SHYROKYNE, Ukraine -- When the first shells of Grad multiple rocket launchers were hitting Shyrokyne in Donetsk Oblast in early September 2014, the warring sides were arranging the final points of the peace plan in Minsk, Belarus.
But the Minsk deal, signed on Sept. 5, 2014, by the representatives of Ukraine, Russia, Russian-backed separatists and Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, didn’t bring peace to Shyrokyne or to the rest of Donbas. Neither did “Minsk II,” a second peace plan signed on Feb. 12 2015 and still nominally in effect.
Instead, Shyrokyne, a sleepy fishing town of some 1,400 residents located in 800 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, became new a hot spot in Russia’s war against Ukraine, which has claimed almost 9,500 lives, according to the United Nations.
For the two years Shyrokyne changed hands several times, which always was accompanied by the fierce fights and massive destruction.
Its only strategic significance — if it has any — is its location on the separation line, only 23 kilometers east of Mariupol, a big prize that has eluded Russian-separatist forces since the start of the war in 2014. Mariupol, with its 500,000 residents near the Azov Sea port, has remained in Ukrainian hands throughout.
Shyrokyne reveals that step one of the Minsk peace plan — a cease-fire — has never come to pass.
The last attempt of a “silence regime,” launched on Sept. 1 this year after another round of talks in Minsk, worked no more than five days.
With the sun going down after a midday on Sept. 8, the sounds of heavy artillery shelling in Shyrokyne were becoming louder.
“What do you expect if the distance between us and the Russians is no more than 550 meters,” said sergeant major of Marines serving in Shyrokyne with nom-de-guerre Chingiz.
This is his second war. When being a conscript, Chingiz, now 45, fought is the Soviet army troops in Nagorno-Karabakh war in 1991-1992. He said this war is harder. “In mountainous Karabakh it was impossible to use Grads and here there are prairies everywhere,” he said.
While the OSCE monitors hail the relative silence now in comparison to turbulent summer months, the analysts say escalation is likely by mid-October, when a new round of talks in Normandy format, a diplomatic group of senior representatives of Ukraine, Russia, Germany and France, are going to take place for conflict resolution.
“(Russian president Vladimir) Putin needs to strengthen his position before the new round of Normandy,” said Sergiy Gerasymchuk, an expert of Strategic and Security Studies Group and FPC “Ukrainian Prism.” He added the weather conditions will also be ideal for attack until mid-October.
The Russians have already used the massive military attacks in August 2014 and February 2015 to win the concessions in negotiations with Ukrainian side. Both times it ended up with the new peace deals, knows as Minsk 1 and Minsk 2.
But the soldiers in Shyrokyne say the Ukrainian army in 2016 is uncomparable to under-equipped and disorganized troops they used to be two years ago. So the new attack would bring to way more losses.
“We’ve learned how to fight,” Chingiz said. “There will be no repeat of 2014.”
An officer of a civil-military co-operation (CIMIC) called Zhenia, 32, who refused to give his last name as he wasn’t authorized to talk to the press, said the military hear about the risk of escalation every early spring and early autumn over the last two years. “I doubt it will be a full-scale war, rather they keep on disturbing us the same way,” he said.
Chingiz said both soldiers and civilians feel exhausted with this neither war nor peace situation.
The elite Marine unit called also the “black berets”,” which is now serving in Shyrokyne, was formed from the Crimean Marine troops, who stayed loyal to Ukraine after Russia annexed the peninsula. When they first arrived in Shyrokyne in summer 2015, some Marines started receiving the text messages from their former fellow soldiers from Crimea, who were now fighting against them on the Russian side.
Chingiz said there are predominantly the Russians, including the mercenaries and regular army troops, who are fighting against them. “We hear their radio interception, sometimes we just shout to each other across the frontline, and I can easily recognize by the accent of a language, where they come from,” he said.
From a rooftop of a summer house, where the soldiers are now based, they see the big white electric windmills, located in Kominternovo and Sakhanka, the villages, which are now occupied by the Russian troops and their separatist proxies.
Gerasymchuk, an expert, believes Minsk 3 is likely, though its results would hardly bring to any breakthrough and will once again be stalled on the stage of a non-working ceasefire. He said the peace process, in fact, looks rather like an imitation of the peace efforts from both sides.
Chingiz said the Ukrainian troops are able now to go further and liberate Donetsk if the commanders give the order to do so. He admits, however, that despite the war experience, his unit badly needs the armored vehicles to effectively fight the enemy.
The Marines didn’t like the Humvees, received as an aid from the Unites States, which President Petro Poroshenko pompously ordered to send them last summer. The U.S. cars have the plastic doors, which give no protection from the bullets.
On the big military parade in Kyiv for the 25th anniversary of Ukraine’s independence on Aug. 24, the Ukrainian military first wore the new ceremonial uniform. But the soldiers fighting on the frontline say they would more appreciate if the government supplies them with several sets of quality combat uniform.
In over two years since the war started, they still have to buy the uniform by themselves and rely on the volunteers in a supply of the clothes and combat equipment, including goggles, thermal imagers, and even the masking nets.
The soldiers say the government didn’t fulfill the requirements of the EuroMaidan Revolution, which ousted President Viktor Yanukovych in early winter 2014.
“It was not the change of power but rather the change of the oligarchs,” said Zhenia, referring to president Poroshenko, who is also an oligarch.
Chingiz admitted the soldiers didn’t feel the rise of salaries early this years since the Ukrainian currency devalued. But he added the Marines fight not for money.
“Thanks to me serving here my kid sleeps peacefully,” he said. “We fight here not for Poroshenko, but for our people and our families.”
Shyrokine is now a ghost village. In February 2015 the volunteers from Mariupol city, located in 20 kilometers from it, evacuated all the residents from there.
The central street Shyrokyne it is now overgrown with the trees with the destroyed shops and Soviet monuments, pinned with the bullet holes, are seen on both sides.
In a once big and brightly colored two-story Shyrokyne school the Russian troops used to have their fortification. After they were forced to leave it following the serious fights, the school remained half-destroyed and half-burned down.
A bright classroom with the beautiful view to the sea still has the words on the blackboard reading in English “Friday, the 16th of January. Classwork,” depicting the date when the children learned there for the last time.
The blackboard also has the words “Putin is a dickhead,” written there later by the soldiers.
