""You could see that this Russian was very drunk," she said. "He asked where the Ukrainian soldiers were. I said: There aren't any or yours or ours. Only old people live here'""
""The shelling is terrible," she said. "Everything has been destroyed. Everything is black and burnt.""
""People like us hold onto their own homes, yards and gardens," she said. "The harvest was good this year. I put everything in the cellar and locked it away. But will it remain intact? That's the question.""
""When they spot someone, they hover in place and then swoop down on them," she said. "Many people are dying.""
Kupiansk in northeastern Ukraine has been closed since late September with Russian soldiers stationed and no entry or exit permitted. Seventy-five-year-old Valentyna left her home on the northern outskirts after two Russian soldiers entered her garden and one threatened her with a grenade. Water, gas and electricity failed for months, shops closed, and heavy shelling and drone strikes destroyed property and caused fatalities. Volunteers moved Valentyna through Shevchenkove to a Kharkiv transit center, where she now lives in a hostel with hundreds of other IDPs and worries about her house and stored harvest. Evacuation requests from Kupiansk have risen to about 100 daily, overwhelming coordination capacity.
Read at www.dw.com
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