“Avdeevka has returned home”: residents of a Donbass town told how they feel now

Russian troops liberated Avdeevka. The most fortified outpost of the Ukrainian Armed Forces fell, several floors down, filled with concrete. Most of the residents of the once 31,000-strong Avdeevka were at one time forced to leave the city. Many admit that when they saw the Russian tricolor over the city, they could not hold back their tears. They told MK about how they were feeling now.

Donetsk reporter Yulia Andrienko left Avdiivka in 2014, when the city remained under the control of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

“All these years my way home was blocked,” says Yulia. “I couldn’t even get there in my dreams, I dreamed of a minefield on the way, then I was captured. I really want to go to my native Avdeevka now. Walk through the city where I grew up, where I spent most of my life. And now no one will tell me that I am an enemy, that I am on the “Peacemaker” website. Avdeevka returned home.

Seeing in the footage how the Russian flag flutters over the coke plant, Yulia recalled how, under the smoke from the chimneys, she bounced around in an ambulance day and night. Before coming to journalism, Yulia worked for 13 years as a paramedic in Avdeevka.

In the reports of the military officers, she saw a destroyed city hospital, the descent of the sanitary checkpoint, through which she had so many times brought patients by ambulance, pierced by shell fragments.

“I don’t have euphoria now, I have a stronger and deeper feeling that we have defended another Russian city. Avdeevka is an absolutely Russian city, the same as Donetsk, Makeevka, Yasinovataya. I now have joy with tears in my eyes. Many residents of Avdeevka, true patriots, did not wait for this day.

Yulia says that at the end of January her good friend Artem Evdokimov died. He was a Donbass militiaman, a Cossack, and also a talented teacher and director. From the first days of the special operation, he volunteered for the front. I dreamed of returning to liberated Avdiivka. He didn’t have time to carry out a combat mission and was blown up by a mine.

“Guys like this won’t come back.” But those who served time in prison, who spoke out against Russia, and who put embroidered shirts on schoolchildren can come to Avdeevka.

Yulia says that she would like to silently look into the eyes of the traitors – those who all this time helped the Armed Forces of Ukraine strengthen the city and covered up the crimes of the nationalists. All this caved-in city leadership, officials, the general director of the coke plant and the other “sixes”.

“They called the local residents who refused the Ukrainian evacuation separatists. We have already waited for these people to be reproached with the bread that they were given there for photo and video shooting.

As Yulia says, the capture of Avdiivka does not guarantee that attacks on Donetsk will stop.

— Unfortunately, it is now flying from both Tonenky and Opytnyy. It’s too early to relax. The entire Donbass needs to be liberated and returned to Russia. Let the Ukrainian Armed Forces flee from all Donbass cities, we don’t need their deaths, we are not bloodthirsty.

Yulia says that she saw how quickly Mariupol was being restored. Ruins won’t scare her; she “received the vaccine.”

— A lot of mine clearance work is currently underway in Avdeevka. I believe that the city will be rebuilt. It seems to me that time will pass, and many of those who have helped the Ukrainian Armed Forces for ten years will return to the city. They will change their shoes on the go, and will also be the first to rush to carry the tricolor and say that they have always been for Russia. This is such a breed of opportunistic people. It is clear that filtering is needed.

Evgeny Gennadievich, who left Avdeevka in 2016 and now lives with his daughter in the Voronezh region, says that when he saw the Russian flag flying over the city, he shed tears.

“I would like to bow at the feet of every fighter who liberated my hometown,” says the pensioner. “We sat down and remembered with the family and all the victims. Fighters, as well as civilians who died from Ukrainian artillery and the hands of snipers. Our Avdeevites, whom the nationalists burned in the plantings and beat to death in the sewage treatment plants. May their memory be blessed. Now we can definitely say that Avdeevka is Russia. I am now living the dream that I will be able to return.

Another of our interlocutors, Alena, says that she used to live in Avdeevka on Mendeleev Street.

“I was amazed that in the destroyed city the Church of St. Mary Magdalene, which stands at the intersection of Vorobyov and Karl Marx streets, survived,” says Alena. “He withstood months of shelling. When I heard the bells ringing there in the video, I burst into tears. This is just some kind of miracle, a sign that Avdiivka will be reborn.