"We lived a day - and thank God!"

As under the shelling and attacks of drones live residents of the border Gravoron in the Belgorod region: Fonar.tv material

Valeria Kaidalova visited Grailooron and found out how local residents live now under daily shelling and attacks of drones, why they do not leave the city and what they hope.

The text is published in partnership with the Belgorod publication Fonar.TV .

“Here is the arrival. There arrival "

We go to Gravivoron on Thursday, by 8 in the morning, but we get a little later - to 9:00. Before leaving, I specially checked the channels with warnings about shelling, but so far they are empty.

For more than a year, Gravovoron systematically falls under shelling. The residents of the district regularly die, and several villages of the district, according to the recognition of the Grailoons themselves, were almost completely destroyed. Residents of the district even turned to President Vladimir Putin and Minister of Defense Andrei Belousov with a request to help them, but so far there was no public reaction to their appeal.

Sitting in the car, just in case, looking for the prayer “Our Father” on the phone and repeat it to myself-so for some reason to go calmer.

When we move, the driver accidentally asks where our "armor". We have no body armor with us. It is hoped that they will be given to us in Gravorone if necessary.

The first half of the road passes calmly, although it becomes more difficult to follow it at some point-the connection and the Internet work unstable.

In the area of ​​Borisovka, we drive past two colliding cars - gazelle and gray cars. The minibus was clearly burning, the windshield was broken like from a blow, the owners of the cars stood nearby. We suggested that the car attacked the drone. Later, this assumption will be confirmed: the car really attacked the drone, and after half an hour another drone attacks him again.

According to our driver, such attacks in the district are not uncommon. Most often it gets to minibuses.

“We probably went faster,” the driver Alexander concludes. We silently agree with him.

Despite the fact that we are approaching the “dangerous zone”, there are no less cars on the road, but we are no longer so calm in the cabin. We begin to look around. I carefully peer into the sky from the front passenger sitting - I really do not want to see the point in the sky or hear the buzz, which usually speaks of the approach of drones. It becomes even more alarming when we hear an incomprehensible sound in the car - either buzzing, or howl.

Driver Alexander himself is from the Grailoonsky District. He often travels from Gravoron to Belgorod and back. Noticing our general anxiety, he remarks with a laugh: “What are you spinning? Do you think the drone is flying? Yes, this rubber is so buzzing. If the drone will fly, it will be worse there. You will not confuse him with anything - such a howl will stand. ”

The Graivoron District meets us with a stella with a black raven - a symbol of the district depicted on its coat of arms, and a sign “Attention: the danger of the attack of drones”. It seems that this sign does not bother local residents - a small street fair is located to the right of the road. Although there are few people on it. Mostly sellers with trays with vegetables, fruits, seedlings, clothes. They look boredly at their shelves, empty without buyers.

At the entrance to Gravivoron, cars also do not become smaller. At first, it even seems that nothing reminds that the city regularly falls under the shelling and attacks of drones. But such a feeling disappears when we notice the first building collapsed from the “arrival”.

“This is a psychiatric hospital,” says the driver, pointing to a partially collapsed building with a rickety roof, “the girl was crushed there,” he adds.

The farther we call into the city, the more injured buildings we see: the cracked glasses that collapsed the roof of a residential building; The funnels that interspers the asphalt are the consequences of the “arrivals”, and somewhere completely burned down houses.

- There was a “arrival”, there was a “arrival”, there was a hole here. And once arrived here, and then there were arrivals. And it flew here, but already crawled out, ”the driver lists, pointing to one house or another.

It is striking that there are almost no people on the streets of the city. On the way to the city administration, the only one who met us on a passerby is a middle -aged woman who was traveling on a bicycle. Now, once cozy, a small Gravoron is more like a ghost city. When you see the void on the streets and destroyed houses, only such a comparison comes to mind.

After a few minutes, we stop near the city administration - an old Brick building. The entrance to it is forced by concrete blocks just above human height so that you can hide from the fragments of shells, and the windows are laid with sandbags from the inside. The administration’s employees are in a hurry to work in the building strengthened by almost by military standards: smiling employees in bright dresses and heels stand out on the deserted streets of the city.

Suddenly, an explosion is heard above our heads, and a little later the siren begins to howl. We are hiding in the building.

“Come on, go to the corridor, there are no windows,” the young fair -haired woman is rushing us at the entrance.

A small crowd has already gathered in the long corridor. In the corridor on both sides, a slender row of doors - near each of which a semicircle is outlined as a circulus. One of the women standing with us, seeing perplexing glances, explains: “This is an explosive wave,” she explains briefly, but, after a slightly pause and noticing our bewilderment, adds: “This does not go to the door during the shelling.”

