Fear prevails near line of contact in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region

People living near the line of contact in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region are in a constant state of fear as they worry over the safety of their families and close ones.

Andrii Bolbat, 50, who works at a coal mine in Vuhledar, a city in the Donetsk region, said an instance of shelling at his own house in Marinka left him severely injured. Sitting at a hospital couch, Bolbat said that two pieces of shrapnel were still lodged in his shoulder and another one in his chest.

He recalled that before the New Year, there was an escalation of tensions near the borderline, and the shelling had significantly increased since last Thursday.

Around 5,000 residents of Marinka were forced to move to Kurakhove alone, he said, adding that before the 2014 Russia-Ukraine war, nearly 25,000 people used to live in Marinka.

Larisa Kondratenko, head of investigations at the regional police department in Pokrovsk city, said the situation as a whole is “very tense” now in the region.

“During the week, there was very strong shelling of the city of Krasnohorivka and the city of Marinka,” she said, noting that residents of Krasnohorivka have no electricity as a result.

Russian President Vladimir Putin announced Monday that Moscow was recognizing the two eastern Ukrainian breakaway regions of Luhansk and Donetsk as “independent” states, followed quickly by sending forces to “maintain peace.”

The announcements drew widespread global condemnation as violations of the UN Charter and international law, with Western countries announcing new sanctions on Russia.

In 2014, after invading Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, Moscow began to support separatist forces in eastern Ukraine against the central government, a policy that it has maintained since then. The conflict has taken more than 13,000 lives, according to the UN.

Putin’s latest moves follow Russia’s amassing of 100,000 troops and heavy equipment in and around its neighbor, with the US and other Western countries accusing it of setting the stage for an invasion.

Russia has denied that it is preparing an invasion and instead claims that the West has undermined its security through NATO’s expansion toward its borders.