The city of Popasna (Luhansk Oblast) is half occupied by Russian troops. There are no surviving residential buildings left in the city — the occupiers are methodically destroying all objects.
Mykola Khanatov, who heads the Popasna military administration, told Babel about this in an interview.
"It hurts me to call some interest. The city is being chaotically shelled. The Russians are completely destroying all high-rise buildings and the entire private sector. Methodically. It seems to me that there are no surviving houses at all. There are simply high-rises that are still to be restored, and there are those that are not. It is the same in Rubizhne and Lysychansk", he said.
Almost all communications in the city are cut off, there is no medicine either, because the Russians destroyed the hospital. The city is constantly under fire. People who remain in the city mostly live in shelters, and those who are under occupation are forcibly deported to Pervomaisk (controlled by a pro-Russian collaborators since 2014).
According to Khanatov, more than a hundred people have been killed in the city since the Russian invasion.
At the same time, the occupiers did not allow the evacuation. They once gave a "green" corridor and fired on it. It was on March 19. Then Khanatov received a concussion.