Iñaki Rodíguez and his family resist in Nueva Odessa, where they fear losing the food they have left frozen “because the electricity goes out longer and longer”
“We’re alive, so we’re fine.” Rosa, Karmele and Antonio Rodríguez Jauregi have breathed this morning, another day, relieved to receive the message from their brother Iñaki. With increasingly difficult communications, Lasarte-Oria awaits news from Ukraine, where Iñaki, his wife Ana, and his five children, aged between 18 and 5, have been surviving for a week in the middle of the war.
They have lived for a decade in New Odessa, a municipality located in the south of the country and in the middle of a strategic route with which the Kremlin seeks to control all access through the Black Sea. Located 110 kilometers from Kherson and 174 from Odessa, the town is located just 40 kilometers from Nikolaev, where recent fighting has taken place.
“We have been told that tonight may be somewhat calmer because the Russian convoys have moved towards the nuclear power plant,” writes Iñaki, 56. The plant in southern Ukraine, which has 3 reactors, is located 77 kilometers north of the Gipuzkoan’s home. The last few nights have been “hell.”
In fact, the semi-basement of the house that served as a bunker is not safe enough and they have been recommended to take shelter in the forest during the bombings. The first night they couldn’t get out, but last night they did. “The shelling was quite intense and we spent three hours in the forest, under some tarps, until it stopped,” he recounts by email. «There were quite a few people from the town, where there are several houses affected. Part of the school has also fallen », he writes by mail.
The people of Gipuzkoa make several references to the cold they are suffering. “A long time ago. For tonight 10 degrees below zero are expected », he says. And electricity and gas are increasingly scarce. “Since yesterday at five in the afternoon we have been without electricity or gas, or Internet, until this Monday at noon. Without any communication », he recounts.
According to the information they receive, in New Odessa, where the Ukrainian resistance has set up a base in an old mill in the municipality, “there are six soldiers dead and quite a few wounded by all accounts.”
The man from Gipuzkoa is diabetic and hasn’t taken the prescribed medication for days. “The military police call us asking if they have brought us the medicines but they have not arrived yet,” he says. Food is becoming more and more scarce. “And with these blackouts, the fear is that what we have in the freezer will rot.”
The children spend the day “playing with each other”, except when gunshots are heard. “We are sleepy, we are tired.”
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