Ukraine: the correspondent of tg2: “Woke up at two in the morning by artillery thuds”

“At two in the morning we woke up with the sound of bombs, near here we could hear the thuds of heavy artillery. I woke up with the barrels and they continued until dawn, we could hear the sound of tanks”. This is the testimony to Adnkronos by Piergiorgio Giacovazzo, a Tg2 correspondent in Ukraine to follow the developments of the conflict. “Our interpreter, necessary because nobody here speaks English or French, was afraid to stay – says Giacovazzo – and wanted to run back to Kiev, he also had the car we were traveling with, we were left on foot and without an interpreter”. Giacovazzo, who is currently in Donetsk, the Ukrainian side, in a city called Sloviansk, explains that the situation is dramatic. “It is a city that lives as one lives in war. This morning there was a queue at the opening of the supermarkets and yet, even thinking about how we emptied the markets in Italy when the pandemic broke out, if you look at these poor criti they go with a plastic bag and a carton of water. There is real poverty. The situation is tragic. ” The population, “although it is not a belligerent but peaceful people, which it undergoes – observes the journalist – is in extreme tension, which can suddenly reach the stars. This morning, I give an example, they mistook us for Russians, and a man he started shouting in the middle of a group of people. A small episode is enough and the escalation is a second, because their nerves are very tense “. An example for everyone: in the motorway restaurants” you can buy baseball bats. they play baseball, they keep them in their cars because you never know what’s going to happen. ” Everyday life is strongly shaken by the situation, and even the smallest daily activities are currently difficult and compromised, explains Giacovazzo. “Another big problem is that they do not accept cash – he says – and there are long queues at the ATMs. This morning we queued for three hours thinking we could withdraw at least the equivalent of 5-600 euros, instead they made us withdraw a maximum of 4,000. Ukrainian hryvnias, which are the equivalent of about 120 euros. We don’t even know how to pay for the hotel. ” “All the houses”, says the news correspondent, “have a bunker to shelter from the bombings, which have remained at rest for many years: now they have been refurbished, albeit in a rough way, with refrigerators, deck chairs, sun beds. And it is not excluded. that we too have to enter one of these, in the next few days “.