Horrors of War in Lysychansk

November 25, 2022
The story of Anna Domodiedova from Lysychansk. #UkraineWorldTestimony #MemoryBook
article-photo

Anna didn't expect the war at all. In the city, according to her, everything was quiet and peaceful, everyone was living their own life. Anna had an apartment. She was making repairs, and she recently had a baby.

On the first day of the full-scale war, Anna heard a strange sound. Then, somewhere around 7 a.m., the whistling started. She saw something like red streaks in the sky.

In the neighborhood next to Anna's, the Russians struck a nine-story building. They hit it right in the middle. There were more explosions in the evening. There were no military facilities or bases there. Absolutely nothing. But every day, every morning, planes flew overhead.

On the tenth day of the war, there was almost no living space left in the city. Shops were closed, the water supply was cut off, and there was no electricity or communications. People carried water from wells. Anna, for example, walked with her small child. She has no husband, because the couple broke up.

Later, the shelling came to be so intense that handles flew off of the plastic windows in Anna's apartment. One day, a shell hit a neighboring house. The explosion left a huge hole in the building. It was then that Anna decided to leave.

"It's really all terrible. We have the Russian border nearby. All people lived peacefully and in harmony. Why did this war start? Why did this aggression from Russia appear when no one ever expected it? Almost nothing is left of our city," says Anna.

In Lysychansk, Russian soldiers shelled residential buildings, schools, and shops. Anna saw the consequences of this shelling with her own eyes: "Bodies were lying near houses on the streets, and the neighbors covered them with blankets and other things. Everything nearby was destroyed. The bus stop was crushed like a tin can. Imagine the force of the impact, which sent concrete slabs flying onto a nearby street, and shrapnel gutted houses and shattered windows."

When Anna and her daughter had already left Lysychansk, the Russians targeted the "Donbas" shopping center. There was a huge fire. The Central Market burned for two days. Near the market there are residential buildings and two schools. They were also affected by this explosion.

Anna's friend has a relative living in Russia. The Russians don't believe that their soldiers are firing at Ukrainians. They say that this is a so-called "liberation."

Anna would like to address the Russian soldiers: "You also have children! Small or adult who went to war. Stop this horror. We are all people. Look at my daughter, look at your children. Are you not thinking about your own children when you are shooting? You wouldn't shoot at your child! Why are you shooting at our children, why are you shooting at us, why are you bombing us? We haven't done anything bad."

This material was created on the basis of testimonies collected by the Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group.