Ukrainian peasant woman curses President Poroshenko for war

This video says about itself:

A news broadcast by German ZDF station on September 8 [2014] showed soldiers of the Ukraine Azov Battalion in Mariupol with nazi symbols on their helmets.

Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands:

“Poroshenko is an unscrupulous leader”

Added: Tuesday 16 Sep 2014 06:35
Update: Tuesday 16 Sep 2014 09:47

By our reporter Gert-Jan Dennekamp in Ukraine

The 60-year-old Nadezhda Jakovna keeps rattling on, hounded by despair and fear. She barely has time to breathe, the story must be told. Occasionally in the conversation her grief stops her. Then the tears come. She points to the houses down the street: all the people who lived there are dead. Besides the shot out homes are burnt armoured vehicles of the Ukrainian army.

Nadezhda lives in Chrasjtsjevatoje on the edge of Lugansk, the capital of the People’s Republic of Lugansk, proclaimed by the rebels. On August 13, the Ukrainian army occupied the village and then the bombing started. The Ukrainian military maintained themselves there for two weeks, but in the battle between the army and separatists a big part of the village was destroyed. Certainly fifty homes were completely destroyed or burned.

Neighbours

With her 86-year-old mother Nadezhda spent two weeks in the basement. “We were like moles under the ground.” Initially in her own home, but when the house was hit by a grenade, she fled to a small apartment building not far away. Her mother was wounded in that attack.

A few days later, on August 19, the Ukrainian army evacuated people from her street. But they were not yet out of the village when the truck was fired at. All her neighbours were killed.

Ukrainian President Poroshenko is to her an unscrupulous leader. “The Ukrainian army came here to liberate us, but from whom or from what? From ourselves? He has done us so much harm. I curse him to his tenth generation. His grandchildren should experience what it is like to be bombarded.”

Her daughter occasionally adds to Nadezhda’s story. She suddenly almost casually says her father died the first day of the bombing. He was killed on 14 August in a village nearby. She was already hiding in the shelter. The phones were not working. Nadezhda heard it two weeks later. The house where he was was hit by a shell and burned down. He is not buried yet. “There is not enough left over of him to set up a cross on a grave,” she says.

Senseless war

Who fired at the truck with refugees is unclear. It may be that the separatists thought to kill fleeing soldiers but according to neighbour Irina Brisovna it is unlikely that the rebels have shot her neighbours. “They were shooting from an armoured vehicle. This area was controlled by the Ukrainians. It cannot have been the rebels.”

Irina lives just around the corner, her house is battered by shrapnel, but she can still live there. There is no gas or electricity, so tea is put on a wood fire. She says it is a pointless war. “It does not matter what name the region has, if there is only peace and no one dies. Brothers should not kill each other.”

“Every day you walked here on the street and you talked to them and now there is absolutely no one. We buried people for two days. But imagine, imagine how many soldiers have been slain. Boys of 18 or 20 years. In West Ukraine the mothers do not know where their sons are buried. ”

At about twenty yards from her home along the highway is a cross. “There’s a soldier. Nobody knows who he is.”

How?

A few blocks further a woman pushes against her wheelbarrow. Also on this side of the village, the houses are almost all shot to pieces. A man knows who is responsible. “Putin,” he says. But most people blame the [Ukrainian] army. …

The woman stands still in front of a house that is directly hit by grenades. She did not give her name but she is 57 years old she says. “We’ve built my house for 30 years. Everything is burned. We are now homeless.” She stands at the home of her sister, also there is nothing left. “The house of my son’s destroyed. My mother’s house is completely burned. We are five families and we have nothing.”

“How shall we rebuild it. There is no work. How?”

US and NATO hold military exercises in western Ukraine, as ceasefire begins to fray in east: here.

Ukraine: Odessa: Leftists again arrested and tortured: here.

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