The Donbass war exclusion zone is riddled with mines and snipers, but Natalia does not leave: “I’d rather die at home than keep running”
In Pisky there are hardly any houses standing. The few that maintain something similar to a roof and walls have a word drawn on the facade. It is written in Cyrillic. In most it says ’empty’. In a few it says ‘busy’. This was the way that the Ukrainian Army had to know if they could use those houses when the fighting with the pro-Russian separatists began. Eight years later and 14,000 deaths later, almost all the buildings are abandoned. Whatever you put on its walls, hardly anyone lives there anymore. It’s been a long time since everyone who could have fled the war front.
The city of Pisky is part of the Donbass dispute exclusion area. This is where the gray area begins: the space that separates the contenders. It is controlled by the Ukrainian forces and no one can enter without permission. The Russian-backed insurgents are only about ten kilometers away, at the gates of Donetsk, but the front may be closer, a thousand, because snipers are hiding everywhere.
It may seem like a lot, but ten kilometers is nothing for rockets and snipers, who hide in any collapsed building waiting for the enemy to mislead. On paper, right now there is a ceasefire. But violations of the truce are constant. And the dead too. Last year about a hundred people died. From here the shots that cross both armies can be heard clearly.
There is hardly anyone left living in Pisky anymore. The few that resist are in Voliane, one of its neighborhoods furthest from the trenches. Almost all of them are very old people. They have been living there for a long time and they don’t want to leave. Although they can barely get out and need humanitarian aid even to receive food. Natalia Romanina Suslova, 78, has already got used to shooting. “I’d rather die at home than keep running,” she stresses.
military only
In Pisky reigns desolation. There are no supermarkets or shops for miles around. The roads are completely snowed. Snowplows don’t go through here. Only military circulate. From time to time a UN and Red Cross vehicle is seen. It is one of those places where the body tells you to escape quickly. Just the opposite of what was happening just a few years ago.
A Ukrainian soldier, at a checkpoint near the front line. /
Before the uprising of the pro-Russian separatists, Pisky was a town where small farmers’ houses and summer cottages mixed. It was the perfect place for nature lovers. It is surrounded by huge lakes where you could fish and swim in the summer. There were no noises. Pheasants and squirrels could be seen. The pollution of the cities did not reach here.
first line
There are hardly any neighbors left in Pisky. All those who could have left here long ago
It was the ideal place to look for a second residence. Above all, for the residents of Donetsk, the capital of Donbass. Before the first shot, there were more and more luxurious chalets. The workers’ houses were disappearing. Today, Pisky is nothing more than a ghost town, the symbol of a war that is bleeding Ukraine dry. And that has Europe in suspense for only a few weeks.
To enter you need a permit from the Ukrainian government. You have to send numerous documentation and wait at least thirty days to receive the authorization. We don’t have that many days. We want to see how people live in the area closest to the front. So we decided to get closer to the last control, but without entering the exclusion area.
downed plane
We just came from doing a report in Slaviansk. It was there that the first bullets were fired in 2014. About 100 kilometers from the border, controls are intensifying. And life begins to disappear. Even in heaven. Planes have not returned here since a plane that covered the route between Amsterdam and Kuala Lumpur was shot down by a Russian missile in 2014. 298 people died.
Near the front, houses with ‘for sale’ signs, semi-ruined buildings and closed businesses begin to proliferate. “This area has been in depression for years,” explains Olexander, the translator. Almost all police controls are passed without problems. Passport and press card. Only in one they stop us twenty minutes. They want to know what kind of stories we write. The road also becomes much more dangerous. Winter tires are essential.
We are only a few kilometers from Pisky. We come from the heart of Donbass, without taking the main road. The employee of a small gas station recommends a shortcut. Everything is already abandoned buildings. We are afraid that the road will take us to the space that separates both armies, the worst possible scenario. We proceed with caution.
From heaven to hell
The war has turned a summer resort into a catalog of uninhabited ruins
We move slowly. Everything around is ruin. Even the trunks of some trees are burned. The roads are the only passable path because the surrounding fields are riddled with mines. In the middle of the ruin we see an old woman. She wears a hat, gloves and several layers of clothing. She is shoveling snow on her doorstep. Her name is Natalia Romaniuna Suslova and she is 78 years old. She is glad to see us. Around her there are only three neighbors, all retired like her. At the entrance to her small house there is a clearly visible sign indicating that the house has been restored with funds from the European Union. She invites us to enter.
Natalia lives alone with a puppy named Bagira and many cats. She shows us where the rocket hit. It was in 2015. She then lived with her husband. She smashed the roof, the windows and the back of her house. “That day they launched six rockets on this street. We were lucky because the one that fell here was faulty and didn’t have much power,” she says.
Purged by Russia
Natalia and her husband spent a year without heating or electricity. He died and she was convinced to go live with relatives far from Pisky. She was soon back. She did it as soon as a truce was declared. She missed her house. She wanted to be near her husband’s grave.
Natalia Suslova lives in the exclusion zone of the war. /
This woman has a new roof and new windows. She also has electricity and television. The water is extracted from a well. The Red Cross and other organizations help meet her most basic needs. They bring her food and take an interest in her. But she still has no boiler since the rocket destroyed part of her house. In her room he has an electric lamp placed next to her bed. She also has a wood stove, located in a small pantry, but it only heats part of the house. “At night, when it’s really cold, I come here with a chair,” she explains.
no heating
Natalia’s house was bombed. Her husband passed away and she wants to stay by his grave
Natalia insists that she is not going anywhere. She keeps hearing gunshots. But she is not afraid. She is hard as steel. She was born in a mountainous village in the Carpathians and grew up in Siberia. The Soviet Union deported her there with her parents because several of her relatives escaped to Canada. She talks about the aftermath of the war and her childhood naturally. The only thing that makes him cry is her animals. Only a few days ago she died Karat, the German shepherd who has accompanied her throughout the war.
“You can’t be here”
Natalia says goodbye to us from the door of her house. Shortly after, we found a new control: machine guns, concrete blocks and barbed wire. A military man asks us who we are and how we got there. “You can’t be here,” he repeats. We tell them that we are journalists and we detail the route we have followed. The soldier calls his superiors and leads us to a house. It looks like just another abandoned chalet. But here is one of the main operating bases of the Ukrainian Army.
The barracks are only about 500 meters from Natalia’s house. Mobile phones do not work here to prevent the base from being located. They ask us for documentation. Everything is in order. But we shouldn’t be here, they insist. The translator explains that it was not our intention.
The colonel calls his superiors. While he receives the answer he leads us to the living room of the chalet, now converted into a dining room. The soldiers who arrive from the trenches are entering. Silent. They are young, but they are exhausted. They take a plate and plastic cutlery. The only woman in the detachment distributes the rations. The soldiers eat and go to rest for a few hours, before returning to the line of combat. While they decide what to do with us, they invite us to eat.
The first dish on the menu is a meat and mushroom soup. The second is pasta with meat and an omelette with melted cheese and mayonnaise. There are also bowls with raw garlic and onions. To drink there is coffee and compot, a traditional non-alcoholic drink.
About two hours later there is already a response from Kiev. Kindly, the colonel tells us that we must get out of there, that he cannot serve us without authorization. We take the car and head to Dnipro, towards the center of the country, away from the bullets. Natalia is still there, on the war front.