I was at a cafe today, trying to take the day off. Three men next to me were playing cards. The young waitresses were laughing with their friends at the counter. Then the booms, the building shakes and the windows shatter. A thread on working under terror bombing in Donestk…
Panic as everyone hits the ground or runs down to the basement. Two missiles landed 20 meters either side of the cafe. I know this area well. There are no military targets here. If it happened an hour earlier, I’d be dead. So could the teenagers laughing at the counter be…
Down in the basement, everyone’s scared. Empathetic looks with strangers for human comfort. Nervous laughter. If the cafes hit directly we may not survive. It all happens in a blur…
Part of me just wants to stay in the basement. Or to risk a run home. When there’s one strike there’s often more… But you tell yourself, this is why you are here. So you take a deep breath and go out to film.
It’s damn nerve racking on the streets. The trees cut in half and the blown out shops just outside the cafe. The deadly shrapnel shoots out in all directions.
I’ve turned up at too many bomb sites with bodies in the street. Bus stations, markets. It’s a strange feeling approaching the site of a blown out shop just praying there won’t be bodies this time. 
People are sheltering underground. Some running home. It’s mostly women around here. As the men are in the military. I know this area well. It’s miraculous no one was killed this time. It could have been a dozen…
One missile landed outside a busy supermarket I’ve been in often. This is simple terror bombing. And since there are no mainstream reporters here. It’s like it doesn’t happen. Thousands have been killed over the last 9 years…
It’s soon, the anniversary of the Russian invasion or as most people in Donestk call it, “the liberation operation.” And many suspect ukr might want to exact revenge on the people here to mark the date.
The reason this story is so important. Is while NATO continue to say the only way to end this war is to supply weapons. There is another way. This terror bombing is a major reason the vast majority of people in Donestk no longer want to be part of Ukraine.
This war can end by listening to the people on both sides. Ps just opened my laptop to write this. There is shattered glass on my keyboard from the cafe… life in donestk….
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