To visit Nikishino is to see the effects of almost total war. This could be the road to Berlin in 1945. It is, in fact, the road to Debaltseve, in eastern Ukraine, in 2015.
Debaltseve is a small city and a railway hub, and was the prize in bitter fighting, which ended with Russian-backed separatists seizing it from Ukrainian forces five days after a general ceasefire was supposed to come into effect last month.
Not a house, not a building in Nikishino, a small town of 900, is undamaged. Ninety percent are all but completely destroyed.
To the outsider they look uninhabitable. Yet …read more
Source: National Newswatch
