At the gates of Odessa, in Ukraine, civilians flee and the hospital fills with wounded

In a neighborhood of sad gray towers on the outskirts of Mikolaiv, a city south of Ukraine under Russian bombs, a shell hit the second floor of a building, tearing out windows and doors. “Damn,” says Liliana, a neighbor.

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The bombardment occurred on Monday, around five in the morning. It was a miracle that there were no casualties. “I was sleeping and the windows started to shake, so I pressed against the wall,” says Vitali Sobolev, a 70-year-old man who lives right next to where the shell landed.

In this poor neighborhood Mikolaiv there are no military targets, only civilians, “people who have almost nothing and no one helps them,” explains Liliana Sidorska, the neighbor of the 4th. “What does the Ukrainian government do? Why are the Russians bombing here? They are miserable, miserable, ”she repeats.

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Mikolaiv and its region have been the scene of violent fighting and bombing for several days. The city of 500,000 inhabitants was already hard hit during the Nazi occupation in World War II.

130 kilometers west of Odessa, Mikolaiv stands between the Russian advance and the large Ukrainian port city, a strategic target for Russian forces.

People stand in an underground parking lot used as a bomb shelter at a shopping mall in Odessa, Ukraine. (AP/Sergei Grits) (Sergei Grits/)

Although the situation was relatively calm on Tuesday, sporadic shelling continued to rumble. Miles and miles of cars wait to cross the bridge that connects the city to the west bank of the river, to escape the Russian offensive.

“Let our planes bomb the Russians!”

In front of the city’s central hospital, Sabrina, a 19-year-old girl, waits for her mother, who has come for kidney treatment. “Then we will go by bus as quickly as possible. We can’t stay, it’s dangerous”, says Sabrina, surrounded by bags, her puppy and a cat sheltered in her hood. She has no news of her husband, who is at the front.

The hospital doctors are mobilized before a massive arrival of wounded. Several young soldiers are hospitalized here, including Olexandr, in his 20s, with a broken leg covered in shrapnel from the shell that landed on his barracks on Monday. According to Olexandr, eight soldiers were killed that day, eight are missing and 18 are wounded.

People run towards the evacuation train at Odessa Central Station on March 7, 2022. (BULENT KILIC / AFP)

Impossible to verify his words. However, even the hospital’s chief surgeon, Dmytro Sykorsky, has stopped counting the wounded and dead. He only knows that, in the first days of the war, 160 soldiers passed through the hospital. Since then, civilians have not stopped arriving.

He knows that his center welcomed some Russian soldiers, “but we can’t get close to them, it’s the military who take care of it,” Sykorsky replies.

In his plant there are, above all, civilians. Like Vira Pismenna, a woman in her sixties with graying hair and pretty blue eyes, her face covered with dried blood, and a bandage on her temple.

His village, Snegirovka, about 60 kilometers from Mikolaiv, was bombed. “Let our planes bomb the Russians for what they have done to us!” says this sweet-faced woman.

A Ukrainian soldier is comforted by a nurse while receiving treatment at the central hospital in Mykolaiv, 100 km from Odessa, in western Ukraine, on March 8, 2022. (BULENT KILIC / AFP)

In another room, Maxime Sokol is having his head bandaged.

On his chest and arms, this young man has a wolf, a dragon and a kalashnikov tattooed. Maxime was shot as he was about to throw a Molotov cocktail at a Russian armored vehicle. “It was about two, three or four days ago, I don’t remember anymore,” says Maxime.

Maxime, who is an only child, complains about his head. Next to him, his mother explains that Maxime could not join the army due to health problems, and that he is part of the civilian volunteers of the Territorial Defense.

With a small voice, Maxime has the strength, however, to joke with the nurse, and ask her if she has already been on safari: “We’ll go after the war”, she promises. “When?” he replies. “I do not know”.

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Source: Elcomercio