STANYTSIA LUHANSKA, Ukraine — This bridge has been in ruins for four years. A pedestrian crossing over the Siversky Donets River in Stanytsya Luhanska, a war-front city in Ukraine’s eastern Luhansk Oblast, was partly destroyed following severe fights in 2015.
The wreckage stands as a strong metaphor. Just like the war itself, the ruined bridge has cut off territories occupied by Russian-backed militants from the rest of Ukraine.
In July, President Volodymyr Zelensky promised to rebuild this bridge as a symbol of his effort to glue the country back together.
Yet problems with getting that done reflect the broader challenges that Zelensky faces in his attempts to end the Kremlin’s war that has claimed more than 13,000 lives.
In Kyiv, Zelensky’s approach to peace efforts have caused several large protests. While many welcome his attempts to end the war, others fear they will lead to bitter concessions to Russia that limit Ukraine’s sovereignty and surrender the Donbas.
In Stanytsia Luhanska, with roughly 14,000 people, it took months for Russian proxies to withdraw their soldiers from territory near the bridge, allowing the reconstruction to begin.
But Ukrainian officials and soldiers say that pro-Russian military forces are still around the bridge, disguised as civilians. Some residents also fear they may be in danger after Ukrainian soldiers withdrew from Stanytsia Luhanska, turning it into a neutral zone.
Vitaliy Komarnytsky, Luhansk Oblast’s new governor, who regularly inspects the bridge, believes the reconstruction is worth the effort.
“I understand the residents, but we should look for compromises. There should be peace,” he told the Kyiv Post. The reconstruction is planned to be finished by the end of November.
Mutual distrust
On Sept. 12, when the Kyiv Post visited the bridge, Komarnytsky and other Ukrainian officials were observing the construction. It was only the fourth day after authorities from Russian-controlled Luhansk stopped impeding the work.
During those four days, sappers from the emergency services found two anti-personnel landmines and about 120 pieces of unexploded ordnance under the bridge, Komarnytsky’s aide Ihor Vorobiov said. “Can you imagine what would happen to all these people if the mines exploded?”
The work on the bridge is going fast. The sappers demine the area, forest rangers chop wood, and road workers cover the safe part of the bridge with new asphalt. In order to not block the crossing point, a temporary bridge was constructed beside the broken section and was opened on Oct. 6.
While Russian-backed forces are also seen doing some work on the bridge, Ukrainian officials say it’s mostly a facade. “When there are no journalists they do nothing there,” Vorobiov said.
When representatives from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) came up and shook hands with Ukrainian officials, Ruslan Demchenko, a diplomat and Zelensky adviser who came with an inspection from Kyiv, tried to make them admit that the separatists were sabotaging their work.
“Is there any difference between the intensity and scope of work on both sides?” he asked them. The OSCE representatives predictably avoided the assessment.
The scene took on a menacing tone when workers on the separatist side set fire to tires under the bridge, previously used for military fortifications. The black smoke rising from the tires rekindled memories of war. But the civilians with big carts walking back and forth along the bridge paid little attention to the smoke and the officials.
Pensioners suffering
According to Ukraine’s State Border Service, about 12,000 people cross the Stanytsia Luhanska Bridge each day, more than at any of the other five crossing points between government and non-government controlled parts of the Donbas. Between January and June, 34 people died at these crossing points, according to a UN report. The report also said that in June, around 20 people were fainting at the Stanytsia Luhanska crossing point every day because of heat.
Since the summer, people who are 75 and older can pass the bridge by a free bus provided by the Luhansk Oblast authorities or by electric cars provided by the UN refugee agency.
Liudmyla, 83, a woman in a pink headscarf who lives in Russian-controlled Luhansk and is afraid to give her last name, is grateful for the free bus, but she still had to spend more than four hours standing in a line in Stanytsia Luhanska to pass a government identification point, which is necessary to get her monthly pensions of about $84.