We are silently silent. At that moment, almost everyone is silent in the corridor, even the howl of sirens does not reach us through thick brick walls.

-Was there something? Smsk came to me about shelling, - one of the women breaks the silence.

“Not yet,” another replies to her briefly.

"We move around the city with bastards"

When missile danger is canceled, we continue the trip around the city, during which I understand that now it is difficult to find a street in Grainoron, on which at least one building was not affected by a drone or artillery. On one of these streets with small cozy one -story and two -story houses, the driver brings us.

On the side of the road there is a small green Peugeot with an engraving "For the homeland!" On the hood. It is sparkled with small, like bullets, with fragments, the windows in the car are broken from all sides and through them a burned salon is visible.

There are no other injured cars on the street, but in every second house the roof is broken by fragments, the fence is drawn or as if part of the building was torn out. Near one of these houses we meet a man with a hasty gait walking along the street. A tall youthful man with gray hair on the temples and a loud voice-66-year-old Alexander. He lives on the street on which we stopped. He is a pensioner, a former mine worker. He lives in Gravoron with his wife and mother -in -law. He is not going to leave the city yet, although he admits that he would really like to do it.

- I would love to leave, but where? Where to go? I have heard about the premiums, when 30 people on the same bed (previously no one publicly reported about such problems in the PVR, therefore it is not possible to confirm the reliability of the man’s words - the author’s approx. ). PVR is so.

Let them give money, like the Kherson to certificates, so that you can leave wherever you want. In general, I am already used to a little to this. When you work in a mine, you get used to stressful situations, but now we can wait for the best times in Grainoron, ”the man shrugs.

Our interlocutor believes that “90 percent of the city’s population” remain in Gravoron, but do not go out onto the streets, because they are afraid of drones and shelling, and just like him, they cannot leave their houses.

- There is nowhere to go to people. They are afraid, move around the city. You go to the store and look not under your feet, but upstairs - it will fly on your head or not, ”the pensioner explains.

According to Alexander, he understands both local officials and residents of the district, who collect appeals and signatures in order to "at least somehow pay attention to what is happening."

Recall that earlier the Gravorovorians collected more than 2 thousand signatures to appeal to the President of Russia due to shelling, but, as the activists themselves admitted, their initiative met a misunderstanding-to the points where they collected signatures, police officers came to verify.

- I understand the local authorities: you won’t have time for three bazaars with one ass, it’s hard for them too. Someone is trying to do something, but everything is difficult, it is very difficult, of course. But people are simply suppressed, the picture is very sad, ”the Gravoronets admits.

When asked how often they fired at the street on which he lives, the man confidently replies that regularly.

- Grades, drones - we hold on courageously. When the first time was, I already don’t even remember - there were so many of them. The scatter of the shells is crazy around the city. Only now, literally on their own, they blocked the roof of Valera’s neighbor, and again flew to him.

There you can even see, if you want, a piece of “Grad”, ”the man spreads his hands to shoulder width apart, showing the size of this“ piece ”.

The pensioner confidently escorts us to the half -destroyed one -story brick house. True, it is brick only to the middle, and the upper half of the house and the roof are wooden floors, the voids between which are closed by a tarp.

Alexander leads us to the courtyard of the house. A loud bark is met by a small black dog with red tan, tied to a wooden booth. Immediately at the entrance to the house lies a large mountain of construction garbage from pieces of roof, insulation, brick and plywood sheets missing the house. Alexander leaves the house for several minutes, and then returns with the meter wreckage of the shell, crumpled at the end.

- Beauty, right? - our interlocutor jokes, posing with a fragment. - stuck out there in the middle of the house. He is already singing the door from the other side. And the neighbors in another room were - they were miraculously alive. Miracle! - repeats Gravoronets.

He continues his impromptu tour and leads us further along the neighbor’s garden past an electric plow and other agricultural equipment, showing the funnels remaining from the flew shells. On the way, Alexander selects a piece of wood, most likely a fragment of a broken roof to use it as a pointer, showing us the places of “arrivals”. It stops near the funnel of diameters several meters, with a black spot released among a neat green garden.

“The funnel seems to be small,” the man says, pointing to her with an impromptu poison, “and the roof was demolished,” he says, pointing to the destroyed brick extension to the house near the funnel.

Leaving the neighboring site, the man draws our attention to the green Peugeut, which we have already seen when we just arrived.

