Article author:
Reuters
LYSYCHANSK — Bullet-filled upside-down Ukrainian patrol cars, bullet-burnt pierced municipal buildings, and damaged golden dome of the Orthodox Church.
Lysychans'k Reuters reporter, captured on Sunday by Russia and its separatist allies, found that few people lived in a city that once lived close to 100,000, and the destruction spread. rice field. ..
Several civilians, all women investigated the damage, armored vehicles equipped by Russian-backed troops ran through the streets, and the red Soviet victory flag (adopted by the Russian army). The WWII symbol) was hanging above the entrance of the destroyed municipal building, the interior office was exposed to the elements.
The fall of Lysychans'k to Russia and its agents is important by Moscow, which has complete control of the wider Luhansk region, one of the goals of President Vladimir Putin. It was welcomed as a moment. Called his "special military operation" to eliminate what he cast as a dangerous threat.
For Ukraine, the occupation of this city was a tragic defeat, as it was said to be an unjustified war of aggression aimed at clearing its territory and making it smaller and weaker. ..
The city has little strategic value and states that it was able to prevent Russian troops from trying to seize this city and nearby cities for weeks while regaining territory in the southern part of the country. increase.
On Monday in Lysychans'k, a Reuters reporter who visited with the help of the self-proclaimed Russian-backed People's Republic of Luhansk found an eerily quiet city almost everywhere, except for the barking of birds. I found the inhabitants fled.
Olga, a 67-year-old pensioner who stayed behind, welcomed the newly discovered calm.
"The current situation is good. We are only afraid that it (fight) will come back," she said, and her first thing she wanted to do was the Russian children. Was to visit.
Otherwise, she said her goal was to stay alive.
Elsewhere in the city, the burnt gray brick municipal building with the Ukrainian emblem was empty and there were no windows on the upper floors.
A burned-out car cluttered the streets with the remains of at least two police patrol vehicles, one upside down and the windshield filled with bullets.
In a long low-floor shopping center, many of the glass-paneled windows have been blown away, holes have been drilled in the golden dome of the Orthodox Church, and the roof underneath has been stripped to a metal frame. I did.
There were some signs of the Ukrainian identity of the city. Inside a local public prosecutor's office without a roof, a small mountain littered with Ukrainian passports and a Ukrainian flag abandoned on a road not far from a crumpled van. (Report by Reuters, written by Andrew Osborne, edited by Janet Lawrence)
