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FRONTLINE OF HELL
Putin’s spies dish out poisoned sweets to kids in apocalyptic Ukraine town where locals live in sewage-stenched shelters
Watch exclusive video of the bullet-riddled Ukraine town
UNSUSPECTING children have been handed poisoned sweets in an apocalyptic Ukraine town "infested with Russian agents".
Liman - which sits just 15km from the frontlines - was liberated in October 2022, but Vladimir Putin's spies still run rampant.
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During our visit, a seven-year-old girl approached us, smiling and offering sweets - what happened to be a heartwarming gesture.
But a volunteer with us warned us not to eat them, saying Putin's henchmen have dished them out to unsuspecting kids who then pass them on to Ukrainian soldiers, who are also none the wiser.
The volunteer said: "The town is infested with Russian agents.
"There were cases when children were bringing sweets to the checkpoints and random soldiers in the street.
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"The candies were poisoned. The children are not aware of what they are doing.
"You should not take anything from people; you can’t trust even a little girl."
The girl appeared from nowhere and was not with anyone - and did not blend into the general atmosphere of depression, destruction, and apocalypse.
Liman -which has a thick stench of sewage - is a stark example of how the whole of Ukraine might have looked if the Russians had advanced and takenover.
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The infrastructure of the town, located in the Donetsk region, was destroyed after a four-month-long Russian occupation in 2022.
Most houses were left without basic utilities, and their bullet-riddled walls were covered in graffiti spelling out words like "Russia", "USSR", and "Russian World".
Liman was liberated in October 2022 - and has been regularly targeted by Putin’s army ever since.
People today live there in basements to protect themselves from Russian rockets, shells, and drones and cook their food outside on makeshift stoves.
Beside every building are tonnes of firewood stacked in piles.
Before the Russian occupation, Liman was home to more than 20,000 people; now only a few thousand are trying to survive - many of whom have become untrusting.
We also met with a family of three, living in a basement the size of a closet.
Galina Viktorovna, 62, her daughter Irina, 30, and her granddaughter Evelina, ten, live in a three-square-metre room.
The distinctive smell of sewage and mould was almost unbearable.
Galina told The Sun: "Yes, it smells terrible, but it’s warmer than in an apartment here, and we are safe from the rockets."
But sadly that is not true - as Russians know that people live in basements and aim specifically there.
Russians had already hit the basement of the building next door, reportedly with an air bomb, judging by the crate.
But people in desperate situations need to believe and hold on to something.
Galina continued: "We have nowhere to go. We didn't have any problems until Russia caused them."
People like this family rely mostly on humanitarian help.
We came to the town with a team of humanitarian volunteers.
While distributing humanitarian aid in Liman, we met Artyom.
Artyom, 52, still had his fancy coat, but his eyes were watery, and his face was beginning to swell - a sign of alcohol abuse.
Artyom’s wife left for Germany with their children at the beginning of the full-scale invasion. They do not talk anymore.
She has a different name and a different family. She traded her given name from Tanya to Tina and has a good life, we were told.
Her husband, who is still married by Ukrainian law, is crushed.
He said: "I used to have a small business. I owned a few buses. When the Russians came, they took them away.
"My wife, whom I loved dearly, found a man in Germany just a couple of months after arriving. She told me that she doesn’t want to have anything to do with me because ‘I am poor now’.
"What should I do? There is no work here. I can’t start the business; I have lost everything. My wife and my life."
In October 2022, when the city was liberated, Ukrainian police were tasked with searching for the bodies of civilians amid the destruction.
Mark Tkachenko, communications inspector for the Kramatorsk district police of the Donetsk region, said at the time that the town was a "humanitarian crisis".
He told : "Some people died in their houses, some people died in the streets, and the bodies are now being sent to experts for examination.
"For now we are looking for grave sites, and there are probably mass graves."
The forests surrounding Liman were also decimated by fighting and the roads lined with dozens of burned-out vehicles.
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