Report on random casualties of hostilities in Donetsk

The first week of 2024 passed in Donetsk the same as two years before it. The city was shelled every day – mainly in the outlying front-line areas, but also into the center. According to official data, at least eight people have died in Donetsk and its suburbs since January 1. Usually nothing is known about civilian victims of shelling; daily reports indicate the impersonal “a man born in 1953 died.” And if the relatives of the victims are not active on social networks, then the deaths go unnoticed. A Kommersant correspondent tells how Donetsk lives now – and how people are dying there.

For a person who has recently arrived in Donetsk, being on the street for the first few days is very unsettling. Explosions are constantly heard here. Moreover, it is unclear what exploded and where, and this makes it even more alarming. Doesn’t matter, outgoing do you hear or inbox, you still shudder and reflexively press your head into your shoulders. It seems that the next shell will definitely fall next to you.

And if you carefully examine the buildings, you begin to notice traces of shrapnel everywhere. You see potholes in the asphalt and a scattering of holes in the walls. Road signs and bus stops punched through sieve. Windows boarded up with plywood where people still live, and broken glass in houses where people have left. Each such moment of awareness reminds you that your fears are not at all groundless. Really here arrived. Exactly here, where you stand now, just on a different day and time. Which means it can fly again. In ten minutes or in five seconds – you won’t guess. “I will not be afraid of an arrow that flies at midday” – no, I will certainly be afraid. Another explosion – this time in the distance. Where will the next one be?

You sit in a cafe where you haven’t been for six months, order a glass of wine, look thoughtfully out the window – it seems like a normal life. And suddenly you realize: half of the façade of the shopping center across the street has been crushed. It was as if he had been hit with a huge club. But six months ago it stood intact… And then it bangs again – it’s not clear where, but loudly.

Therefore, during the first days in Donetsk, I am very tempted to take refuge. Go to the store, go down to the underground passage – and at least stand under the canopy of a bus stop.

In your mind you understand that it will not protect you, but it is still calmer when there is not a clear sky above your head, but a thin layer of iron. The subconscious repeats a forgotten saying from childhood: I’m in the house, I’m in the house, I’m in the house. Nothing bad will happen anymore.

But this is self-deception.

On Thursday, January 4, my colleagues and I went to the outskirts of Donetsk. In this city, each district has its own chat rooms – “roll calls”. There they discuss local affairs, exchange recipes, sell old things, collect money for those in trouble, complain about garbage in the yard, and also warn about shelling and talk about dead neighbors. And in the Kuibyshev “roll call” they wrote that they had just arrived and there were casualties. From the center to the desired address there are only 11 kilometers, the navigator promised 10 minutes maximum. But as soon as the Kuibyshev region began, the normal road ended. And the city has suddenly turned into a suburb. Houses of three or four floors, wastelands and vacant lots, rusty garages, instead of chain stores there are “glass buildings” at intersections. And most importantly, it’s very loud here, even by the standards of Donetsk. Both “incoming” and “outgoing” are very frequent and close. When we finally got there, the first thing I did was take my bulletproof vest out of the trunk. Its severity reduced my anxiety a little – I felt like I was in the house again.

The house we needed had only three floors. The walls, once blue, have long since peeled off, and the ground is overgrown with green moss. Next to the open door of the entrance there is a clumsy inscription “Shelter”. And right under her lay a dead man. It was unclear whether it was a man or a woman – someone carefully covered the body with jackets and coats. Only a gray hand in bloody rags of a sleeve was visible. A syringe was sticking out of the hand.

Neighbors stood next to the body. A middle-aged man took us to where it all happened. “This is my wife’s aunt,” he said lostly as we climbed the stairs. “She died, her husband was taken away by ambulance. Maybe he’ll survive. Well, come in.” I crossed the threshold, walked past the calendar with kittens – and realized that I would no longer feel safe in Donetsk apartments. Because there is no “house”.

To the left of the hallway I saw a completely normal kitchen. Yes, the shelling damaged the pipes and the floor was flooded, but that’s all. A stove, cabinets, a refrigerator with magnets, a table with plates, a glass with a sprouted onion – everything is in its place. But the room on the right…

There are two Soviet carpets on the walls, icons on them, and the sky above them.

The house no longer had a roof. The shell brought down concrete blocks, which buried a sofa, armchairs, flower pots – and two elderly people. The floor was not even visible – only concrete, broken bricks, slate, bent reinforcement and other construction debris. I fished out a shell fragment from it, turned it over in my hands and threw it into the corner.

