The Acting Commandant of the Perevalsk Commandant’s Office offered me a short tour of a little town which just happened to be in the immediate vicinity of the front-line. The Ukrainian forces had been firing towards the residential district of the town right up until the day when the Militia had mopped up Debaltsevo. We took the road which I knew very well. We drove through the town where I could see the consequences of the shelling all around. We approached the school from its rear and saw there a football pitch with a huge crater in the middle of it. Then we saw another crater from an Uragan missile near the school.

Craters left by "Uragan" missile near Zorinsk school

Damage, made by missile to the school building

We found quite a large shell fragment, resembling a crumpled aluminium pail, inside the building, but the distinct marking number it bore proved that it was part of an Uragan missile

The school had none of it's windows left intact on the side facing towards Debaltsevo. Evidently, it had not been random fire—we could see that all the strikes on the school were direct hits

Now, the image of the book with hammer and sickle and the engraved phrase “Peace to the World” adds more sadness to the whole scene

The condition of the building inside was no less terrible: overthrown pieces of furniture, broken window frames. splinters of glass and crumbled plaster on the floor, fragments of wood and brick everywhere, everything slashed and holed

In a half-ruined corridor there were stands with portraits of the Heroes of the Great Patriotic War, “killed” once again by Ukrainian bullets. “Nobody has been forgotten, nothing has been forgotten.”

I'd like to note that respect to the values of memory has always been a very important part of our school education. In the light of Ukraine’s conflict, one of the main tools currently employed in Ukrainian schools is the misrepresentation of history—in particular, replacing the names of Soviet heroes with the names of Banderites. Yet people in Donbass do remember their true history: we learned it not only at school, but also from our grandparents, who saw this history with their own eyes and retold it to us again and again, and we shall never forget it.

I entered the classroom where Vika and the other first form pupils used to study. Again, the usual scene: pieces of broken glass everywhere, destroyed windows, smashed furniture, holed walls… Books left in a bookcase…