Les forces ukrainiennes consolident les tranchées dans l’attente d’une offensive. Reportage à Pisky, juste à l’ouest de l’extrémité de la piste de l’aéroport de Donetsk.
À la fin de l’article, ce point de vue d’un « local ».
Ukraine’s field army digs in for separatist offensive - Telegraph
▻http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/ukraine/11247933/Ukraines-field-army-digs-in-for-separatist-offensive.html
A Donetsk native, Artyem says this checkpoint will be his home until he can get back his own place in the separatist-occupied city.
But perhaps worse than the weather is the sense that, despite being a local, he is not entirely welcome.
Several of the towns west of Donetsk raised rebel flags before being retaken by the volunteer battalions in summer, and uncomfortable truth for Kiev is that the sympathies of many locals lie on the other side of the lines.
“About seventy per cent of people around here support them,” said Artyem, who refused to give his second name. “There is a separatist lives over there,” he says, pointing towards the village up the road from his checkpoint. “Every time he drives through the checkpoint he tells me to go back where I came from. I tell him ’mate, this is my home.’”
Perhaps because they include a number of Donetsk natives, the men of Dnipro 1 seem less inclined than some other Ukrainian units to believe that their enemies are just Russian mercenaries.
“We captured a Russian paratrooper major a while back, so we know they [the Russians] are there. But along with them are the locals,” said Sergei, also a native of Donetsk.
“We’re on our own land,” he added, repeating a line popular on both sides of this war. “We know we’re defending our homes, and that is what makes us stronger.”
The tragic irony is that is precisely what the men in camouflage on the other side of the lines also say.