Oleksander Marchenko was one of those who thought Vladimir Putin would not launch a full-scale invasion. A former Lyman factory worker in eastern Ukraine, Marchenko, 63, saw it as a “one in a million chance”. On the night of February 23, he had a quick bite and a cup of tea with his wife, Katya, and they went to bed. “We were restless,” he admits, shaking his head. Russia had tens of thousands of soldiers stationed on the Ukrainian border, and foreign intelligence services had been warning of Moscow’s plans to attack Ukraine for weeks. There was much skepticism inside and outside the country, but among those who believed the possibility was real, the unknown factor was the scale of the attack.
In Donbass, which has been at war between the Ukrainian army and pro-Russian separatists for eight years, the atmosphere has been heating up for weeks, supported by the Kremlin and its forces aiming to take over Donetsk and Luhansk. Oleksander and Katya woke up at dawn to a call from their daughter. Putin had launched what he called a “special military operation” to “denazify” the Donbass and “liberate” the Marchenkos and tens of thousands of other Russian-speaking Ukrainians. It was indeed a full-scale attack by land, sea and air to try to take over the entire country, but it turned into a huge fiasco for Moscow, which had expected a speedy operation, but instead about 250,000 casualties – including more than 100,000 deaths according to intelligence sources – and its exclusion from global financial markets.
A year later, with the partially occupied southern Ukraine, the constant bombardment of civil and energy infrastructure across the country, and fears of new large-scale attacks coinciding with the first anniversary of the invasion, the war in the Donbass region seems deeply entrenched to be where it all began, where the outcome of the new Russian and Ukrainian offensives remains unknown and where a bloody battle of the 20th century is being fought in the 21st century – a battle that could also decide the future of the Russian war in Ukraine European perspective.
“Everything will end and peace will come. The problem is when and how we do it and what is left,” says Marchenko in the hallway of his house, which has become a storage room for firewood and water jugs. It’s almost -10 degrees, the city is snow-covered and the couple, who hardly leave the house, spends their days by the wood stove. The entire city, which was under Russian occupation for several months, has been without water and gas since last May. Life in Lyman just got tougher. The railroad town, which was home to about 20,000 people before the invasion, is riddled with potholes. One shell here, another there. A huge hole in the sidewalk has swallowed up the bridge leading to the train station. An attack destroyed the mall. A rocket hit the concert hall.
Shelling of the city has intensified amid bloody fighting on the Kreminna-Svatove axis, where Ukraine is pushing to retake territory along a line that would enable it to march on Lysychansk and Severodonetsk, two major cities in Luhansk and the largest Russian conquests in the province, which it controls almost completely. But the counteroffensive on dry terrain littered with mined forests and destroyed villages has not gone as expected, and Moscow’s forces are striking back with violence.
The Donetsk and Luhansk fronts, two of the key flanks for the new Russian offensive according to Ukrainian and Western intelligence sources, have barely moved a few yards. The war on the sometimes snow-covered, often muddy Eastern Front has turned into a World War I-style trench warfare, analysts say. And the cost in lives and equipment is huge for both armies. Moscow, which has been besieging Bakhmut for months with relentless assaults and infantry attacks by the regular army and Wagner Group mercenaries, aims to seize the fortified city of Donetsk in March, when the warmth of spring sets in.
Further south, in the industrial city of Avdiivka, a city already scarred by eight years of war in the Donbass and which has had permanent trenches in place since 2014, Kremlin forces are trying to gain territory inch by inch, Major Pavlo explains. His infantry brigade has stopped to eat at a small volunteer center just outside the Donbass, where Raya and Tatiana have a huge table setting and a huge cauldron of borscht, the Ukrainian beetroot soup. The situation, Pavlo admits, is “difficult”.
Raya and Tatiana, in the small volunteer center they run at the gates of Donbass.María R. Sahuquillo
Donbass is the priority goal of Russian President Vladimir Putin. A way to justify his “military special operation”. Territory alongside Crimea illegally annexed by Moscow in 2014 say those urging Ukraine to seek talks and stop fighting — usually the same voices calling for peace from Kiev and its military backers, but nothing from Russia, the Invading country, demanding that Ukraine could give way in a hypothetical negotiation. Kiev’s goal is to regain its territorial integrity, its internationally recognized borders. And that means taking back the occupied parts of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhia and Crimea. Four provinces that Russia does not fully control but has illegally annexed.
Ukrainian authorities state that the new Russian offensive in the east is progressing slowly. Kirilo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s military intelligence service, points out that Moscow has problems with artillery supplies and is prioritizing attacks in the Bakhmut area and towards Lyman, where it is increasingly using infantry attacks to obtain ammunition. Kiev also consumes a large amount of shells, and its western allies are still looking for ways to increase stocks.
Liudmila, a 79-year-old retired nurse, bedridden in the apartment where she lives with Natacha, with her cat in her arms, in Lyman.María R. Sahuquillo
In the house of Liudmila and Natacha, in a hive of apartments in southern Lyman with broken glass, cracked walls and surrounded by damaged buildings, they do not know anything about ammunition. They only know that the attacks are still happening and that they are not far away. Night and day. At least 8,000 civilians (including 487 children) have been killed in Ukraine, as confirmed by the United Nations, which has warned that the real death toll is likely much higher, perhaps by several thousand. “The government is telling us to evacuate, but where should I go?” says Liudmila, a 79-year-old retired nurse. She is bedridden, covered up to her neck in a yellow quilt. She can hardly walk. “I would like to see the end of the war, but I’m old. Unfortunately, I don’t think I’ll see the ending yet. It will continue.”
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