so September the 8th which uh in the
donbass area which donet and lugans make
up is The donbass Liberation days this
is when the Nazis were kicked out of the
area by Soviet forces in World War II
it's also 3 days since the ceasefire
started and uh it's largely held across
the region there have been a couple of
violations but so far no major fighting
has broken out again so we're going to
speak to some people here to talk about
the memorial and also hear what they
think about the ceasefire
[Applause]
CL do you see uh the fight against naism
in the 1940s similar to what uh the DNR
are fighting for here in in
2014 are you happy that a ceasefire is
now in place and are you hopeful that it
will continue
fore foree
[Music]
we're currently driving with a small
humanitarian Convoy to the town of ilice
which is to the southeast of Donette it
was the scene of very heavy fighting
throughout August between Ukrainian DNR
forces and it ended up with Ukrainian
forces actually being surrounded near
the town and being forced to surrender
and flee the city some of those fleeing
were caught in ambushes by DNR forces
which we've seen the aftermath of uh the
town itself has been heavily damaged in
the fighting lots of destroyed buildings
and a lack of power uh food and water so
this Convoy as a couple of big trucks
we're heading down there now to uh watch
and distribute some of those supplies to
the
residents so what's the situation in
town now is there still water gas
electricity what's the situation with
the
food for
[Music]
can you tell me who organized this
humanitarian uh Convoy and how much
material you're actually delivering to
so the fighting in aice between the
ukrainians and the DNR lasted for up to
3 weeks there was daily shelling from
both sides and you can see the aftermath
of that there's loads of these sort of
bombed out houses have been also damaged
by fire uh we're in front of the train
tracks and there's a like a pedestrian
foot bridge that goes over the tracks
here and that's been uh been collapsed
it's just like the whole place has kind
of been devastated and this is why now
with the DNR having to come here in
Convoy to deliver food and
Aid this is one of the schools in ilis
and we've been seeing a lot of these
which are markings uh to point out where
unexploded Munitions are are still lying
in the ground this one looks maybe like
a Mott shell and it's completely stuck
in the concrete the fins just hanging
out so again you know this school
obviously isn't going to reopen anytime
soon but the civilians here are going to
have to live with the cost of this
fighting for a very long
time I have no idea what kind of rocket
that is I'm no Munitions expert but it's
enormous I I don't want to go too close
as well as there being the tiny mortars
that we've seen there's also these
massive like
rockets and
uh seems someone was growing a bit of
weed by the garages and luckily for them
the crop hasn't been destroyed
so after a months of both sides using
artillery there are hundreds possibly
thousands of unexploded shells across
the region so now that there's a lull in
the fighting whilst the ceasefire is
still holding the DNR in this area
trying to blow up some of these
unexploded shells to try and minimize
the risk to civilians who are now coming
back to their homes and finding these
shells lying around
so the DNR have rigged up one of these
unexploded shells on the tracks with
some explosives uh they don't seem too
interested in uh diffusing the shell but
they'd rather just destroy it instead so
now they've told us to try and uh well
to head a bit further back where they're
now going to blow it up so we got to
take some
cover they they're just testing the
connection of the wire to the uh the
explosive and they're going to blow it
sound like it
worked could you just tell us what
happened today with the explosive here
on the
tracks for
the first attempt with 200 gram of
explosives didn't work so now they're
going to try with a kilo and a half of
explosives to try and get rid of the
shell that was a lot
bigger so it seemed the second attempt
to blow up the uh artillery shell works
it was there now there's a big crater
but they're a bit unhappy because the
explosion has damaged the uh the train
power lines above it they wanted to try
and uh keep that in one piece because
obviously they want to get these tracks
working again so they've kind of screwed
up a little bit on that part but at
least they've got rid of the
explosive for