Viktoriya Hamaza lives in the city of Cheraksy in central Ukraine and is a journalist. But the 32-year-old has had no time for her work since the Russian invasion of her country. As a volunteer, she is constantly on the move in the immediate vicinity of the front line. In October, Commander-in-Chief Valery Saluschnyj awarded her a medal for her commitment. Recently, the young woman and her boyfriend have often been going to Bakhmut to provide Ukrainian soldiers with food and equipment. However, hundreds of civilians remain in the city, which has been hard fought for months and has been almost completely destroyed.
In a report, the 32-year-old explains why people don’t leave Bachmut. She also describes the horrors and horrors she witnesses every day. The report was recorded by journalists from the independent Belarusian news portal Zerkalo.io. With the kind permission of the editors, the text is now also appearing on ntv.de.
Before the war, Bakhmut was a nice town. I remember the many flowers, the beautiful architecture, the coziness. It was so alive! The people persevered to the end and took care of their city. Now Bachmut lies in ruins. There is no rest, day or night. At night you can see a fiery glow over the city from afar – like sunrise, only without the sun. Bachmut speaks the language of shots and destruction. The city is simply leveled to the ground.
We have been going to Bachmut again and again since April. At that time we still rescued people from other cities and brought them there. Since the enemy began to approach the city and hard fighting broke out, we come a lot more often. We deliver all sorts of things to our soldiers: medicine and food, ammunition, thermal imaging cameras, protective vests, uniforms. With the help of donations, we also buy drones, resuscitation vehicles, pickups – every week such extensive requests come from the front.
When you’re in Bachmut, you’re under constant fire. There is probably no building that is not damaged. I observe how, for example, there is less and less left of a house in whose basement we once slept: sometimes a wall is missing, then a whole floor… Once a rocket hit the building while we were sitting there in the basement. The explosion was so powerful that two floors collapsed completely, leaving a huge hole at the top.
When a rocket hits, everything happens so fast that there is no time to get scared. There is a deafening noise and then there is just a lot of dust. Immediately the shouts come: “Everyone alive? Everything alright?” Last time everything was not right: one of our team had a splinter tearing off part of his lower leg, another lost an eye.
Getting killed isn’t the worst. The worst is when you’re buried under rubble and no one can get you out. A family was buried and the emergency services could not save them because they were shot at. The father, mother, son and daughter lay under the rubble and slowly died. To this day they have not been recovered.
In Bachmut it smells like corpses. The smell is so terrible that you cannot mistake it for anything else. On the outskirts of town, where rubbish dumps used to be, there are piles of corpses. Everything is covered with corpses. Now it’s winter and everything is frozen. But as soon as it gets warmer, the bodies decompose and the remains end up in the ground. In the vicinity of Bachmut, the well water is therefore already unsuitable for drinking.
Our soldiers describe a horrific picture they observe during the fighting: “We’ve hardly killed one before the next ones come.” The Russians attack several times a day. Our boys shoot at them – they fall over. And then the next ones come, they just walk over the corpses – this is how real “corpse strips” are created.
The Russians do not recover their dead and wounded. Even if they’ve already captured a position, they don’t drive away the bodies. They throw them in a heap or just leave them lying around. There are also torn bodies among them. Because if heavy equipment was used, only severed legs, arms and heads remain of the soldiers. Sometimes there’s just a head in a helmet lying on the ground.
A few months ago, our army agreed with the enemy to take away the bodies of our soldiers who were lying in the occupied territory. Russia agreed to a corridor that was agreed at the top level. Ten of our fighters went to collect the dead. The Russians just shot them.
If you remove the uniform of injured or dead soldiers, you will often find a letter from their children in a transparent film under the protective vests. It’s very painful because you know that somewhere out there is a family whose world is falling apart. When you see a hand-mended uniform, you understand that it might have been mended by your mother, wife or sister. It was made with so much care – and the human is no longer there. And the families don’t even know it.
Since the summer, Russian sabotage groups have started donning Ukrainian Armed Forces uniforms. Sometimes they stop at the side of the road, pretend to be wounded, then kill our soldiers who come to help and steal their cars. Recently there was an incident in Kurdyumivka (a municipality 16 kilometers from Bakhmut – editor’s note): the Russians wore Ukrainian uniforms and were let through at a checkpoint. They drove into one of the positions at night and shot everyone who was there.
Because of the constant attacks, the Russians are taking casualties maybe three times as much as we are – they go for quantity. But the number of victims is also increasing here. In early February, the enemy began to advance and, of course, since then there have been many more casualties. Our doctors in the surrounding towns can estimate the intensity of the fighting based on the number of wounded that arrive: sometimes 70 people – sometimes up to 500 a day.
The doctors there are superheroes, they do incredible things! When there is no electricity, they operate in the light of the flashlights. They don’t have time to eat, drink or go to the toilet – they just change their gloves, sterilize their hands – and on they go. It happens that they stand at the operating table for up to 20 hours without a break.
The locals are in a terrible situation. Many die from shrapnel wounds. A few days ago, for example, a 77-year-old grandfather and a 12-year-old boy were killed by shrapnel in a house. There are still a few thousand civilians in the city, including 200 children (before the war, around 73,000 people lived in Bakhmut – editor’s note). Most of them sit in the basement all the time and are afraid to go out. But they don’t want to leave. For example, last week we evacuated a girl who lived with her grandparents. We took the child with us, but the grandparents still refuse to go.
Why do people stay in the destroyed Bachmut? Many have no place to go. The older ones say: “What should we do somewhere else? We have no money, nothing – where should we go? We have lived here since our childhood, our whole life is here.” There are also people who believe that it will soon be over, that Bachmut will be defended. And, of course, there are those who are waiting for the “Russian world”.
Since the end of the summer there has been no internet and no cell phone reception. There is no electricity or water either. Even the wells from which civilians used to fetch water have now been destroyed by the attacks. People collect rainwater and snow. There’s nothing to filter though, so drink it that way.
A few months ago, abandoned animals were still everywhere in Bakhmut. Today there are fewer of them: many starved to death or were killed by shrapnel, some were picked up by volunteers. But there are still many. Dogs roam near the field hospitals, fighting among themselves over the blood-smeared stretchers and uniforms. They lick this blood because there is nothing else to eat.
Once I wanted to feed a dog. It was a huge shepherd dog, so emaciated that his ribs stuck out. I could see how hungry he was, he was so greedy for the food! But then he spat out everything I gave him. I found that strange. And then I saw that there was a hole under his jaw. Everything he ate didn’t reach his esophagus but fell out.
All the horror, death and destruction is hard to bear. Although the emotions turn off when you are there. It’s only when I’m at home that I sometimes remember a little thing and it all comes back up. We risk our lives all the time and it’s better not to think about it. It was scary at first, but now we don’t even react to explosions.
Despite all the casualties and enemy breakthroughs of the past few days, I remain confident that Bakhmut will be defended. It’s just a pity that the price for it is so high. And considering how many lives and forces have already been sacrificed, the city cannot simply be abandoned now.
Translated by Uladzimir Zhyhachou
