The bombardments have disfigured the city, the Russian infantry is a stone’s throw away, but morale does not waver: Gulyaipole, the “capital of anarchism” in the front row against Russian troops on the southern front of Ukraine , claims to draw on its history to repel the invader.
In this old-fashioned charming town where tulips, red and yellow, have risen triumphantly since the arrival of spring, the thunder of the bombs, which crash at regular intervals in the immediate outskirts, reminds us how close the war is.
The vast majority of the 16,000 inhabitants of this locality, which after October 1917 was the center of a revolutionary peasant movement of anarchist inspiration, fled.
They have been partly replaced by displaced people from Donbass, an eastern region partially controlled since 2014 by pro-Russian separatists and which Moscow absolutely wants to take back. Not a passerby in the streets. Cars are rare.
Many pretty houses with neat gardens have lost their roofs, a section of wall, or more. Tatiana Samolenka, a 63-year-old retiree, had just put her chickens back in the cage when she said she heard “a huge whistle”.
“I knew it was for us. I thought my house would be my grave.” Her husband, across the street, sees a craft “fall on a parachute”, she says, which crashes just behind their palisade, in the nearby field.
A crater several meters wide and deep testifies to his incredible luck. “An identical bomb fell the same day, without exploding, a little further. We moved it with difficulty. It weighed 300 kilos”, observes the mayor Serguiï Yarmak.
– The “legend” Makhno –
A few weeks ago, it was a “phosphorus bomb” that set the marsh of this town east of Zaporijjia ablaze, he says. “It was broad daylight, but it was like fireworks.” If a large blackened area is still visible, the grass that has since grown back around now makes it impossible to imagine the extent of the fire, underlines the city councilor.
More recently, Russian troops made a breakthrough in town, only to be pushed back by Ukrainian forces.
“Gouliaïpolé holds and it will always hold”, launches Mr. Iarmak, because it draws its strength from its “legend”: its most illustrious son, Nestor Makhno, a charismatic anarchist, took the head a little more than a century ago. of peasant guerrilla warfare against the German and Austrian troops then occupying Ukraine, but also against the “white” anti-Bolshevik forces.
This supporter of Ukrainian independence, known for his improbable costumes and his sheepskin Cossack hat, organized self-managed libertarian communes. Gouliaipolé was the center of it. It is still today nicknamed the “capital of anarchism”.
But the Red Army, once its ally, turned against Makhno. He and the “Makhnovshchina”, his “black” army, were defeated. Forced into exile, he died in Paris in 1934.
The Russians “are always trying to betray us”, mocks Serguiï Iarmak. After the dirty trick played in Makhno, the invasion of Ukraine launched by Moscow on February 24 is however doomed to failure, according to him, because “we are independent and free”. Particularly in Gouliaipolé, where the local Che Guevara has his statue, his museum, helping to attract tourists, says the mayor.
– “We are stubborn” –
Then, since there is no more peace, the hero inspires war. The local defense units are called the “Makhno Ark”, says Mr. Iarmak proudly. “A few days ago, guys from here shot down two helicopters,” he said, showing a video on his cell phone – the veracity of which AFP could not verify.
The tenacity seems contagious among the civilians who remained in town. Like Svitlana Sokol, a 54-year-old Ukrainian teacher, who has taken refuge in the basement of her building since early March after Russian shells blew up part of the neighboring building and damaged the neighborhood church.
With about twenty neighbors, she has organized a small community based on “mutual aid”, long confined underground. But with the return of fine weather, the group, mainly women, chatted quietly in the sun, while the explosions followed one another, sometimes very close. The positions of the Ukrainian forces are only a few hundred meters away.
“We know exactly whether the bombs are coming from us or from them,” Svitlana smiles. Just before diving precipitously into the cellar after recognizing a “Grad”, this device fired by a multiple rocket launcher which has bruised Ukraine since the start of the war.
Nothing, however, to impress him. “We are stubborn and we will go all the way,” she thunders, citing Makhno and “the spirit of the Cossacks.” And the fifties with big glasses to add, as brave as it is hilarious: “We are extreme people. We have adrenaline full our pants.”