Ukraine Frontline Report (4th)
2023.12.23 (Sat) Hitoshi Takayo Follow Following A woman I met in the town of Furiapole, Zaporizhzhya region, just 6 kilometers from the front line (photographed by the author)
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(Hitoshi Takayo: Journalist)
The Ukraine war has no end in sight. In late October, I visited the front lines in Ukraine, where fierce fighting continues, to report on the situation.
Circumstances where you can’t evacuate even if you want to
One of the things that surprised me while reporting on the front lines was the reality that many people still live in dangerous areas where they don’t know when shells will fall.
Zaporozhye Oblast, southern Ukraine. There is a town called Friapole, located 6 kilometers from the front line where fierce battles with the Russian army continue. The streets are lined with apartment buildings whose steel frames are exposed, as if they were directly hit by shells, and shops whose doors and windows were blown off by the blast. Half of the buildings in the town were destroyed by Russian artillery bombardment, leaving piles of rubble everywhere.
A housing complex in Furiapore was damaged by shelling. You never know when the ground floor will be hit by a shell (Photo by the author)
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It was raining cold that day. A figure could be seen on the streets of the town, where the sound of shelling continued. She was a woman in her 60s, wearing a raincoat and carrying luggage on a bicycle.
“As a pensioner, I can’t afford to evacuate elsewhere,” said a woman who was passing by on a bicycle. In the background is the Friapole Cultural Center, reduced to rubble. Cultural and educational facilities are also targets of the Russian military (photographed by the author)
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Surprised that there are people in such a ruined town, he asks why they remain in the town instead of evacuating. She says, “With only a small pension, she cannot evacuate.”
The pension is just under 20,000 yen per month. If you evacuate, you will receive public support, but it is said to be about 23,000 yen per adult for the first three months, and only about 8,000 yen from the fourth month onwards. They say that they cannot live in the evacuation site.
I learned that “self-responsibility” is the basis for responding to war. Even if a shell hits your home, you won’t be compensated because war is an insurance exclusion.
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2023-12-22 21:00:00
