Voices of occupation. Volnovakha

Volnovakha is a small town in the Azov steppes of the Donetsk region. It was founded in the late nineteenth century during industry development in the Donetsk coal basin. It was necessary to build a railway track to deliver products from Yuzivka (modern Donetsk) to the port of Mariupol and further transport them by sea. Thus, a railway station appeared on the bank of the Mokra Volnovakha River. The development of the railway continued in the early twentieth century: the track stretched from Volnovakha to Zaporizhzhia. Since then, the city has become a strategically important railway junction. During the First Liberation Movement, it was the site of battles between the Makhnovists and the White Guards. 

In the XXI century, it also became a place of fighting and human tragedies. 

Militants of the illegal armed group of the "Donetsk People's Republic" tried to capture the city in 2014. In their reports, they compared themselves to the White Guard, Ukrainian artillerist Hennadii Kharchenko recalls. On August 30, 2014, they announced that they had already occupied Volnovakha and would move to Berdiansk. The front stopped 20 kilometres before Volnovakha, from where it was shelled by Russian artillery.

Serhii [name changed for security reasons - ed.] was born in Volnovakha, but he studied in Donetsk at the beginning of the Russian-Ukrainian war. In 2014 he left and continued his studies in Vinnytsia. After graduation, he returned home in 2016. Since then, he has worked as a journalist and watched Volnovakha change. Many internally displaced persons from the temporarily occupied territories of the Donetsk region moved to Volnovakha. As a result, new businesses began to emerge in the city. "The war had a positive impact on Volnovakha. Every year the number of pro-Ukrainian residents increased," the guy recalls. 

Natalia [name changed for security reasons - ed.] also lived in Volnovakha then. "After 2014, we aimed to show even more that Ukrainians lived in Volnovakha," she says. 

She spent most of her life in this city, working for 27 years in one of Volnovakha's schools. "My goal was to foster a love for the Ukrainian language and literature among children in eastern Ukraine," says Natalia. She believes this has paid off: Natalia continues teaching children from Volnovakha online despite the fact that the school building was completely destroyed. 

Almost no one in Volnovakha took the prospect of a full-scale invasion seriously. Local authorities did not urge residents to be prepared. 

A few days before the full-scale invasion, Natalia realised that war was inevitable. Talking to her pro-Ukrainian friends, she learned what chaos was happening in the temporarily occupied Donetsk: the militants were forcibly taking the citizens out of the regional centre to create panic artificially. Since February 21, after Putin recognised illegal armed groups, Volnovakha residents lived in anxiety. "On February 22, we could see that everyone came to school sleepless," - the teacher says.

On February 24, there were explosions in the city. They woke Serhii up at 5 am, but Natalia did not hear them. "I washed my hair and was going to work as usual," she recalls and laughs. Then she started receiving messages from colleagues that the school was switching to distance learning.

Even then, most of the townspeople did not understand the situation. Usually, there were many militaries around the city, so they did not think the front would change quickly. Natalia, for example, decided to cook borsch. 

Petro and Maryna [names changed for security reasons - ed.] also woke up to the explosion. The husband was at the front in 2014 and had not heard anything like that. So he understood - there would be another war. Three hours later, the family left the city. 

On February 25, the Russians began to fire at the city's outskirts with artillery Volnovakha residents organised territorial defence. At the same time, the Ukrainian military convinced the citizens to leave. Many did so in between the shelling.  

Serhii assumes that around 40% of the population - about 10 thousand people - remained. The guy decided to stay because he was worried about his elderly grandparents. Natalia asks herself: "why didn't I leave then?" "I did not believe. But I should have," the woman answers.

Natalia and Serhii agree the city was not ready for the war: there were no sirens or warnings. Then, on February 26, the electricity went off. The next day Serhii packed his things and went to his relatives’ in the city. Ukrainian militaries were still defending Volnovakha. "Smoke was rising into the sky above the bus station, and machinery was burning," the guy recalls. Natalia hid in her house's basement because her neighbourhood was under shelling. She slept on egg trays. Serhii, meanwhile, stayed with his relatives in the basement of the railway hospital. 

In Volnovakha, a lot is associated with the railway. The city is divided into two parts by the tracks. The Ukrainian military dug in on the western side of the railway and held back the Russians for two weeks: the city battles lasted from February 28 to March 11-13. 

During this time, Natalia managed to leave. When she left the basement, she saw the car of her former student. He waited for her and drove away. However, the shelling started, and the car tire was punctured. The man went to a nearby village and dropped Natalia there. Serhii stayed in the city. 

Until March 15, the Russians failed to establish a temporary occupation administration. At that time, Serhii could move around the city relatively easily. He was looking for friends and food. "Locals went to bombed grocery stores and took some cereals to cook food," he says. 

Everyone also had to heat themselves: there was no electricity or heating in the city. "We made stoves, collected firewood or just covered ourselves with several blankets," says Serhii. Despite this, they constantly felt cold. 

Natalia spent the first half of March in the village of Vilne, where she comes from. Later it fell under occupation. The woman tried to find someone to help her leave, but everyone was afraid. "Then I resigned myself to living here," she says. Eventually, in the second half of March, Natalia returned to Volnovakha. She lived in the ruins of her house, crying every day and cooking on the fire, but she still spoke Ukrainian.

The presence of Russians became more noticeable in early April. They brought bread, but to receive it, Volnovakha residents had to give their passport data to the occupation administration. Those who did had to stand in hour-long queues for a loaf of bread and a bag of cereals.

At the same time, the Russian military began to look for veterans of the Russian-Ukrainian war. Serhii thinks they found the lists at the police station or military registration and enlistment office. But Natalia knows her neighbour went around the house with the militants and told them where everyone lived. All the captured soldiers are being held in basements and tortured. However, we did not find any more detailed information about this.

To leave, the locals had to go through the so-called filtration camp. Before that, they had to stand in a queue of a thousand people, which moved no more than 100 people per day.

Serhii understood that he could not live in occupied Volnovakha because of his pro-Ukrainian position. Natalia also needed help understanding what to do in the city. 

Serhii decided to undergo filtration, but before that, he deleted all sensitive information from his phone and computer. After that, Russians took his fingerprints, photographed him and checked his gadgets — they found nothing.

Natalia was lucky: after standing in line for two days, she got to the checkpoint, but the Russians were tired and reluctant to inspect Natalia. They did not interrogate her; the woman could drive to the temporarily occupied Berdiansk. The journey, which the car covers in two hours, cost her 10 thousand hryvnias. From Berdiansk, she moved to Zaporizhzhia for another day. "I have never been so happy to see the Ukrainian flag," the woman recalls the first Ukrainian checkpoint. 

But it was more difficult for Serhii. Russians tried to intimidate him and wanted to force him to lie about himself, saying that he was passing information to the Ukrainian military. So he spent three weeks in a filtration camp. At the same time, Russian security forces searched his grandparents' house. "Many people cannot find their relatives because the Russians took them somewhere," he recounts conversations with other Volnovakha residents who wanted to leave. But eventually, they let him go. 

The boy's grandparents are still in the city. There is no drinking water or work; the temporary occupation administration gives pensioners little money and admits there will be no gas. 

All the interviewees are still determining whether they will return to Volnovakha after its de-occupation. Maryna says Volnovakha was heavily damaged during the fighting, with many infrastructure and residential buildings destroyed. She fears that reconstruction and demining may take a decade. As a result, Maryna, Natalia and Serhii were forced to start their lives from scratch in new cities.