Liudmyla is still too young to pass the identification point without a line. “People born in 1935 and older can do it without a line, but I was born in 1936,” she said, resting on a lone chair she was lucky to occupy. Her bedridden sister cannot get her pension at all because she can’t travel to the government-controlled side.
Since the crossing point at the bridge closes at 6:30 p. m., Liudmyla would have to stay overnight in Stanytsia Luhanska and pay some $4-$6 for a bed. Nevertheless, she thinks there have been some improvements with the crossing point under Zelensky. “It got better after our new and young one came,” she said.
When Liudmyla hears it’s her turn she jumps up from her chair, which immediately gets occupied by another pensioner.
Loud music plays from the kiosks nearby, where local entrepreneurs sell sweet pepper, grapes, mushrooms, and meat. The taxi drivers advertise their buses. For the residents of Stanytsia Luhanska, the crossing point is also a way to make some money.
A small woman in her 80s drags her cart across the bridge and admits she gets paid $12 for taking the cart loaded with some stuff to the separatist-controlled side. When passing by the group of Ukrainian officials on the bridge, she says with discontent, “another delegation is here. I saw so many of them over the summer.”
Ukrainian soldier walks near Stanytsia Luhanska in eastern Luhansk Oblast on Sept. 12, 2019. (Oleg Petrasiuk)
Soldiers staying put
There is a large, red statue of a woman holding a loaf of bread on the government-controlled side of the bridge. But after more than five years of war, the statue was so heavily damaged by shelling that it has almost lost its human features and resembles a big red monster. Many houses next to it are equally disfigured by the war.
Ukrainian soldiers from the 46th Airborne Brigade observe the statue and the people on the bridge from a distance. They say that while Ukrainian forces withdrew one kilometer following the Minsk peace talks, the Russian-proxy troops didn’t move far enough and placed their checkpoint just beyond the bridge.
“Russia played and now plays again against the rules,” said Ivan, 21, a platoon commander with the nom-de-guerre Zinya, who was born in Zhytomyr Oblast in northern Ukraine. For security reasons, soldiers are not allowed to give their last names or even be photographed without masks.
The soldiers live in the broken houses near the bridge and keep a kitten named Mike and a mongrel dog called Ginger. They like to watch the cartoons on Russia‑1, Russia’s state-owned propaganda channel because Ukrainian TV does not work in Stanytsia Luhanska.
Russian TV is the reason the local dogs like Ukrainian soldiers more than local people do, said another soldier Yuriy, 23, nicknamed Kamaz.
Kamaz, who comes from Ivano-Frankivsk city in western Ukraine, used to work as an artisan blacksmith before the war. Last year, friends offered him work in Spain, but he refused to go abroad as long as the war continues in Ukraine. Kamaz said people in Donbas would become more loyal to Ukraine if they stopped watching Russian propaganda and visited Europe.
Soldiers admit the war is changing, but they worry it might change in a way unfavorable for Ukraine. While Zinya believes it will end in frozen conflict, Kamaz hopes Ukraine will manage to take back Russian-controlled Luhansk.
“Many local people got lost, they just went the wrong direction,” Kamaz said. “But the war eventually comes to an end and we will keep on living together with them.”
Bridge for dialogue
The demilitarized bridge has already created chances for conversations between people living on different sides of the frontline.
On Aug. 7, two so-called officials from Russian-controlled Luhansk, Olga Koptseva and Vladyslav Deinego, argued there with Yuriy Zolkin, head of Stanytsia Luhanska district administration. Zolkin was appalled to see the separatist officials freely walking on the bridge. That talk consisted mostly of shouts and mutual accusations.
But on Oct. 2, two female activists from Kyiv met two of their counterparts from Luhansk and Donetsk on the bridge. A video by Donbas Public TV showed them hugging and crying during their first meeting since the start of the war. They met to talk about humanitarian issues and peace and decided to meet there again next month.
