The image It looked like something out of one of those. huge historical volumes on WWII that rest for decades in the family libraries of the houses, without anyone even taking a look at them. However, instead of a dense black and white photography with the blurred contours due to the passing of the years, it was the contemporary representation of an overwhelming war scene, full color and with the sharpest in the worldwhich impacted and moved other senses, beyond the eyes or the view.
Half morning this Monday, hundreds of children, women, the elderly and young people crossed on foot, dragging small briefcases or aboard vehicles loaded to the brim, the bridge Varvarivskyywhich exceeds the river southern bug and links two central districts of the strategic locality from Mykolayiveast of Odessa, an important river port a few tens of kilometers of the Black Sea and seat of the major shipyards from Ukraine. There were old people who barely they dragged their luggagemiddle-aged women, couples with few belongingsand even young people with children in their arms.
As if it were the advance of the occupying troops during the first bars of the ‘Operation Barbarossa’the invasion of the USSR by the Nazi Germany in the spring of 1941on the horizon rose dense columns of smoke produced by the impacts of the Russian artillery, positioned a few tens of kilometers further east. In the middle of rumble of gunshots carried out by the Ukrainian Army, which wanted in this way to prevent the fire of the occupants and protect the passage of civilians in the absence of humanitarian corridors to facilitate evacuation, even the air gave off a penetrating gunpowder smell. aware that they left behind home and belongings that will most likely take years or decades to recover, none of the protagonists seemed to want to speak, and the evacuation was carried out in the midst of a sepulchral silence that emphasized the seriousness of the moment.
a week like this
“We have been like this for a week, in this situation, the Russians are beyond the river“, recounts Arthur Gorpenichinhabitant of Mykolayiv 24 years oldwhile waiting in line for a grocery store. Despite the constant rumble of the artillery, assures that “it is still possible to live” in the city, although he also admits that many “women and children have fled”, including his wife and young baby, who are safe in the Czech Republic. “The Russians are Across the river“, he points out, not daring to give a distance or exact location. If his forecasts fail and the occupying troops end up reaching the town, he has no intention of fleeing. “I will stay and enlist in the Army,” he says, determined.
According to the local police that directs the traffic of vehicles on the western side of this bridge, Mykolaiv is since Monday one of the scenarios where the Russian Army could be committing war crimes. Not mentioning his last name, Sergeiin front of the checkpoint, shows photographs of alleged dead bodies of civilians caused during the morning bombardment with projectiles from the family RS-132, better known as Snariad, and launched by all-purpose batteries BM-30 or Smerch. In both cases, it is weapons low precision intended for the neutralization of groups of infantry or columns of armor, totally unsuitable for use in populated areas.
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Of the fate of this town and in particular its strategic mobile bridge 750 meters long and built in the 1960s, it will depend on the fate of Odessa, a population of just over a million inhabitants 120 kilometers to the west and baptized as the ‘Pearl of the Black Sea’. “If the Russians succeed take the bridgethey will have the expedited path” to the city, says Aleksei, a wealthy agricultural entrepreneur that you prefer not to reveal your last name and with military training.
In fact, Mykolaiv, located at the confluence of three Riversconstitutes the last geographic hurdle before reaching the main Ukrainian port on the Black Sea. Beyond this town, there are only crop fields and flat land that would allow the Russian tanks and armor advance quickly and encircle Odessa from the west, a city founded for the empress Catherine the Great and therefore coveted piece of the russian imperialist nationalism.