AVDIYIVKA, Ukraine — Despite an attempt to restart a cease-fire on Feb. 20, sporadic firefights and shelling continued all over the frontline in the embattled Donbas.
The Russian-backed militant troops combat activity significantly reduced, but did not stop completely, Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense spokesperson Olexander Motuzyanyk said on Feb. 20.
“By this midday, we have recorded 15 facts of hostile shelling, although no heavy weapons were engaged by the enemy,” the official said.
Ukraine’s military spokespeople reported that since the new cease-fire reached in Munich, Germany, at least 40 incidents of shelling had been recorded on Feb. 20, with machine guns, small arms sniper fire, 82 millimeter mortars and guided anti-tank missiles being engaged by militants in all the principal war zone of the Luhansk, Donetsk and Mariupol area. The cease-fire was reached among four nations in the so-called Normandy Format — Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France — although accounts of the weekend negotiations differed.
Apart from the cease-fire, the opposing sides agreed to start pulling troops off the front line if the cease-fire lasts seven days. But Ukraine’s military press center reported that it could not confirm the start of the withdrawal of troops by Russian-backed militant forces, as new shelling had been recorded overnight, and there had been no clear signs of redeployment seen to the other side of the battle zone
The eastern Ukrainian front-line city of Avdiyivka, with 22,000 people some 700 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, is still suffering from shelling targeting resident blocks and vital infrastructure which renewed on Jan. 29.
“This is my fifth rotation period in Donbas war, and I’ve never seen so much intensive and cruel shelling against civilian areas”, spokesman for the military press center in Avdiyivka Leonid Matyukhin says.
Avdiyivka has been balancing over the brink of humanitarian disaster amid the escalation of hostilities instigated by Russian-backed militants. The fierce combat tensions north of the occupied Donetsk had reached the highest point in late January and claimed at least 30 lives, and since then the people in Avdiyivka are trying to overwhelm the aftermath of the exhausting war.
Three weeks earlier, electricity and water supplies were eventually restored for the totally disconnected and poorly heated city in the heart of winter, however, even certain de-escalation of hostilities has not brought tranquility for the townspeople.
‘Showdown every evening’
Sporadic combat clashes between Ukraine’s army forces defending Avdiyvka and Russian-backed troops cause new devastations in the city’s resident blocks, injuries, and deaths of civilians.
“A real showdown around the city starts at 6 p.m. every day. When the darkness comes, virtually nobody here – the police, civilians, medics, the military – has an indulgence from God,” says Olexander Gagayev, a paramedic of the first volunteer makeshift hospital. Every night Gagayev and his fellow paramedics are on their volunteer duty for the city where a regular stray shell can raze any house or apartment to the ground.
By 5 p.m., when the twilight comes down upon the city, the outnumbered townspeople are in rush to get back home, and whole Avdiyivka is bracing in strain. In the almost empty streets, the sounds of short rounds from heavy machine guns are heard all around – combat affairs are taking place near the city, often turning into fierce bloodshed engaging armored vehicles and heavy artillery.
However, the local people have been adapting to the burden of war.
“A human being can live through many things,” says 44-years-old Elena Kudryavtseva, a civilian woman living in a regular Avdiyivka 5-storey building near a household market. “So we are trying to live more or less normal lives, as much as it is possible here some 3 kilometers away from the battlezone. We have been trying to support each other, to get ourselves busy with daily cares, guesting our friends, caring for each other. Or else the whole life will go on in fear.”
Despite menacing rolling thunder of artillery rounds somewhere south, Elena is calmly walking her dog in the evening.
Among the debris
Over the last days, Avdiyivka has seen some of its worst destruction in months.
On Feb.16, a projectile hit a residential house on Gagarina Street in the southwestern part of the city, throwing down two flats on the 4th and 5th floors, killing one person and wounding three. Because of the strike, the house has been under risk of collapse, so the local authorities decided to resettle the dwellers. Two more houses on that street were targeted on that day the same way.