- My neighbors died in her. One was 40 with something, and the other was 50. When it arrived, one immediately killed, and the second died, without waiting for an ambulance. It was still March 14, and the car was never removed, ”says Alexander.

According to a man, now the Gravoronians are trying to drive cars so as not to expose themselves to excess danger.

-If some kind of more or less voluminous machine is traveling, they [Ukrainians] try to knock it out. The parking lots also aim. Especially all sorts of gazelles. It constantly goes on, ”the man concludes.

"The appeal of people to power is the scream of the soul"

On the other side of the street, neighbor Alexander Pavel Cherevatenko - a pensioner in a cap shifted over the eye - mowns the grass in his site with an electric lawn mower. Reluctantly, looking up from his lesson, he tells that he is from Kozinka.

“I lived on Lesnaya Street, 2. Forest Street - a street that is no longer there,” the man says calmly.

Pavel is a retired Ministry of Internal Affairs Colonel, which can be guessed by a military bearing and a strong handshake. In Gravoron, he lives with his wife and is not going to leave anywhere.

- Where am I going to go? Here is my house - points with a hand to a small one -story building. -If you collect all my relatives, then I have 2-3 thousand people here. Where to go? - Pavel shrugs.

The option to leave for the PVR Pavel, like his neighbor Alexander, does not even consider. When the shelling begins, he and his wife are hiding in the basement. There, the man put two stools on which he and his wife are waiting for a rocket danger.

“When you hear“ bang ”there, then after six seconds already here,” the man explains.

Suddenly, a deaf explosion is heard in the distance.

- Have you heard the Bach? - Propading, asks Pavel. -In a good way in 3-4 seconds, he will be here. But you do not be afraid, - with a smile waves the hand of men, “when the“ arrival ”here, there is a“ bang ”. And as if the air then pulls here, ”he explains to us, seeing that these troubled everyday life of the Gravorontsev are still unusual for us.

Pavel Cherevatenko believes that people in Gravoron can be protected, but he does not understand why the authorities cannot do this. According to Paul, this is his "only question for power." He considers drones to be the main problem of the city.

- We are worried about these daily shelling and UAV raids. Previously, at least there were fragments, now another - [drone] explodes and falls from above. Everyone knows where they fly. If you put people with guns, with ammunition, then everything will be fine.

Perhaps the problem is that according to the law it is impossible to shoot in cities, but I think it could have dealt with this. I believe that you can put things in order here, ”concludes Pavel.

According to the pensioner, the inhabitants of some border villages have already decided to cope with drones on their own. So, in one of the border settlements (he does not call it from the security reasons of the heroes of history - approx. F. ) there are already men who independently knock down drones from rifles.

- Four drones were already shot down. And the place where these men live, drones are already flying around - they are afraid. I promised them that I would fight for them so that they would not be punished, ”says Pavel.

He admits that now the city is "tense situation."

- People are worried about these shelling. The last time I did not reach me. My windows were scored there, the neighbor was injured, the house burned through the house from me. It bothers, of course. In Kozinka, in my native village, there are practically no people. And according to the calculations, somewhere in 11 villages there are no people either. Therefore, I believe that the authorities, of course, should take measures to protect us. I saw the appeal of the inhabitants of the Grailoronsky district to power, and I believe that this is a cry of the soul, ”the man explains.

Pavel understands the experiences of people who lose their housing, because he himself lost in Kozink a house that he got from his parents.

- Yes, I feel sorry for my parental house - I came there with pleasure, I fell asleep there well, but my main property is here. There are worse situations. Our neighbor only managed to jump out of the house and ran with a suitcase and with clothes to us. And she has nothing more ... I feel sorry for everyone, of course, ”the man sighs.

Pavel again takes the lawn mower in his hands, turns on and continues to cut the grass across the road from the house destroyed by the arrival of the house. We are going on.

“The whole city is broken. We will not restore it on our own "

Through the street from the house of Pavel there is a blackened and seems like a house of concrete blocks and wood that burned through. It comes from it a quiet long “meow” - a black kitten, briskly jumping on what was the windowsill before, purr and ask for affection.

Apparently, people who leave the house in a hurry tried to save at least something from it. Among the mountains of the ash lies charred clothes, parts of burned books and pages on which the written text is still guessed. What managed to save - jeans, bedding, T -shirts - are folded into one large pile mixed with ash. What used to be the property of people turned into one color spot mixed with the soot of the destroyed house.

The ashes are mixed with glass crumbs crunching under my legs. I look into the house - among the charred, rustling in the wind, the lining of the house hardly guess the outlines of the former rooms. It is difficult to say where the bedroom used to be, and where is the bathroom or kitchen.

