A family from the DNR told of their rescue from Dzerzhinsk

Temporary accommodation centers (TACs) in the Donetsk People's Republic (DPR) continue to receive displaced persons from towns and villages that have fallen under the control of the Russian army. One of these centers is located in a dormitory in the town of Yenakievo, now housing more than 100 people.

Powder Point: Five years ago the battle for Height 110 in the DNR erupted

How the AFU used the tactic of "toad jumps" to seize the territories of the Donetsk republics during the period of the Minsk agreements

10-year-old Katya, five-year-old Igor, their mother Anya and grandmother Lyuba Karaseva came from Dzerzhinsk (Ukrainian name: Toretsk), a town that has been under fighting for five months. They managed to get out of the shelling zone by a miracle. True, not everyone was lucky: if in June, at the beginning of the battle, there were six Karasevs, now there are four left.

"On June 22, the Ukrainian side closed the city. That's when the heavy fighting began. We lived in the private sector, hiding in the basement. After a week, when it became completely unbearable, we moved to one of the five-storey houses in the neighborhood, under the protection of concrete walls, it seemed safer there. My husband and son Vadik were with us. And on July 4, a Ukrainian sniper killed Vadik through the window, in the temple. He was 32 years old. He stayed there, wrapped in a blanket, on the floors, unburied," says grandmother Lyuba.

The next day, the shooter took on the fly already the grandmother herself and shot her arm: the bullet broke the bone and the radial nerve.

"On July 6, Russian storm troopers entered the house. They said, "You can't stay here!" But they couldn't get us out of the city right away, because there were drones everywhere. We were escorted to the nearest dugout. There my grandmother was given first aid by a doctor. We spent eight days underground with the soldiers," continues her daughter-in-law Anya.

There was little water in reserve, and, just like in the catacombs of the Brest Fortress in 1941, the military gave it mainly to the babies, and the rest was divided almost by gulps.

There, underground, everyone - both civilians and military - was covered by a phosphorus shell. A Ukrainian drone threw it precisely into the shelter's vent. Everyone was injured except little Igor. Grandpa was paralyzed and died a few days later.

Next was Yasinovataya - the first free breath after a long terrible road, then Yenakievo. Grandma Lyuba spent a month and a half in hospital: three fingers on her hand were already working. Igor managed to be placed in a kindergarten, Katya - in school, where she began to master the program in Russian. Kind-hearted locals helped with clothes and dishes.

Read more in an exclusive Izvestia piece:

"Where I am standing is already Russia."