flew here.

At the exit from Novoazovsk we stop next to the group of the Ukrainian military.

- Guys, who shot and where?

- They shot from the side of the border. Didn't you hear it yourself?

To our surprise, the colonel turns the card and puts it directly on the hood of our car.

- Your technique went across the border in the area of ​​the village of Shcherbak. About 20 tanks. Some of them are now standing in this triangle, - the colonel circles the territory between Shcherbak, Markino and a broken checkpoint a few kilometers from the eastern exit from Novoazovsk. “Now your forces are accumulating here.”

Odessa - Mariupol - Novoazovsk

PS on August 27, starting from 10.45, Novoazovsk is fired again.