On the left, because of the charred beams, the dog peeps from the yard-the gray Husky on a leash, wagging its tail and loudly barking-still protecting what was before her house.

The thundercloth near the destroyed house is violated by the conversations of two men - workers who restore the mains near the house. One of them - a dense man in blue pants with suspenders - stands below the pillar, fingering the wires at the bottom of the shield. The second - a loud, rather young man in trousers and shoes - unravels the wires, standing on the upper crossbar of a folding staircase.

- The whole city is broken - the connection is destroyed, all cables are broken, the sewage system - everything is broken. We will not restore it on our own, ”the young man shouts to me from above.

- There were 100 of us before, and now there are nine left. At first, the reduction occurred, then some came due to the fact that the situation is this. And here we are a native, and there are five monster, we must restore the whole city. How?

Contractors are afraid to help to help. Previously, we went to villages, now we don’t go already, although those villages that are not so firing, we also leave and leave. А там где всё разбито… Козинка, Глотово, Безымено… — свою мысль плотный мужчина не стал заканчивать.

— Пять монтёров на район осталось! Досокращались! У нас и рабочие дни, и суббота и воскресенье — тоже рабочие, до темна приходится [восстанавливать]. Десятку доплачивают, конечно, но всё равно! — экспрессивно говорит молодой мужчина.

Он добавляет, что в поддержку грайворонцев властями ему верится с трудом, потому что когда жители округа собирали подписи для президента, чтобы обратить внимание на обстрел Грайворона, — люди, представившиеся сотрудниками управы (управ в округе нет, они есть только в Белгороде — * П *рим. автора ), приехали и забрали их.

— Пришли забрали письма, подписи, сказали, что там всё известно уже. И всё, — разочарованно отмахивается мужчина.

«Хорошо, если сразу убьёт, чтобы не мучался»

На следующей улице, на которой мы останавливаемся, встречаем уже привычную для Грайворона историю: три подряд пострадавших от обстрелов дома. У первого — рухнула стена, а по размазанному следу гари можно понять, куда прилетел снаряд, у второго — изрешечён забор, у третьего — уничтожена пристройка. Один местный житель — седой басовитый мужчина — рассказывает тоже уже ставшую привычной для нас в Грайвороне историю, перечисляя сколько домов пострадало от обстрелов на улице, где он живёт.

— Прилетело к соседям моим. Это РСЗО «Град», били со стороны Харьковской области. И сюда раньше прилетало, и на соседнюю улицу, и дальше — там дом сгорел. У меня забор сдуло, я вчера залепил, чтобы хотя бы чужие собаки не бегали. Крышу посекло.

По словам мужчины, пока жители улицы повреждения устраняют собственными силами.

— А кто будет это делать? Представитель районной администрации приезжал, снимал. Сказал, что передаёт это в комиссию, и потом по решению будут присылать людей, которые будут замерять, но пока ничего и никого не было, — делится мужчина.

Он признаётся, что ему кажется, что все грайворонцы «уже стали фаталистами».

— Мы тут живём не знаю как. День прожили — и слава Богу, получается. Ночь переночевал — уже хорошо. Where to go?

В ПВР — это где-то на верхней шконке спать в забитом помещении. Не хочу, я лучше дома [буду спать]. Прилетит, накроет, убьёт — хорошо, если сразу убьёт, чтобы не мучался. And if not, then no. Люди доведены до отчаяния уже, честно говоря. Вот здесь уже это всё сидит, — красноречиво постукивая себя пальцем по горлу, говорит грайворонец. — Но тем не менее и на работу ходим, и работаем ещё, и как-то живём. Выводы тут уже сами должны делать наши власти. Так что вот так, ребятки, — невесело заключает мужчина.

Он добавляет, что надеется только на то, что «это всё когда-то закончится».

— Я не пожелаю лютому врагу такого образа жизни, — признаётся грайворонец.

К разговору присоединяется ещё один житель улицы. Он говорит, что с журналистами общаться не хочет, но несмотря на это решает лаконично излить душу.

— Жизнь у нас такая. Мы почему здесь водку глушим? Не потому, что алкоголики, а потому что по-другому это пережить не получается. [Пьём], чтобы забыться, — разводит руками смуглый мужчина средних лет.

После этого мы покидаем разрушенную улицу, чтобы поехать практически в самый центр города — на городской рынок. Провожают нас виды разрушенной улицы и воронки от снарядов на асфальте

Valeria Kaidalova, fonar.tv

To be continued.