DONETSK–DEBALTSEVE, Ukraine – When Dmitry and his family returned to Donetsk on Sept. 21, two days after Ukrainian and Kremlin-backed insurgents hashed out the latest cease-fire agreement in the Belarusian capital of Minsk, the city seemed to feel relatively normal again.
But it didn’t take long for the truce to fall apart and the shelling to restart.
Since Sept. 21, battles have raged again at the Donetsk Airport, as evidenced by the rumbling of rocket fire and plumes of thick black smoke wafting from the area. Shells have crashed elsewhere in the city, too, terrifying Dmitry and his family and forcing them to shack up with friends in Makiyivka, a Donetsk suburb further from the clashes.
“I don’t know if we will ever have our Donbas returned to us,” Dmitry told the Kyiv Post by phone, referring to the pre-war condition of the easternmost Ukrainian regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, the nation’s most populous oblasts with 15 percent of the nation’s 45 million people. Dmitry didn’t give his last name for fear of reprisals from the militants.
Donetsk had 1 million people before the war. As many as 400,000 people fled the fighting since mid-April and the question is how many feel safe enough to return – or to want to return to a city run by Moscow proxies.
Dmitry’s family fled the separatist stronghold in May after the family’s neighborhood near the city’s airport became a battleground. Bullets shattered their windows and pierced their furniture on May 26, when separatist fighters attacked Ukrainian troops who had taken up positions at the airport. Dozens were killed in the fierce gun battle.
Elsewhere in the regions, the situation is similarly dire. Some 40 miles north, in the besieged city of Debaltseve, a city with a pre-war population of 25,000 people, there has been no stoppage of fire by government and Russian-backed forces despite the mutual agreements. Each side also agreed to pull their artillery back 15 kilometers to create a 30-kilometer buffer zone wide enough so that they can’t hit one another’s positions.
But in fact, not a day has passed without heavy bombarding by rocket fire from both sides. On Sept. 22, the town’s streets were mostly empty, save for a few residents scrambling to the only open quickie mart for water, stale days-old bread and canned food while shells roared overhead, shaking the earth and the chestnuts from their branches.
At least 20 Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in the three weeks since the initial cease-fire was announced on Sept. 5, also in Minsk.
Yaroslav Zhylkin, who heads the National Memory nongovernmental organization that focuses on search and exhumation of the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers from the war zone, said their volunteers have found at least 100 bodies of servicemen since Sept. 3.
While the official death toll stands at 900, the real number of Ukrainian military casualties could be significantly higher. Svyatoslav Oliynyk, deputy head of the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast administration said on Sept. 19 that “the estimated numbers for killed servicemen since the start of the ATO can be around 2,000.”
In Debaltseve, at least three civilians have been killed in Debaltseve since the Sept. 5 cease-fire deal. Others are living in fear. Electricity has been out for nearly two months, and water was shut off almost a month ago, residents said. Rockets have leveled whole streets and homes since the initial truce was concluded. Only the charred frames of what used to be charming, pastoral houses remain in some places. Photos of once-happy families lay amongst the wreckage, evidence of more peaceful times.
At the city government building, just one man, Alexander, sat inside an office. The glass in the buildings’ front doors and windows has been blasted out, and a sign taped to the entrance informs residents “the executive council is not working.”
“There is shelling every single day. Does this sound like a cease-fire?” he said rhetorically as a volley of rockets explodes nearby.
“Those are Grad,” he added, referring to the Soviet-designed multiple launch missile system. “We now know what each [weapons system] sounds like.”
At the train station two blocks away, about a dozen people emerged from the basement, where many have taken shelter after their homes were destroyed, during a brief intermission between rocket rounds. They have been living underground in darkness now since August. Evgeny, a railway employee, describe it as “living like rats.”
Based on what the Kyiv Post has seen, much of what is being fired comes from a Ukrainian military camp adjacent to the town, where more than 1,000 paratroopers from the 25th Dnipropetrovsk Airborne Brigade and soldiers from other units have dug in.
Mazes of trenches, charging stations with tangled cords and field kitchens with cauldrons of steaming borsch dot the grounds of the pop-up military base where scores of tanks and other self-propelled artillery, as well as weapons systems with terrifying names like “Hail,” “Tornado” and “Hurricane,” are positioned.
On Sept. 23, a barrage of missiles fired from separatist positions struck the town and pounded part of the military camp. Luckily, this time there were no injuries.
In the midst of this havoc soldiers remain relatively calm, trading tales from the front lines over a meal of barbecued pork, tomatoes and sunflower seeds. As an incoming rocket whizzed overhead they didn’t flinch a muscle or scramble to their dugouts, and when news came in over the radio that the bridge on the only road out of town – their soul escape route – had collapsed, they shrugged it off.
“They can’t hit us,” one troop said, referring to the rebel forces. “But they know where we are – they have always known where we are.”
Kyiv Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at @ChristopherJM. Staff writer Ian Bateson contributed to this story.
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from www.mymedia.org.ua, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action, as well as Ukraine Media Project, managed by Internews and funded by the United States Agency for International Development.
