BILD in liberated Lyman - Dead Russian soldiers still lying in the streets

On Sunday, less than 24 hours after the capture of Lyman by the Ukrainian army, we cross the border to the city in the Donetsk region. Attached to the town sign, a Ukrainian flag is blowing in the wind. From far away, artillery thunder can be heard. The war continues in all its severity, especially in the Donbas.

Corpses, destruction, despair. In the liberated city, the full extent of the cruelty of war is on display.

When you see the dead young Russian soldiers lying in the streets of Lyman, you once again become strikingly aware of the consequences of this war for Russia. You automatically wonder: what is it for? And for how much longer?

The whole world is now talking about Lyman, the small town in the Donbas that had approximately 20 000 inhabitants before the war. For Ukraine, the liberation means much more than just the capture of another city. The fact that the Ukrainian army captured Lyman one day after Putin’s declaration of the illegal annexation on Friday (“forever!”) is also of symbolic value.

Lyman is the first city to return to Ukrainian control following the illegal referendum and Putin’s threats.

In the woods, evidence of the brutality of the battle for the city is everywhere. In one street alone, we count one dozen dead Russian soldiers. They are lying between their ruined equipment and destroyed cars. There are Russian food rations (beef paté) and medicines lying on the ground. It is not known how many Russians have fallen here. Some experts think it’s hundreds, others even think it could be over one thousand.

The Russian army has merely stated that they retreated because of an imminent encirclement.

On this Sunday, Lyman looks deserted. There are hardly any Ukrainians in the streets. It seems like a ghost town. It is unclear how many have fled or have locked themselves up in their homes.

We meet pensioner Ekatherina (70). When we ask her about her experiences in the past few days, she falls to her knees and kisses the ground: “This is my Ukrainian soil.”

Natalia (54) stands in front of one of the destroyed houses, looking for wood for heating. “I am glad that the Ukrainian army is here now. But everything is destroyed; we have nothing. That’s why I’m searching for wood.”

She does not believe that the Russians will return to Lyman. “I’m telling you one thing: they will not come back. They can shoot at us; they can kill us. But they won’t come back. If they had wanted to stay, they would have stayed. But they ran away twice like cowards.”

“I am afraid of all of this,” Natalia continues. She used to work as a nurse in a hospital. “But they took all of the drugs and medical equipment with them. Why didn’t they leave anything for us civilians? We, too, get sick, but they left us nothing.”

In fact, almost everything in Lyman has been destroyed. The administration building, for example, is hardly recognizable. Russian stickers (“Russia forever Donbas”) and flags are still lying around.

This is what the Ukrainians did first: replace the Russian flags with Ukrainian flags.

The last time we were in Lyman was in May. Back then, the Russians were incessantly bombarding the city. The mayor was desperately trying the save civilians by moving them out of the city. At that point, many people thought: the Russians will never leave this town – especially since it is an important railway hub for military supplies.

However, five months and a great amount of Western weapons have changed everything here.

At the checkpoints, old Russian propaganda newspapers from 22 September are still scattered, advertising the fake referendum. Putin wanted Lyman, too, to be Russian.

After Lyman’s liberation by Ukraine, Zelenskiy aide Oleksiy Arestovych (47) jibed: “Lyman has left the Russian Federation”.

What happened to people during the Russian occupation will only become clear over the next weeks. So far, no further gruesome deeds have been disclosed. However, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything, since hardly anybody has had access to the city yet. It is still shielded by the military.

One reason for this is that it is still dangerous. There are countless mines in the woods. On the streets, where Russian soldiers were killed, we can also see many mines.

The outskirts in particular were an all-out battleground, anyway. In some villages, not a single house has escaped being hit by a missile. For months, the fighting had been so severe that almost all of the bridges were detonated. The detours now take hours.

It seems that Ukrainian soldiers are continuing to advance. We keep seeing military supply vehicles – heavy arms, tanks.

Following the retaking of Lyman, the Ukrainians have already started to focus on which cities to liberate next. One reason for their haste is that Russia wants to bring hundreds of thousands of soldiers and more heavy equipment into the country.

The big question that many people in Ukraine and elsewhere are now asking is: what will Putin do after the liberation of Lyman? Would he actually be willing to use a tactical nuclear weapon?