Lidiya waves her hands in the shape of a cross as the sound of bombing surrounds his house and his look is a mixture of resignation, indignation and fear. “We’ve been here for weeks, we don’t have water, food or electricity and this is where we live under bombardment,” he says as he leads the way through a trapdoor that leads to a narrow, sloping staircase that descends at a dizzying incline. Especially hard to beat for people like the elderly couple who lives in the house, now partly destroyed by bombing, in a small area of the town of Severodonestkon the luhansk region, in the Ukrainian east of Donbas. A local NGO is the one that distributes the food throughout the area and, with its help, we visit several shelters and houses of people who have decided not to abandon them.
The population of the area donbas lives immersed in war since the pro-Russian separatists they tried to seize the entire area in eastern Ukraine in 2014. At that time, the uprising did not work and led to a chronic conflict. Now, with Putin’s invasion, the area is one of the most coveted objectives in the armed conflict.
“The rocket it is still in the grass. It didn’t have a shell, but several tiny bombs.” Numerous smaller shells flew all over the courtyard of the housing estate, exploding on impact. “That was yesterday,” says Svetlana, who has just gotten some fresh air at the a few minutes out of the shelter he lives in. He looks nervously up at the sky over and over again.
The hospital, bombed
“Since the Russians bombed the hospital, we have not had peace,” says another woman who prefers not to be identified. She points to the campus of the Regional hospital in his hometown of Lyman, across the street. The building caught fire last Friday as a result of artillery fire. The hospital had been evacuated only two days earlier, otherwise there would likely have been numerous deaths and injuries.
Lyman It is a quiet little town with just a few 20,000 inhabitants in the north of donbas. In a Playground with pine forests and lakes, known as the ukrainian switzerland. Today, this small town is on the front line. The sound of drums and loud explosions can be heard constantly. The Russian army It is slowly advancing about a kilometer each day, and is currently three kilometers away.
“Our apartment is on the seventh floor,” he says Svetlana, who adds: “But now we live in the basement”. This 45-year-old woman now lives in two small rooms with her family. An anteroom with a table and a two-burner stove serves as a kitchen. A low, narrow doorway leads to the bedroom, where there is a deckchair and a mattress on the concrete floor.
The family has saved all their most valuable belongings, which are stacked on shelves, among plastic plates, pans, canned food and eggs. In the middle are their packed bags. “We are always ready to go”, Eugen, Svetlana’s husband, tells us. “We will not stay here if the Russians invade. Everyone knows the terrible things they did in Bucha“, he concludes.
scorched earth policy
A few kilometers before they rise columns of smoke stretching to the horizon in the intense green of this region. In the background, you can see a 17th century monasterypicturesquely located on white cliffs on the banks of the Severy Donets River with its golden roofs and several damages to its facade caused by the bombing. Many Ukrainians used to come here on vacation. The Russian Army has been attacking the small town of just 4,000 inhabitants for three weeks. In the meantime, it has approached two kilometers from the place. Ukrainian commander Vladimir tells us: “We are on the first line of defense.”
Soldiers are only glimpsed in the few vehicles on the road, and they drive at full speed to try to avoid being potential targets of the constant bombardment. They park their cars along the walls of houses and under trees. “During this week, the Russians advanced five kilometers,” explains Commander Vladimir, outside the city center. “They are only advancing because they are bombing all the villages to the ground,” he says. It is the policy of Burned ground that Russian troops are now using in Ukraine. Only when everything is totally destroyed do they decide to advance. The Russian army has learned from its mistakes in kyiv, from the strategy blitzkrieg -lightning war- with which they wanted to take the Ukrainian capital in a few days in February and which failed. With columns of large caliber tanks and bombsalmost nothing can be done. Now they trust the artillery and the rocket fire. The Ukrainian Army cannot resist in the long term. You have to retreat if you don’t want to lose all your men in indefensible positions.
“Please don’t ask me how, but we control the skies,” Vladimir informs proudly, adjusting his cap. That makes an important difference but it is useless without heavy weapons, the commander abounds to add: “But what we still urgently need are heavy weapons.” Refers to weapons with a range up to 60 kilometers with radar systems that detect the ballistic trajectory of the projectiles, and that allows them to position and eliminate artillery of the Russian Army. “We are fighting trench warfare here, almost like in the First World War,” says Vladimir. “If the heavy weapons we need arrive, we can stop the Russians,” he is confident.
“I understand the Russians”
The starting point of the Russian attacks is lyjum, 20 kilometers to the north. An small town of around 45,000 inhabitants that the Russian Army seized last month and turned into the axis from his deployment in Donbas. New troops arrive daily, the feared Battalion Tactical Groups (BTG) which are units between 600 and 800 men and combine infantry, air defense and armored units. According to US intelligence, at least 76 of these battalions are currently deployed in Donbas.
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In this city you can see the consequence of a recent rocket. The roof is completely destroyed. Fortunately, the residents fled weeks ago. Ivan lives next door, cleaning the shards of broken glass from his window: “I perfectly understand the Russians, they have to do what they are doing, because the Ukrainians have been bombing the Luhansk and Donesk People’s Republics for eight years,” says the old man. He repeats endlessly Russian state media propaganda, as are many of the area’s Russian-speaking residents. “Even if the missile had killed me, I’d be fine,” she says with all seriousness. He is from Russia. His son lives in Moscow and his daughter in Donetsk, which is occupied by pro-Russian separatists. “Of course, I only follow the Russian media,” he says. “They show the truth,” he asserts. He does not have to fear any negative consequences. “I don’t have the slightest problem saying what I think,” he insists again and says goodbye.
Vladimir, ukrainian army captain, tells us that the pro-Russian inhabitants marked the position with a blue light, and sent two intercepted SMS messages. The captain explains that this is the problem in the area, that there are people like Ivan who actively or passively blindly believe in Russian propaganda and its biased view of what is happening. Coincidence or not, when the journalists’ car enters the city again after visiting Severodonestk, three mortars fall next to it, a few minutes after having parked it near the meeting point with Vladimir. He directs us to run to a ladder that gives access to an underground where they take cover from bombing if you have enough time to reach it.
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Eddie is an Australian news reporter with over 9 years in the industry and has published on Forbes and tech crunch.