Olena and her husband Nikolay were trying to bury an elderly neighbor when the sky split open, spewing pieces of shrapnel that split open the head of their teenage daughter.
Nikolai, 52, was a little further up the hill in the Ukrainian village on the front line, still holding the body of a neighbor he used to shield himself from the worst of the blast. Huddled under a corpse, he could only watch in helpless horror as his wife and child Anastasia, 15, were torn apart by the Russian strike in their own garden.
Their village in Donetsk is literally on the front lines of the vicious war that began with Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine in February. Located just meters away in fractured Ukrainian-held territory, it could soon be engulfed by Russian troops who have advanced on Donetsk after capturing all of the neighboring Luhansk region.
So it’s a hellish no man’s land where the villagers cower in their basements while the tug-of-war rages above them.
“I was screaming Anastasia’s name, I was screaming that Anastasia is dead,” Olena, 51, said through tears from her hospital bed in Kramatorsk, a city itself under attack, about 28 miles south of the village. Medics tending to her say she suffered severe head, arm and leg injuries in the bombing the day before the interview.
Civilians, most of them elderly, have been waiting days for aid as food prices have soared
(Bel Treu)
“My daughter’s head was smashed; you can see her brain. She’s my only child,” Olena adds before breaking off.
She is comforted by another neighbor of hers, Olga, who oversaw Anastasia’s funeral at dawn, only to be wounded by gunfire a few hours later while trying to pick raspberries. Olga was transported to the hospital in Kramatorsk, still concussed with serious head trauma.
“Every day a house in our village is hit by everything, even white phosphorus,” she shakily tells The Independent. “It’s too dangerous to bury people properly. Now we just wrap the bodies in a blanket and put them in holes in our own gardens.
Caught in the middle and fearing repercussions from both sides, the trio asks that their identities and the location of their village be kept secret. They are reluctant to assign blame for the violence, saying they were attacked by both sides.
“We just want peace… we want an end to this war,” Nikolai adds desperately.
This is unlikely. This eastern part of Ukraine is now the deadly focus of President Putin’s assault on the country.
On Monday, he declared victory in Luhansk, an area neighboring Donetsk, just a day after heavily outgunned Ukrainian forces said they had been forced to withdraw from Lisichansk, the last remaining bastion of resistance in the area.
Pedestrians walk past the tail section of a missile embedded in the ground in Kramatorsk on Monday, a day after a Russian missile attack
(AFP via Getty)
The governor of now-occupied Luhansk and local authorities in Kramatorsk agree that the capture of all of Donetsk is Moscow’s next goal. Cities such as Kramatorsk and neighboring Slavyansk – from where the evacuation of civilians was hastily organized – are now in the line of heavy fire. On Tuesday, there were reports that Russian positions were only a few kilometers from Slavyansk.
“The enemy has already started to ‘work’ with artillery and aviation in the Donetsk region. Most likely, they will continue to use the ‘scorched earth’ strategy, which means they will destroy first and then attack,” Sergey Gadai, the governor of Luhansk, told The Independent. “The goal of the Russians is and always has been to take over all of Ukraine. They will stop only where the Ukrainian army stops them,” he adds.
Igor Eskov, a spokesman for the local administration in Kramatorsk, says his city is preparing for the worst, expecting Russia and its allied forces to make a “pinch move” against them, coming east from recently captured Lisichansk and north of the territories beyond Slavyansk.
“After Mariupol, it is the largest remaining city in Donetsk; it is the most important politically and strategically in the region,” he told The Independent outside the sand-strewn local government buildings. “Kramatorsk is the administrative center of Donetsk. They will insist on getting as much territory as possible.
For the past few days, Moscow’s artillery has turned its turrets on the two key towns that lie just a few miles south of Olena’s village.
On Sunday, six people, including a nine-year-old girl, were killed and 19 wounded in Russian strikes on Slavyansk. Kramatorsk was also shelled. On Monday, while the city center is quieter, the summer afternoon is pierced by the constant howl of shelling and outgoing fire.
