The first six soldiers to arrive at the detachment pause, leaning against the wall. The first loosens his shoelaces, the second finishes his cigarette, and the third wipes his sweat with a handkerchief as black as his cartridge belt. Two more appear exhausted behind him with a lumbering machine gun, and behind them, with the Kalashnikov in his right hand, the last one reaches the detachment and drags his feet into a vest with all sorts of accessories hanging from it: bullets, magazines , walkie-talkie , flashlight, rubber bands to make a tourniquet, four grenades and a knife at shoulder level, which today is no longer used to kill enemies, but to peel an apple. The six are silent except for the big one, who mumbles and clears his throat until he spits blood, which he wipes away with the black handkerchief.
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Leaning against the ruined wall of the former doctor’s house, the dejected battalion embodies the ferocity of the battlefield and the bravery of an army that combines professionals with enthusiastic volunteers in the trenches. In a war in which people are being killed by drones and attacked by missiles from bases hundreds of kilometers away, the soldiers and militiamen stationed in Luch are the front lines of a resistance that confronts each other every day. An army of soldiers like her, barely four miles away if the day was good.
Wrapped in sweat and mud, the battalion is slowly getting its say again. The first is to call home. Although the commanders forbid the troops to give their location, most of the time he calls to say everything is fine, but he can’t even fool the family because every few minutes the bombs go off and slip through the line. Sometimes Russian artillery fires are heard every 30 minutes, and sometimes the ground trembles three times in less than a minute. Sometimes the pauses are long and disturbing. It’s hard to tell if the enemy has gone to rest or the worst is about to happen. Sergei, who worked in a shipyard before the war and didn’t smoke, now eats his cigarettes.
Luch, the place they protect as an outpost, is a small town located 20 km from Mikolaiv and considered the main defense of Odessa, the major city 135 km away in the south of the country. With a population of half a million, before the war, Mikolayiv was a major economic engine in the country, which thrived on the three shipyards and Black Sea port that feed the city. Paradoxes of history, many of the Russian ships launching the missiles that have punished Odessa and Mikolaiv since February today were made here. Just this week, with all eyes on Moscow, both cities celebrated Victory Day by slamming down rocket fire from Vladimir Putin that destroyed military targets and civilian homes alike. After more than two and a half months of attacks, Mikolajiv, located in Europe’s largest estuary, has run out of water and the city’s daily scene is one of thousands of people queuing in front of tankers.
In this part of the country, war is fought inch by inch. Just 90 kilometers southeast of Mikolayiv is Kherson, a Russian-controlled city. In Kherson, the use of the ruble is being enforced, the Ukrainian flags have been replaced with Russian red, white and blue, and the Kremlin-imposed mayor has called for a referendum on immediate annexation to Russia. And in the midst of both follies – Mikolayiv without water and Kherson paying in rubles – a small town, Luch, and the detachment leaning against the wall defending it.
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Until February 24, Luch was a quiet, tree-lined town with clean sidewalks, nestled between two beautiful estuaries with a school, two churches, and a playground at its center. On either side of the main street were simple two- and three-story buildings that Russian artillery reduced to rubble, shards of glass, shattered doors, collapsed walls, blown-up kitchens and halls engulfed in fire. Where children used to play, women shopped in the market, and farmers rode bicycles, it’s now a ghost town where the undergrowth has begun to engulf the swings. The old tree-lined streets are now a series of shell holes for a vehicle to fit.
Two streets in a straight line and one to the left of the playground appear the first glimpses of life. It’s about Andrei, a 62-year-old electrician who, after a week in the basement, finally raises his head like a frightened mole. Fed up with canned food and preserves, he decides to go to the garden and cook some mushroom soup using firewood, the only thing he’s found that can add flavor to the water. “How are you, sir? “Sometimes worse and sometimes worse,” he replies wryly.
Was this week tough? “See the hole?” he says, pointing to the crater in his garden, “it’s from three days ago. And the other one, and that one, and that one over there,” he emphasizes, without having to get up from his chair every time a bomb hits. “If you want to see them, be careful with the mines and stay on the trail,” he clarifies. To explain the extent of the destruction, Andrei hesitantly shows the jug in which he used to heat milk, an iron bowl that was torn to pieces by shrapnel from the last shell. “The Russians killed more than the Nazis when they came through here.” The background music of the conversation is the explosions of the projectiles. After many weeks, Andrei learned to distinguish even the model of the projectile “which is a cluster bomb. That longer tone is a degree,” he says.
And why doesn’t he go away? “Because here is my house, my neighbors, my cats…” explains the electrician, holding a piece of wood to light. Pride prevents him from admitting that many people from the villages don’t want to go to towns where they don’t know anyone, even if their lives are in danger, lest they live on alms in other shelters surrounded by strangers. Living in the basement for weeks, they prefer their city.
Andrei, who doesn’t want to give his last name, seems to be the only resident of Luch until he invites the journalist to tour his new home, a small shack that looks like a tool cellar. But the place holds a secret, namely 30. When Andrei opens the door, there are stairs that lead down to a cold, dark basement, lit only by a few bulbs from a generator. 10 meters underground there is silence and humidity. At the bottom of the stairs there is a corridor where canned food is stored, and then a curtain that Andrei pulls back and behind which a dozen elderly people are waiting on cots. They don’t speak, they don’t pray, they don’t move, they just wait. “I knew a few words of Spanish,” says the most enterprising old man, an old man with white hair and a mustache, happy to see a foreigner who is not Russian: “Long live Spain, paella, sangria,” and he laughs generously to himself before returning to the stillness of the wake. In the next room, 20 other neighbors have been doing the same thing for days. Expect. Occasionally the ground trembles with the explosions. “We used to have animals: pigs, chickens, rabbits… but they ran away with the shelling,” Andrej says back to the surface to explain the colorless water in his soup.
“Where are the weapons that Europe is sending?”
The morale among the troops is not the highest. After more than two months of war, patriotic enthusiasm has given way to the wounded, the blood, the invalids, the evacuees and the thousands of militiamen who originally enlisted to fight Russia have discovered the need, every day in a warehouse under the sleeping on earth surrounded by worms, tin cans, explosives, cans of tuna and a blue and yellow flag. “I’ll sleep here,” says soldier Sergei, pointing to such a place underground.
Sergei, wearing a khaki suit several sizes too big, thinks Russia “uses old guns, but when they come up with the new ones, it’s going to be a horror,” he says glumly after a tough day at the front. “Where are the weapons that Europe is sending? You don’t come here. Look, my gun is an old pot,” he says of the 25-year-old Kalashnikov that hangs around his neck. “Even my commander doesn’t have a decent machine gun,” he says, pointing to the superior who leads the squad of heroes protecting a rubble pile, a playground, a school and two churches.
Next to the cold bunk, Sergei is the image of fear every night. His eyes water when he describes everyday life at the front in detail. So he tries to change the subject by showing the journalist photos from his former shipyard life on his cell phone. Then he moves his finger on the phone so quickly that when the photos of boats, iron and welding are done, a photo of a woman appears, and then some parents and a family… and the thick silence returns, that , in which no one is quiet.
The Ukrainian authorities forbid giving details of the number of men and weapons, so some details have been omitted and some names have been changed.
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