현지용 기자
2024년 11월 2일
Pokrovsk, November 2, 2024
With the help of the famous Ukrainian photographer @dobronosov, we arrived in Kramatorsk and today's destination, Pokrovsk.
As the Russian army gradually advanced, Pokrovsk became the front line from the front line. Here, the distance between the Russian armies was reduced to only 5-7 km. As a result, the sound of gunfire and explosions from both armies could be heard loudly every 5 minutes, just like we heard on the Kherson front line, which was 3 km away last year.
Sometimes, after the gunfire, there was a terrible smell of gunpowder. The smell of the artillery was carried by the wind to where we were walking. It made me realize that we were only a few km from the front line. The acrid, head-splitting, head-splitting smell of death that I had smelled in the crater after the missile strike on Dnipro last year came back to me.
As I was driving a taxi, I passed the destroyed 'Sapphire hotel' in Kramatorsk. On August 25, 2024, the Russian military targeted the hotel where Reuters journalists were staying, killing one person and injuring several others. Today is the UN Memorial Day to End and End Impunity for Crimes Against Journalists.
The market in the town behind the front lines was quite crowded. However, in Pokrovsk, which was becoming the front line, there were hardly any people on the streets except for cars moving in a hurry as if they were escaping. Children and young people had already fled first, and only the middle-aged and elderly remained. War is even more brutal for the weakest.
Some parts of Pokrovsk city were intact, but many areas were badly damaged by shelling and missile strikes. It reminded me of the ruins in Saltivka, Kherson and Kharkiv. One of the buildings that was badly destroyed was said to have been a hotel.
Local residents, whose electricity and heating supplies were cut off by Russian air raids, are now riding bicycles to fetch water in large jugs or carrying firewood home on small carts. The sight of a middle-aged man who seems to be struggling to pedal and carrying a large jug of water, or of him struggling to drag a heavy and large pile of firewood, weighed heavily on my heart.