The Ukrainian servicemen in Avdiyvka showed the Kyiv Post remains of the shell that had been allegedly found among the debris in Gagarina Street apartments. It is a tank 125-millimetre projectile bearing a specific marking A-IX-2 meaning that the shell had been filled with an explosive material called hexal consisting of the mixture of hexogen, aluminum powder, and wax, actively used in the production of modern shells for Russian armed forces.
Besides, observation on the emergency scene shows that the projectile that hit the house has been targeted from the southern direction, e.g. from the territory controlled by Russian-backed troops some 5 kilometers south of the site.
A Kyiv Post source in Ukrainian armed forces combat units in Avdiyivka has confirmed that on Feb. 16, the Ukrainian fighters defending the Butovka coal pit some south of the city had been shelled by an enemy tank deployed near a kindergarten building in the nearby Russian-occupied town of Spartak. The hostile vehicle had fired its whole ammunition arsenal, the source said, and some missing shells could actually hit buildings on Gagarina Street.
Another one heavy strike has been dealt against a 9-storey house in the Yubileyny block. On Feb. 17, a projectile burst into a second-floor building and thrown down concrete blocks and walls thus demolishing four flats on three stages.
“I was at home when this happened,” Telman Salimov, one of the damaged flat’s residents. “I nearly lost consciousness from that terrifying rumble. The concrete platforms of the third floor had been demolished with explosion and they breached thу second floor, and then all this concrete mass crumbled down. I was pretty lucky because only one of my living room walls had fallen down. Fortunately, nobody was home on the first floor, or else there would be nothing left of our downstrike neighbors.”
This time, the shell whipped into the room narrowly missing another nine-story building over its roof from east-southeast, which is pointing to a fact that the shell had been fired from the militant-controlled territory and then hit the building in Avdiyivka on the inclined path.
Fortunately, nobody was killed in the accident, although a second floor flat owner, Soviet-Afghan war veteran got off with a scratch on his head. At that point, he could only trawl through the dusty concrete debris of his own flat with his family in search of some personals and documents.
The old part of the city mostly settled with private sector housing is a frequent target for shelling. Overnight into Feb. 19, at least 10 mortar shells fell down upon civilian households in old Avdiyivka.
Olexander Povarenkov, an owner of an allotment house near the railway line, is among those suffering losses – a mortar shell had got into his garage in the yard, penetrating all the way through a car inside. But despite the loss, Olexander is keeping a good heart.
“There’s no regretting,” he says while removing the debris of his garage’s roof. “The people here in the city are losing their homes in a moment, and I only got stripped of my car. I’m glad that all of my family is okay, so we will cope with this.”
Three more days in darkness
On Feb. 18, at 8.20 p.m., Avdiyivka was repeatedly cut off electricity again amid fresh combat clashes. Previously restored with pain and misery, normal electricity supplies had sustained only a little more than a week.
“The electricity wires were damaged at five points inside the government-controlled territory,” the Avdiyivka city civil-military administration chairman Pavlo Malykhin told the KyivPost on Feb. 19. “And there is another one breakage inside the occupied territories. There’s also a problem in Avdiyivka – when electricity is off, mobile communications are very poor or unavailable at all. It is a huge problem during shelling – the people want to call each other to make sure all their near and dear ones are alive and well. The medics, emergency services, the police in the city are also often left with no connection.”
When lights turn off in Avdiyivka, the rattling sounds of electricity generators are heard in any block – many of small shops and cafes use these devices to go on working, and many of the city’s youth gather there together in the evening – just to stay near a rare source of light.
By the afternoon of Feb. 19, the repairer brigade had managed to fix all five breakages inside the Ukrainian-controlled territory, and next day, after negotiations for a ceasefire with the Russian side the militants eventually allowed the electricians to the occupied area, the Donetsk Oblast governor Pavlo Zhebrivsky wrote on his Facebook page on Feb. 20.
Around midday, the electricity supplies for Avdiivka have been restored again – and the city, weary of 2-year war, made another step off the edge of disaster.