Vitaly, a trauma doctor in Kramatorsk, says the hospital where he works is reduced to using home drills on patients
(Bel Treu)
And so at the hospital where Olena is being treated in Kramatorsk, which receives wounded from across the region, medics say they are understaffed, ill-equipped and exhausted. They also worry that this is just the beginning and that the front line will soon come to them too.
“I work 24-hour shifts. Sometimes I try to take a nap, but often I can’t,” says Vitali, a 46-year-old trauma doctor found sitting dazed on the couch during a rare break. “We did orthopedics before the war, now we work with injuries from mines and shelling. It’s a completely different job. Our lives are cluster munitions now.
He says he and his colleagues have to improvise with little equipment. For example, before the war they hired surgical drills for orthopedic surgery. Now they are forced to use homemade hand drills on patients’ broken bones to fix implants. Companies that rent out medical equipment have stopped operating in Ukraine since the fighting broke out.
“We need new equipment and more staff. Injuries from cluster munitions and mines happen very often,” Vitaly continues.
“Just last week we treated a woman from Lisichansk, a grandmother, who was tending to her goat when she stepped [a bomblet from a cluster munition]. Another man picked one up while collecting wood,” he adds.
Vitali points to the surgical training required to treat patients injured by cluster bombs and landmines
(Bel Treu)
Another problem that stalks the population of Kramatorsk and the surrounding villages is hunger. Since the start of the war, prices have skyrocketed and wages and even some pensions have stopped.
To the sound of gunfire and the wail of air raid sirens, residents of Kramatorsk line up for humanitarian aid. The majority are elderly people.
They say they waited for days just to receive a bag of food and supplies provided by local and international NGOs. A kilo of potatoes in the shops, they say, is worth $1 (84 pence), while their pensions are already under $100 a month.
Olga, who is 85 years old and suffers from multiple health problems, has the number 707 scrawled on her hand – her position in the queue – to remind her when it’s her next turn.
It’s her third day waiting outside the aid station and she’s leaning on the warmth of her cane. She is afraid to leave Kramatorsk because of her health: she is not sure that she will cope with the trip. “The sound of the shelling is terrifying. I just stand behind two walls in the corridor, as the authorities suggest, and pray to God,” she says quietly.
Marina, 76, who is unwell herself and cares for a niece who is diabetic and unable to work, says this is her fourth day in line. Her husband and son died and so she has to take care of herself and her niece. She cannot leave Kramatorsk because her niece cannot move.
“I’ll be back at 4am tomorrow morning,” she says in desperation just before the center closes for the day. “All we can do now is live in the basement.”
Tamara, 82, says she was born during World War II and is likely to die during the current conflict
(Bel Treu)
Behind her is 82-year-old Tamara, who says she doesn’t have enough money to leave and has nowhere to go anyway. “I was born in war and I will die in war. “I never thought this was how I would spend my retirement,” she adds.
Inside the center, exhausted volunteers say they are doing their best. A team of 10 people is busy registering names and distributing food parcels organized by a local organization called “Everything will be fine in Ukraine” and the international food aid charity World Central Kitchen.
“We support about 500 to 600 people a day, but it’s never enough,” says Igor, 55, who coordinates the center. Before the war, he worked in a steel factory that was later bombed. “The main problem is the increase in prices and the fact that almost everyone lost their jobs. Now I’m worried that the fight will come here.
He says residents have been repeatedly asked to evacuate, but those who remain have nowhere to go and no means to support themselves. Fighting breaks out between desperate civilians when they have to close the center for the afternoon.
“We always need more supplies,” he adds with a hopeless shrug.
Bloodied stretchers leaning against a wall in a hospital in Kramatorsk
(Bel Treu)
Meanwhile, the town around the center is eerily empty. The previous day the shelling had been loud in the centre, while now the noise of the shelling provided a constant background.
At the hospital in Kramatorsk, Olena, Nikolay and Olga, stunned like many others, say they have no plans for the future as they have no financial means to go anywhere and no support network.
Nikolai tries to comfort his sobbing wife Olena by vowing to adopt children orphaned by the war so they can rebuild their family. He says that the war has nothing to do with the civilians who are going through it and that they just want to go home.
“We are just civilians;…
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