We went outside. The body was no longer there – a gray “loaf” with the inscription “Ritual” was leaving the yard. There was a loud rumble somewhere nearby. At the next entrance stood a woman in home clothes – that means she was local. I felt like a complete m…m because of my bulletproof vest – “he’ll think that I came to see them on a safari” – but still I approached and asked to say a few words about the deceased. “But I don’t want to talk on camera, but… what can I say? — the woman shrugged. “It’s already flown to our house three times, today is the fourth.” Our neighbor, Natalya, died. We worked together at the factory, then the factory closed. When she retired, she got a job working in a kindergarten, but our kindergarten was bombed – and she hasn’t worked since then, she stayed at home. Today, too, I was at home—apparently, I was watching TV in my chair. A shell hit the house and she was thrown into the chair. We came running and thought she was dead there. Then the ambulance arrived, there was such a good girl doctor, she felt the pulse and said there was still a pulse. They lifted the stove and the doctor immediately started injecting her with something. But it didn’t help. They took her outside and she died there. What else can I say about her? She was good, kind, and helped everyone. We all loved her very much.”

I returned to the car, got into the passenger compartment, and did not take off my bulletproof vest.

“I used to be afraid to come here too,” a colleague from Donetsk nodded understandingly. “This is a front-line area of ​​a front-line city.” It flies away from here, flies here – this happens all the time. But if you look closely, you will see how many people live here. And how, after arrival, they leave the entrances and continue to go about their business. Pay attention, we have now overtaken the regular bus – even in these conditions it runs on schedule. That’s how I realized that these places in general are no different from the rest of Donetsk. This means there is nothing special to be afraid of.

— It still flies less often in the center.

“And there are also hits in the center,” he shrugged. “You don’t have to leave Kuibyshevsky and survive all the arrivals.” Or you can die in a quiet area from a random shrapnel. There’s no guessing here—you just have to accept it.

Two days later, a new arrival was reported in the “roll call” of another outskirts. “This is no longer Donetsk, this is Makeyevka,” the local driver sternly corrected me. But I didn’t see any difference between the Kuibyshevsky and Chervonogvardeysky districts. It was just as loud. The same old houses, squalid shops, Soviet playgrounds – and monstrously ruined roads. On the shabby wall I noticed the faded inscription “Vitya Tsoi”. The series “The Boy’s Word” could have been filmed right here.

On Uborevich Street, a green piece of iron was sticking out of the road—the remains of an MLRS shell. Nearby, large clots of blood froze on the asphalt, and a men’s winter cap lay nearby. “This is what my father wears,” I thought. My stomach felt unpleasantly cold.

I took a few pictures and looked around. The Donetsk colleague was right – the shelling ended quite recently, and Uborevich Street was already living its own life.

At the bus stop, people were waiting for the bus; in the house opposite, they were taking out the frame to install new glass. A cyclist wearing a plastic safety helmet rode along the sidewalk.

It was so ridiculous that I completely stopped caring about the inappropriateness of my body armor.

Passers-by suggested which house the body was taken to. A man in a T-shirt and shorts was smoking at the entrance; he was shaking – and not at all from the cold.

– My name is Semyon. My wife and I were standing in the kitchen, and then such an attack… The glass was immediately broken, a piece of glass flew into the room, we hid in the corridor. Then it banged three more times – and then there was silence. I go out to look, and there is a man lying on the street. I didn’t recognize him right away. I come up, take a picture with my phone, and realize that it’s Victor! Our neighbor from the second floor! We called an ambulance, put him on a blanket, and brought him here. He was still breathing then. And when the ambulance arrived… Well, there were no more signs of life.

The man lit a second cigarette.

— His name was Victor. Victor, yes. He was already a pensioner. We have a Natasha store across the road, he went there, sat, drank a hundred grams, went home – and then it arrived. I didn’t reach the entrance twenty meters, how could that be…

Semyon invited me into the apartment and showed him the broken windows and a large fragment from a shell that had flown into the kitchen. Another, very small one, hit the back panel of the TV, but did not penetrate it. When I photographed the fragment, the TV continued to show the boxing match as if nothing had happened.

The man took out his mobile phone and turned on a video that he shot after his arrival: a dead man was lying near a hailstone sticking out of the asphalt, the voice-over repeated several times: “A man was killed…” Semyon’s hands were shaking, he handed me the phone – and I saw There are blood stains on the body. I was shaking too. I returned the cell phone and asked him to tell me what kind of person Victor was.

“What can I tell you here…” Semyon answered confusedly. “He’s my neighbor, we always helped each other.” You see the room – he helped me do the renovations. He was a good man. A kind person. A common person. What else can you say…

The way back was very long – we carefully went around every hole. We did hit one, and we felt the suspension groan and creak. The driver swore:

— Write in your newspaper that the Chervonogvardeisky district does not deserve this!

– Such deaths?..

– So expensive!

He paused and continued more calmly:

“And deaths… no one deserves such deaths.”

I looked for mentions of Natalia and Victor in the news, but found only two lines. “On January 4, a woman born in 1954 died in the Kuibyshevsky district” and “on January 6, a man born in 1953 died in the Chervonogvardeysky district.” Now you know that they were good people.

Alexander Chernykh, Donetsk—Makeevka