Ukraine Residents Trapped Between Battle Lines
Updated: 11:01pm UK, Tuesday 09 September 2014
By Katie Stallard, in Mariupol, Ukraine
We met a 78-year-old woman pulling a small cart piled with belongings.
She told us they had been hiding in a cellar, but now they were worried it might collapse.
They had heard gunfire close by this morning.
She said she didn't know where to go now.
"We hid there in the cellar," Nadezhda Podtikan explained, gesturing to a building in the distance, "but it's a very weak cellar so it could just fall apart.
"So now we're here, we don't know where to go.
"Many people have already left by cars, but we have only this vehicle.
"Where should we go? What shall we do?"
Nadezhda's village is one of several now between the two front lines.
To the east we found a checkpoint controlled by pro-Russian rebels.
To the west is the outer perimeter of the Ukrainian army defences.
As we were stopped at one of the Ukrainian checkpoints we heard a burst of machine gun fire.
The soldiers told us they'd seen something move in the trees.
One of the guards shouted "well done".
The official ceasefire doesn't reassure the troops stationed out here.
One of the roads to the east of them is blocked by a Ukrainian tank with its turret blown off.
We saw a masked man standing guard nearby.
A bridge to the north has been demolished - presumably a defensive measure by one side trying to stop the other advancing.
On the road into the village of Shyrokyne we saw empty Ukrainian defences.
A children's holiday camp in the village has been heavily mortared.
There was a Ukrainian armoured personnel carrier parked outside one of the dormitories - it looked like they had been using it as some sort of base.
Nikolai Antonenko, the camp's 68-year-old security guard, told us there must be negotiations and some form of compromise - that they can't go on living like this.
"It's very painful in my soul," he said, "it's very hard. What happened here shouldn't have happened.
"There were explosions, everything was on fire, people were hiding.
"We need negotiations - at the highest echelons - otherwise we will not get anywhere.
"They will keep shooting and there will be no end.
"Somebody will have to yield."
Surveying the shrapnel and the wreckage around him, he said they would rebuild, but he didn't know how, and he didn't know when.
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