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Lysychansk in Donbass: A woman reacts after a Russian airstrike
Photo: Efrem Lukatsky / dpa
The police station in fiercely contested Lysychansk is one of the few public facilities still functioning in the devastated eastern Ukrainian city.
Now there is a hole in the facade.
20 police officers were injured in the heavy attack on Monday evening, Colonel Oleksandr Kutsepalenko told the AFP news agency.
Lysychansk is a strategically important industrial center in the eastern Donbass region.
Opposite, on the other side of the river, is Sieverodonetsk.
The colonel counted 54 craters after the most recent Russian attack.
The governor of the Luhansk region, Serhiy Hajdaj, reported "catastrophic destruction" from "very heavy shelling", including from the air.
Residential buildings near the police station were also hit.
Despite the attacks, the station was still open last Tuesday.
Citizens came to report deaths or needed help locating their loved ones.
Some just came to use the restroom.
Officers held meetings at the police station.
"Partitions collapsed and the doors were blown out," said a police officer, who gave only his nickname Petrovich, showing the damage.
Three burned-out police cars were parked in front of the station.
The agency had already been hit once in March, but not by such heavy artillery, Petrovich said.
A block of flats opposite the train station was also hit, leaving a huge hole in the facade.
Pages from school books and a stuffed animal are lying on the street in front of the house, and a Russian rocket in the yard.
According to Petrovich, a woman on the second floor was injured.
military vehicles in the city
On the arterial road in both directions there were many Ukrainian military vehicles, tanks and personnel carriers.
A military ambulance stood in the sweltering heat, a tire blown.
The door was open, inside a paramedic tended a bleeding soldier, another lay next to him on a stretcher.
Soldiers dug new defensive positions near the front.
Debris from destroyed cars and vans was hauled onto the street to make it difficult for Russian troops to advance.
Many people have already fled
Many people fled Lysychansk.
For those who remain, the situation is becoming increasingly desperate.
They travel around the destroyed city on foot or by bike to get food and water.
Several elderly residents viewed the damage from the recent attacks.
They had hoped to be able to buy bread from the nearby bakery, they said.
But she was probably hit too.
Others filled their plastic bottles at a vat near the main fire station - they cannot drink this water.
"They think we're separatists because we stayed," said a pensioner named Igor, meaning the officials and the governor.
"We're normal people," affirmed a younger woman with a stroller full of plastic bottles.
Igor is angry with the authorities because he does not get his pension - and scolded: "They should hand out the money with an armored car."
col/AFP
