Winter is coming...and Nataliya Vasilyeva has been writing for the Associated Press on the plight of civilians still stuck in Donetsk:
DONETSK, Ukraine (AP) -- Dark tunnels in the basement of a bombed-out hospital in the eastern city of Donetsk lead to a makeshift shelter. Opening the door hardly alleviates the gloom, for the only lighting inside is the flicker of handmade oil lamps.
The inhabitants move around like shadows, eyes dull and faces weary with hardship, dressed in several layers of worn-out sweatshirts, vests and jackets. The tiny rooms are lit with sunflower oil poured into saucers and set aflame.
These people took refuge in the abandoned hospital's basement after their own homes were destroyed. They are either too poor or old to flee the brutal separatist war that has ravaged Ukraine's east. Their dire situation is about to become much worse as Donetsk, which has lost nearly half of its 1 million-strong population, braces for winter. In eastern Ukraine, where temperatures typically stay below freezing all winter, damage to critical infrastructure and lack of adequate shelter for the newly homeless could mean death from cold for many.
"We have nowhere to go," says Vera Dvornikova, a 70-year-old janitor who has been living in the basement of Hospital 18 on the northern outskirts of town since her apartment was obliterated by shelling in late July.
Her murky room is cluttered with shabby relics of the past, battered old chairs and something with a blanket on it, which could be a bed. "We don't even know who we should ask for help," she says. "We just sit here like rats."
The basement that Dvornikova shares with 19 others has no running water or heating, and electricity has been cut off for a month. Asked how she is preparing for winter, Dvornikova mutters vaguely about keeping warm with an oil cloth and two blankets which she took from the hospital upstairs.
Read the entire article here
Meanwhile, in Kyiv, the city's oldest cinema has been gutted by fire after someone set the place ablaze with a smoke bomb during a protest against the screening of films with LGBT themes there. RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service has this video of the aftermath:
Here is an English map of the military situation in eastern Ukraine today, as issued by Kyiv's National Security and Defense Council (click to enlarge):
