In Kuhari’s school, Liudmyla Koshlets goes from one room to another and sees the damage. This 63-year-old Ukrainian is the director of the establishment, which was the scene of fighting while the city located in the oblast of kyiv was occupied by Russian soldiers. The windows have been shattered, the furniture is damaged or even destroyed: heavy work will be necessary before considering the resumption of classes in this city located a hundred kilometers from the capital kyiv. Russian troops have withdrawn from this region but are now concentrating on the eastern front, in the Donbass, where Ukrainian forces are losing “60 to 100 soldiers per day, killed in action, and some 500 are wounded”, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
To read : Ukraine, reporting from the trenches of fear
In the rest of the oblast, other traces of the fighting are evident: near the capital, Ukrainian forces are collecting all the mines and shells that have not exploded. The search for these dangerous devices is meticulous, especially since the NGO Human Rights Watch denounced, in March, the use of prohibited anti-personnel mines POM-3, nicknamed “Medallion”, which explode and project metal fragments which “can kill and injure within a radius of 16 meters”. “Not only do these weapons not differentiate between combatants and civilians, but they continue to pose a mortal danger for years to come,” warned Steve Goose, director of the organization’s arms division. Unlike Ukraine, Russia has not ratified the 1997 International Convention banning anti-personnel mines.