Despair and destruction: Civilians in Ukraine’s eastern strongholds struggle as Russia advances

DONETSK REGION (AP):

With the Russian advance deeper into the Donetsk region, the air in Ukraine’s last strongholds is thick with dread and the future for civilians who remain grows ever more uncertain.

In Kostiantynivka, once home to 67,000 people, there is no steady supply of power, water or gas. Shelling intensifies, drones fill the skies and the city has become unbearable, driving out the last remaining civilians.

Kramatorsk, by contrast, still shows signs of life. Just 25 kilometres (15 miles) to the north, the prewar population of 147,000 has thinned, but restaurants and cafes remain open. The streets are mostly intact. Though the city has endured multiple strikes and is now dominated by the military, daily routines persist in ways that are no longer possible in nearby towns.

Once the industrial heart of Ukraine, Donetsk is being steadily reduced to rubble. Many residents fear its cities may never be rebuilt and, if the war drags on, Russia eventually will swallow what is left.

“(Donetsk) region has been trampled, torn apart, turned into dust,” said Natalia Ivanova, a woman in her 70s who fled Kostiantynivka in early September after a missile struck near her home. Russian President Vladimir Putin “will go all the way ... I’m sure of it. I have no doubt more cities will be destroyed.”

Kostiantynivka now sits on a shrinking patch of Ukrainian-held territory, wedged just west of Russian-occupied Bakhmut and nearly encircled on three sides by Moscow’s forces.

“They was always shooting,” Ivanova said. “You’d be standing there … and all you’d hear was the whistle of shells.”

She had two apartments. One was destroyed and the other one damaged. For months, she watched buildings disappear in an instant, while swarms of buzzing drones “like beetles” filled the sky, she said.

“I never thought I’d leave,” she added. “I was a stolid soldier, holding on. I’m a pensioner and it (the home) was my comfort zone.”

For years now, Ivanova had watched the region’s cities fall: Bakhmut, then Avdiivka, and others. But the war, she said, still felt far away, even as it closed in on her doorstep.

“I felt for those people,” she said. “But it wasn’t enough to make me leave.”

A blast near her building finally forced her out. The explosion bent her windows so badly she couldn’t shut them before fleeing. Her apartment remained wide open. She left her whole life behind in Kostiantynivka, the city where she was born.

“Please, stop it,” she pleaded, directing her appeal to world leaders as she sat in an evacuation hub shortly after fleeing. “It’s the poorest people who suffer the most. This war is senseless and stupid. We’re dying like animals — by the dozens.”