Split Loyalties in Rocket-Hit Town in East Ukraine
Three days after a hail of rocket fire shook their homes, residents in Olenivka are still digging out casings from their gardens and arguing over which side shot at them.
"We're trapped between two fires," said Irina Yefimovich, a resident in the town just south of Donetsk, which is now lodged between the positions of pro-Russian rebels and Ukrainian troops camped out in the surrounding sunflower fields.
Yefimovich was in the next room when a rocket came through the roof of her living room, part of an attack that locals say saw dozens of Soviet-designed Grad missiles rain down over the town.
The use of Grad rockets in populated areas by both the rebels and Kiev's army has been slammed by human rights organisations.
Human Rights Watch said last month the practice "violates international humanitarian law, or the laws of war, and may amount to war crimes."
Kiev and rebel forces have both denied using the weapons against civilians, and it has been difficult for people caught in the crossfire to know for sure who is firing.
Adding to the confusion are the conflicting loyalties of eastern Ukrainians, some of whom decry the brutal offensive of the Ukrainian army while others blame rebels for intruding on their lives.
"The fire came from everywhere," said 64-year-old Nadya Bendeberia, as the sounds of blasts near Ilovaysk, a town further to the east where battles have been ongoing for several days, rattled behind her.
Tatyana Ostapenko, a young woman who does not hide her sympathies for the separatists, said she saw Ukrainian soldiers position rocket launchers south of her neighbourhood on the day of the attack.
But another woman, who refused to give her name, became visibly upset when her neighbours said rebels were to blame.
"It's not the Ukrainian army! It's the DNR," said Katerina Yefimovich, another resident, referring to the acronym of the separatist "Donetsk People's Republic."
- 'No sense to this war' -
The gardens in Olenivka remain strewn with rocket debris. Judging from the craters, it seems they came from positions in the north, but with the conflict's front moving continually, it is impossible to draw conclusions about who launched them.
Manning a checkpoint outside the town, a rebel chief calling himself Kot, which means Cat, denied that any fighting had hit the town.
"Everything is normal," he said. "There was no battle."
When pushed on the rocket parts lodged in the pavement around him, he said that they had come from "Ukrainians firing Grads."
Standing in the middle of her garden, Nadya Bendeberia said she no longer cares or understands "the point of this war".
When the rebels organised a referendum in the spring on breaking the industrial Donetsk region away from Kiev's government, she voted for independence.
But she would not do so again, she said. "What good can people like us take from this war?" she asked. "We don't care about the government, we just want a normal life."
"We don't want to be Russian," said Katerina Yefimovich. "We want to be in our country, but we want to be respected" by Kiev, she said.
"I don't have money to fix all this," she went on, pointing at her damaged house. "I don't know who to appeal to, Kiev or DNR?"
With her job in a local dairy now located in rebel zone across the barricades, she said the conflict has robbed her of her wages too.
"There is no sense to this war," she said.
Source: Agence France Presse
| Copyright © 2012 Naharnet.com. All Rights Reserved. | https://cdn.naharnet.com/stories/en/144278 |