Shelling has returned to the Donbass, and it's the most intense since 2015.
Sergey Zenin is reporting from Donbass.
This is the village of Oktyabrsky, Kuibyshev district, Donetsk. It's June 17th. The shelling could have resumed at any time, but firefighters kept working, preventing the fire from spilling over to the neighboring buildings. But this house wasn't saved. In the morning, people scraped the pieces of yesterday's life into a pile. This is the heartless destroyer, 82nd. It pierced the roof, exploded, and the fins stuck in the ceiling like a clue is at the crime scene.
- Let me show you another pile.
- Yes?
- Yes.
Again, on June 17th, a powerful bombardment (200 shells) struck the Petrovsky district of Donetsk.
Valentina Nazarkina, Head Physician of the Donetsk Children's Hospital: “It was shelled by howitzers, a 122-millimeter shell hit the tree, and the fragments struck the building.”
For all the war, this is the ninth shelling of the children's clinical hospital. The previous one was in 2015, and now it's happened again. The roof is broken, the windows blown out, medical equipment made inoperative. The damage is over one million rubles. The hospital was operational, as many as 32 children were in the wards during the latest attack. God saved them.
Valentina Nazarkina: "Shelling occurs practically every day now".
This is June 17th, 2014, five years ago. Journalists from our channel filmed a story about the evacuation of refugees near the village of Metalist, in the suburbs of Lugansk. Under the constant shelling of Ukrainian artillery, tanks, and aircraft, people left their burning houses. Anton Voloshin and Igor Kornelyuk worked in the thick of things. The film crew arrived when the mortar attack began. The first shells landed 500 yards from here, and the next right here, you can even see the so-called "mortar splash", and the other three fell where my colleagues were standing. A cross and a forged rose are exactly where the shell hit and where our colleagues died. And so many flowers are here for a reason. They were brought by schoolchildren. There's a middle school nearby named after Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin.
On June 17th, those who remember them gather here. Victor Denisov, a cameraman from our channel, stood 100 yards from the epicenter of the explosion, which saved his life. He filmed the moment when his colleagues died.
Victor Denisov, VGTRK cameraman: "I thought they survived because I didn’t expect anything to happen to them. We were all together, work closely, we didn't expect anything like that. We believe that people are immortal, and I didn't expect that".
This is the Park of Heroes of the Great Patriotic War in Lugansk. There are two monuments here. One is to the victims of an airstrike delivered by the Ukrainian Air Force onto the city on June 2th, 2014; the other is to our late colleagues. It was opened this week, on June 17th. The head of the Lugansk People's Republic attended the ceremony.
Leonid Pasechnik, head of the LPR: "The role of journalists in this war can't be overestimated. With all their dedication, together with the soldiers on the front line, under the enemy's shells and bullets, they made reports to reveal the truth about Donbass to the whole world. We wish it were different, but the profession of a military reporter is not so rare nowadays".
Many colleagues have experienced war first-hand.
Andrey Kondrashov, VGTRK first deputy CEO: "When our guys died, we realized that reporters die just like soldiers. And the truth is like a victory: if you have it, you've already won. So the guys won".
Alexander Sladkov, VGTRK military correspondent: "They just did their job without hesitation. "Do what you must do" was their maxim".
The flowers are from VGTRK, their colleagues, LPR officials, and, perhaps most importantly, people.
Oleg Dobrodeev, VGTRK CEO: "I'd like to thank Leonid Pasechnik for his help, I'd like to thank him for the friendship and the memory that unites us and that we're commemorating here. This monument isn't only to our colleagues, VGTRK journalists Anton Voloshin and Igor Kornelyuk, who came to a tragic end five years ago. It's a monument to all of the journalists who have died in this war. This is a monument to Anatoly Klyan, the brilliant cameraman of Channel One and my old comrade. This is a monument to Andrey Stenin, one of the best press photographers in Russia, who worked for RIA Novosti. This is a monument to everyone who died for the sake of the truth".
"Where's Fedya? Where's Fedya? Take the camera! I can't hold it".
Cameraman Anatoly Klyan died on June 30th, 2014. He passed many hot zones, but it was his mission to Donetsk that would be his last. A stray bullet killed him, but he never lost his hold on the camera. RIA Novosti press photographer Andrey Stenin went missing on August 5th, 2014, in a combat zone near the village of Snezhnoye. On August 6th, his burned-up and bullet-riddled car was found there. There were two molten lenses to a professional camera in his trunk.
On May 24th, 2014, Andrea Rockelli, a journalist from Italy, and Andrey Mironov, his Russian translator, were gravely wounded near Slavyansk. An Italian court conducted the trial. The verdict was announced on July 12th. The prosecution claimed that Mironov and Rockelli's car was attacked intentionally.
Andrey Medvedev, deputy CEO of Vesti: "Everyone realized that war is dangerous for a journalist. Everyone realized that a journalist is at risk in a war. But no one had an idea that things would turn out like that, that it would turn into a focused witch-hunt. Yes, journalists got into trouble, things happened. But it's never been like it is here in the southeast".
We always considered the "PRESS" stickers on body armor and helmets like a writ of protection. The war in the Donbass is perhaps the first war where we have to hide our profession in order not to become a target for the Ukrainian Armed Forces' snipers. However, the 120-mm shells don't choose where to land, and people living at the contact line die or get injured almost every day. The shelling has increased recently. Over a week, the Ukrainian military sent more than 200 artillery shells and about 400 bombs to the residents of Donbass.
Sergey Zenin, Dmitry Malyshev, Alexey Yaldin, Andrey Rudenko, Oleg Bondarenko for Vesti — the News of the Week from Donbass.
