ZAITSEVE, Ukraine -- The 3,000 residents of this village are on the fault line of Russia's war against Ukraine. Zaitseve is literally split between control by Russia and Ukraine.
Many villagers cross the dividing line on a daily basis, risking arrest or worse. Some even still live in the slim gray zone, controlled by no one, despite frequent firefights between the two sides. Like most in the divided eastern Donbas region of Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, the residents are exhausted by 18 months of war.
They have even fewer hopes than other residents that the conflict might be over.
“Did anybody ask us if we wanted it when they started this war?” asks a middle-aged woman who commutes across the village every day from the Russian-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast, where she lives, to Ukrainian-held territory, where she works at a local grocery store.
She refuses to give her name, fearing retribution from both sides. She trusts her mongrel black dog more than people. She also doesn’t have much faith in the shaky cease-fire reached in Minsk in February. “I’ll believe it when I see it,” she says.
Zaitseve, or “The Place of the Hare” in Ukrainian, is nestled among forestry plantations along the Bakhmutka River. It was the scene of fierce fighting in July and August, long after the truce had come into effect.
In summer, Ukrainian soldiers launched an operation to take control of the poorly defended but strategically important village because of its location on the outskirts of Horlivka, a Russian-separatist stronghold. But they only managed to take half of the village.
Maria Kravchenko, 80, says she barely survived the military operation. A shell hit her house in early August and she had to hide in her cellar for days. “It’s so scary when you are lying at night and the shells are flying over you,” she said.
Sitting on the wooden planks near her damaged house, she listens to the sounds of shooting from the other side of the village, as military trucks roar along the winding, unpaved road.
Maria Kravchenko from Anastasia on Vimeo.
Kravchenko lives in her smaller summer house, next to her damaged abode, thinking only about surviving the coming winter together with her mentally-ill son. He can no longer stay in Horlivka’s mental hospital because it has neither doctors nor medicines.
After 40 years of work at a local railway plant, Kravchenko receives a monthly pension of about $44. Since there are no government services in Zaitseve, she relies only on her neighbors, who travel to the nearest Ukraine-controlled city of Bakhmut (formerly Artemivsk) to withdraw money for her from the banks there.
Hundreds of cars now wait in lines every day on the highway that connects Bakhmut with Zaitseve and Horlivka. Checkpoints close at 6 p.m., so many who travel this way often sleep overnight in their cars.
All goods passing through the checkpoint are thoroughly checked by the Ukrainian military. Recently, it has become difficult for bread and other food products to get through to Zaitseve, the woman at the grocery store says. However, prices in Ukraine-controlled part of the village are several cheaper than across the front, where Russian rubles are the main currency.
“The problem of these people is that they are already not in the DNR (as Russian-separatist forces call the areas of Donetsk Oblast they control) but not in Ukraine yet,” says Oleksandr, a Ukrainian soldier with the nom-de-guerre of Zmiy (or Snake), who leads a military unit based in Zaitseve. Oleksandr, 25, refused to give his last name due to security concerns.
The Ukrainian army is the only authority in this part of the village. The local ambulance service and police refuse to go there. So locals go to the soldiers for medical help and to maintain public order. The villagers can’t even buy coal to heat their homes in winter, as they would have to carry it across checkpoints, either from Horlivka or from Bakhmut.
Sometimes the Red Cross delivers construction materials so the villagers can repair their homes, while local volunteers bring food for the soldiers. .
“Many people now live in the destroyed houses. They just put some sheeting on the broken roofs,” Zmiy says. “Recently one man asked me if he should repair his house, which is located between us and the separatists. What can I tell him, if we’re having shootouts almost every day?”
With grim faces, nine soldiers load their guns, preparing for a night shift on Zaitseve’s front line. They know that night is the most dangerous time, when shootouts are more common. About two weeks ago one of the soldiers in their unit was killed during a nighttime fire-fight.
Civilians don’t dare cross the front line after sunset.
A 60-year-old local man with bushy mustache and the rough hands of a former miner says he regularly travels to both Bakhmut and Horlivka on his motorcycle. He refuses to give his name for safety reasons. His son lives on the Russian-separatist-controlled side of Zaitseve, and his grandson in the Ukrainian-held city of Kharkiv.
“I was in Horlivka two days ago. It’s full of people,” he says. “Don’t think they all chose their current authorities. There were only a few who made that choice.”
He doesn’t believe Zaitseve is going to be reunited soon.
Soldier Anton Buhayenko, 22, nicknamed “Small,” is one of the few people in Zaitseve who is optimistic about the future. He said he hopes soon to return to his native town Energodar, where his wife is about to give birth to their first child.
Buhayenko said he believes Ukraine could soon reestablish control of the other part of Zaitseve, Horlivka and the entire Donbas region as a result of the peace process. “Those who don’t like it will simply leave,” he says, smiling.
Anton Bugaenko from Anastasia on Vimeo.
As it gets darker, almost no residents can be seen in the village. A group of men drive a large herd of cows across a dirt road. Zaitseve is well-known for its good milk, which the locals have sold in Horlivka for years, Buhayenko says. Their other main occupation is growing vegetables.
Kravchenko, who is one of the last remaining residents living on her street, watches the gathering dusk as she sits by her house, with its yellow wooden planks in place of window panes. The sound of gunshots doesn’t seem to bother her much.
She witnessed the Second World War as a child. But she never imagined war would return to her in her old age. She says she dreams of peace.
“Why are those at the top talking, talking, and not able to decide anything?” she asks. “Why did they tear Ukraine apart?”
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grytsenko can be reached at [email protected]
