SHYROKYNE, Ukraine – Stressed and hastily inhaling the nicotine of his last cigarette, the 29-year old soldier, introducing himself only as Slavik, hurries himself towards a few Ukrainian army vehicles that pull over at the checkpoint he’s guarding.
It’s not allowed for anyone to go to Shyrokyne after it was declared a demilitarized zone by the Russian-separatist authorities and Ukrainian army.
Nobody controls the ruined village anymore.
The place near Mariupol, the big Azov Port city of 500,000, is where families once enjoyed the views from the hills. It has become a no-man’s-land.
Civilian cars are not a common sight anymore, only camouflage-green army vehicles.
“For days the Russian-separatists have been using provocative gunfire, and the media keep silent about that!” Slavik said. “It could just take a bullet to trigger a full-scale war. Again. There’s a ceasefire, but these terrorists provoke any agreement by firing small arms. It’s to tease us, hoping we’d fire back so they have a reason to attack us and not fulfill any agreement our governments made.”
The Ukrainian military and Russian-separatist positions remain only 500 meters apart from each other.
According to Slavik. tensions between the two conflicting sides are high, despite the fact that both the Ukrainian army as well as the combined Russian-separatist forces have started to withdraw artillery from the demarcation line. “The village is empty. Nobody goes there. We’re on a hill, and the enemy looks at us from just 500 meters. It takes less than a second for them to kill any of us. They’re probably looking at you now, too,” he said, worryingly, although he admitted that the Russian-separatist forces must have the same feeling. “We are looking at them from our positions too, of course.”
Shyrokyne is a small village with a pre-war population of little over 1,000 people. Probably no one had heard of it before Russia’s war against Ukraine, but a lot of blood has been spilled for the village. Lying strategically on hills, the village could have become a hub for the Russian-separatist combined forces to launch an offensive to take control of Ukrainian-held Mariupol, ultimately creating a land bridge to Russia-occupied Crimea.
However, during month-long clashes on July 3 the separatists started to withdraw from the small village. It became the start of the Ukrainian army and the Russian-separatist forces, under surveillance of the OSCE, making Shryrokyne a demilitarized area. Volunteer fighters from the Azov and Donbas battalion were against the demilitarization, claiming it would be easier for the Russian-proxies to launch yet another offensive towards Mariupol. Civilians in Mariupol also protested against the withdrawal. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense decided, however, to remove the two volunteer battalions from Shyrokyne and install the government army, as well as marines, near the demilitarized town.
The Kyiv Post witnessed two Ukrainian tanks withdrawing from the contact line.
“Slavik,” a 29-year-old government soldier from western Ukraine’s Ivano-Frankivsk, explains that the demilitarization of Shyrokyne might be an example of what other front-line cities on the demarcation line will soon look like.
“I doubt there can be any good political resolution with the terrorists regarding who controls which city on the front line. Marynka, Pisky, Avdiivka, Popasna are all cities on the contact line that both sides want to control for several reasons. If parts of these cities are demilitarized, maybe then bigger steps for peace can be made,” he said.
Some of the former citizens from Shryrokyne have fled to Ukrainian-controlled Mariupol.
In front of school number 397, Lyudmila Atpin, a 31-year-old mother, waits for her nine-year-old son, Volodymyr.
The two fled the seaside village of Shyrokyne in December, amid intense fighting.
“Suddenly, I woke up because of loud explosions of grenades and the sound of continuous gunfire. Men from Donetsk stood in my house, demanding that I leave. It was cold and we had to hide in our shelter for weeks,” Atpin recalled, heavily shaking her head. Now she lives with her friend in Mariupol, where she works at a cashier in a supermarket.
Atpin used to be a stay-at-home mom, but her husband left her, so she had to look for work.
Due to the fact that Shyrokyne has become a demilitarized zone, it is impossible for Atpin to return to her home.
“Shyrokyne has become nothing more but a collection of memories.”
