Olga is 70 years old and lives with her dog Barbos and her five cats, Dimoshka, Goshka, Knopka, Kroshka and Kukla, all of them rescued from the streets of Stetskivka. “Dogs have good hearing and it is Barbos who warns me of danger,” says Olga. “When he barks, I know something is coming and I catch him and we protect ourselves.” Where are they going? «To bed. I have nowhere to go, I can only pray. The next morning I give thanks for a new day. Her husband died many years ago, a son also died, and she has a daughter and five grandchildren in Syria. Olga lives in a house very damaged by the passage of time, without windows and without water or gas and only with the light from a hose. The house is dark and full of smoke from the fire with which it is heated. Today a team from Caritas Sumy, from the local division linked to the Greek Catholic Church, visits it: they are Natali Goncharuk, Oleg and Liudmyla Radko and the grandson of the Radko. They have brought Olga money from donations so she can buy firewood. He gets water from a well in the town, and at the local church they give him food. In addition, Olga has a small plot of land where she plants apricots, strawberries, raspberries, potatoes, carrots, cucumbers and onions, “but it is difficult to work the land because I am old and my back hurts.” Related News standard If Ukraine registers more than 2,000 cases of chemical poisoning in soldiers since the start of the war Miriam González Ukrainian Colonel Artem Vlasiuk confirmed the use of “unidentified” gases by Russia and warns about the lack of technology in the Ukrainian army to recognize themThen some explosions are heard, not right there but not far away either, and Natali warns that they have to leave. “Every night there are explosions,” says Olga; “It’s very scary. I’m very afraid. “Every night I wait for the sound of Shahed drones and missiles.” Thank you for the visit. He smiles and they hug. Natali says she doesn’t like working in Stetskivka because every time they come, something happens: Russia is only twelve kilometers away. But the streets are not empty: there is a grandmother with two girls in pink hats, two boys on scooters, two gray cats… Stetskivka is a village near Sumy, in the homonymous region of northern Ukraine. There were 2,500 people living there before the war and now, despite being at the gates of the front, there are about 2,000. More than 500 have fled, but people have also arrived from neighboring towns where the front has fallen on them.Olga is 70 years old and lives with a dog and five cats in Stetskivka Alfons CabreraThe Kursk frontOn August 6, the army Ukrainian began an offensive on Russian territory and invaded part of the Kursk region, bordering Sumy. Since then, this has been one of the most active fronts of the war. On August 8, a Russian missile hit in front of the Stetskivka school. It was damaged, but it was not a tragedy because the school was closed. Not only because it was summer, but because it stopped working when the war started. “Then the bombing started and it still hasn’t stopped,” says Tetyana Papushenko, who adds that “the teachers haven’t seen the children since the start of the war.” Papushenko is the director of the school, and she is next to the site of the missile impact with Goncharuk and the Radkos. Liudmyla Radko, in addition to collaborating with Caritas Sumy, is a mathematics teacher at the school. Classes are now online, but for weeks they have been building a bunker nearby to teach lessons in person again. Instead of restoring the school, they are putting one underground. The entrance is imposing and, when completed, there will be room for 150 students in different classrooms. There are bricklayers at work; They want to inaugurate it for New Year’s Eve and resume classes in January. Luka, the Radkos’ grandson, runs from side to side with a toy rifle in his hands. The Radkos are from Stetskivka and still live here. “You have to be close to people to have first-hand information and be able to help,” says Oleg. He has a car sales and repair business, but he has been with Caritas Sumy since the war started and now he dedicates almost all his time to it. They sleep every night in the shelter. The sun sets behind dragon teeth that stand out against the light of a reddish sky. The dragon’s teeth are an anti-tank barrier made up of rows of concrete blocks driven into the ground. “I dream of peace,” says Natali. “At first I thought it would arrive soon, but time passes and we continue the same.”
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