It was last Friday that almost a hundred years old Lidia left her home in the village of Otjeretyne on the front line in eastern Ukraine.
Persistent Russian bombardment forced her and several others to flee.
– God knows who shot, I didn’t see anyone. I just heard the explosions and thought that “if they kill me, so be it, what can I do,” she told the AFP news agency.
On her way out of the village, she saw dead bodies. She didn’t know where or how long she would go.
– I rested, fell in the grass, fell asleep and went on, she says.
“As far away as possible”
After making it close to a mile on her own, using a broken piece of fence as a cane, two men in a car swerved up to her.
– Babushka, where are you going, asked one of them.
– As far away as possible, replied Lidia.
The men turned out to be police officers from the Ukrainian “White Angels” who evacuate people from villages along the front line.
Russia pours in reinforcements
Lidia was given a ride to a shelter two miles away.
– She had almost nothing with her, says Pavlo Djatchenko, spokesman for the police in Donetsk, who notes that Lidia had already made it a mile on her own.
He says that the situation in the villages along the front line is unreal.
– Everything is bombed to pieces, everything is on fire. It is not possible to stay.
Russia has intensified attacks on Donetsk in recent days. After taking control of the city of Avdijivka, Russia has east reinforcements over the region west of the city, where Lidia’s village of Otjeretyne is located, among others.
This weekend it became clear that Russia had taken control of a third of the village.