ウクライナ東部の町に残る住民１７００人　砲弾におびえる日々

【アウディーウカＡＦＰ＝時事】親ロシア派勢力が一方的に独立を宣言した２０１４年以降、ウクライナ軍との衝突が続いている東部ドネツク州。１日平均約３０回の砲撃があるという同州アウディーウカの町には、いまだに１７００人以上の住民が暮らしている。（写真はウクライナ東部ドネツク州アウディーウカで、地面の穴から救出されたビクトル・グロズドフさん）
　アウディーウカはコークス燃料の工場を中心に栄えた。この郊外の町にとどまり続けているビクトル・グロズドフさん（７７）は今年４月、食料品店からの帰宅途中に道路にできた大きな穴に落ちた。ＡＦＰ取材班は、穴から抜け出せずにいたグロズドフさんを見つけ、救出した。
　現在、町には電話などの連絡手段は存在していないが、ＡＦＰは地元当局の協力を得て、グロズドフさんとの再会を果たした。
　自宅アパートで取材に応じたグロズドフさんは、当時の状況について「大通りを歩いていて、穴に少しだけ近づいてみようと思った」「砲撃による穴か、爆弾による穴かは分からなかった」と説明した。
　「穴の近くでつまずいてしまい、中に落ちてしまった。はい上がろうとしたが、地面がぬかるんでいて全然抜け出すことができなかった」
　地元当局者によると、町の建物はことごとく砲撃の影響を受けており、水道や電気は通っていない。それでも、いまだに１７１９人がここで暮らしており、住民の約６割は６５歳以上だという。
　グロズドフさんの部屋の窓はすべて割れている。一つはシーツで覆われていた。ぼろぼろの壁には家族写真が飾ってある。
　ベッドの上にラジオがあり、浴室には食料の缶詰とひまわり油の瓶が置かれていた。攻撃があると浴室に身を隠し、床に伏せる時もあるとグロズドフさんは言う。
　■「なぜ平和じゃないのか」
　同じく町に残ったビタリー・ゼミンさん（６３）は、地下室で懐中電灯の明かりを頼りにカバ、カメ、サルなど、木彫りのオブジェを作っている。
　「手を動かしていると余計なことを考えないで済む。人のことやウクライナのこと、なぜ平和じゃないのかとつい考えてしまうから」
　住民にとって憩いの場となっているのは、地下のシェルターで、ボランティアが食事や温かい飲み物を用意している。Ｗｉ－Ｆｉやテレビを使用したり、電子機器を充電したりもできる。
　ＡＦＰの取材班が訪れた際には、２５人ほどの住民がシェルターにいた。多くはヘッドホンを装着し、スマートフォンやタブレット端末を使っていた。
　つるが１本しかない眼鏡をかけて戦局についてのニュースを見ていた元工場作業員のパベルさん（６５）は、ここにいる時だけはリラックスできると語る。
　「地下のシェルターは安全。明かりもあるし、インターネットもある。自室にいるときは、砲撃がいつあるのかと不安になる。まるでロシアンルーレットのようだ」【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2023/07/07-16:40）

Viktor Grozdov was in a hole.
Wearing a cap and thick glasses, the Ukrainian pensioner was lying at the bottom of a shell crater, trying to pick himself up and gather the food that had spilled out of his shopping bags.
In the eastern Ukrainian town of Avdiivka, battered by shelling since 2014, Grozdov had strayed into the crater while returning from a grocery store in April this year.
An AFP team pulled him out, found his shopping and saw him on his way back home.
This week journalists tracked him down again, with help from local officials, since the town has almost no communications.
I was walking along the avenue and thought I'd quickly walk round the hole where the shell fell -- or a bomb, I don't know, recalled Grozdov, sitting in his flat near the town's former cinema.
I stumbled as I stepped and fell in. I tried to get out but the earth was loose and slipping under me, I couldn't get out at all.
Despite having no intact buildings, mains water or electricity, Avdiivka still has 1,719 inhabitants, according to Vitaliy Barabash, the head of the town's military administration.
Around 60 percent are people aged 65 and over, he told AFP.
A suburb of the city of Donetsk built around a huge coke fuel plant, Avdiivka is eerie and very dangerous.
It gets shelled on average 30 times per day, the town's chief said.
In the last four months or so, there hasn't been a day without aerial or rocket strikes.
Grozdov uses a stick to walk outside and keeps to routes he knows well.
- 'Won't go anywhere' -
Despite his poor vision adding a further obstacle, Grozdov, a wiry 77-year-old, is determined to stay where his wife and son are buried.
Whatever happens, I won't go anywhere now, he said.
My soul is at home, it's not trying to leave. I'm not anxious, I've become calm.
In his flat, all the windows have glass blown out and there is a sheet hung across one.
The wallpaper is peeling around formal family photographs.
There is a radio set on his bed and bottles of sunflower oil and tinned food in the bath.
Volunteers bring Grozdov water and supplies, and he can cook on a camping stove.
When shelling starts, Grozdov said he hides in the bathroom and sometimes lies flat on the floor.
He appears to pay no attention to the sound of incoming tank rounds outside.
After his mother was killed when he was a baby, he grew up in a children's home in Donetsk.
He then worked at Avdiivka's coke plant most of his life.
He hinted at a life of great difficulty -- his late son was a violent drug addict and hit him in the head, causing him to lose vision in one eye.
On the ground floor of his block of flats, a strike has left a shell stuck in the wall of the landing.
Grozdov's neighbour, 63-year-old Vitaliy Zemin, sits in the cellar carving wooden animals -- a hippo, a turtle, a monkey -- wearing a head torch.
It distracts you from the thoughts a person has all the time: about people, about Ukraine, about why there isn't any peace, he said.
- 'Russian roulette' -
The main respite for residents is a public shelter in a cellar where volunteers provide food and hot drinks, and they can use Wi-Fi, watch TV and charge devices.
Around 25 people sat there on Wednesday, mostly wearing headphones and engrossed in phones and tablets.
Pavel, 65, whose spectacles only have one arm, was watching war news on a tablet.
The retired factory worker said this was the only time he could relax.
It's safe in the cellar. There's light, there's internet. At home you wonder if a strike will hit you or not -- it's like Russian roulette.
- 'Such despair' -
Sometimes I feel such despair, I would go to the end of the world not to see these destroyed buildings, he said, insisting he must guard his home from looters after his family left.
In a sad development for residents, the shelter's water supply via a deep bore-hole --- opened in March -- has fouled up with sand and mud, meaning the washing machines and showers cannot be used.
It's impossible to clean up, said Barabash, the head of the town's administration.
We'll need a new one, he said, promising this in the near future.
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