“The danger who cares!”: Every day they walk around Kharkiv to put out fires caused by Russian bombardments. After more than two months of conflict, exhaustion awaits the firefighters of Ukraine’s second city.
The figures are terrible: more than 1,000 fires in the Kharkiv region, more than 2,000 buildings damaged or destroyed by fire in the city alone and more than 140 civilians dead in the rubble, according to Yevgen Vassylenko, regional spokesman for the Service of Ukraine emergency.
Every day Russian rockets mainly target the North-East and East neighborhoods, the closest to the front line. Residents still live there. Random strikes, spaced out, at any time of day or night, sometimes deadly.
At the end of the day on Wednesday, two bombardments left one dead and two injured. Tuesday the balance sheet was three killed.
“In peacetime, there could be only one major fire, but during the war, there can be ten at the same time”, explains Roman Katchanov, build of judoka heavyweight category, to the head of barracks N.11.
“Two weeks ago, it was a big bombardment”, says the man with the flow of submachine gun.
“56 fire engines intervened in different districts of the city center. A building, then another, and yet another… And then they started to bombard Saltivka”, the district in the North-East, the most targeted, continues the manager.
“And it goes on like this every day. Guys don’t have enough time to rest, that’s the hardest part. It’s exhausting,” he adds.
Wednesday, after the intervention on a garage that went up in smoke, a firefighter sat for a long time, his face partly blackened, dripping with sweat, his features drawn, staring into space.
This week, the firefighters received a visit from a small group of American colleagues. They came to deliver equipment and give first aid courses.
Behind the hangar of the barracks where inexhaustible old fire trucks dating from the Soviet era are parked, alongside other more recent ones, Roman Katchanov shows his guests an impressive pile of skeletons of rockets of all sizes, testimony to the multiple strikes on the city.
Asked about the risks run by his men, when the Russians often bomb the same place twice at 10 or 15 minutes apart, the answer fuses.
“We don’t care about the danger! We have to go there, we don’t even pay attention to it anymore, for us it’s just doing our job,” he says.
– “These guys inspire me” –
In more than two months of conflict, for the Kharkiv region alone, a firefighter and three deminers died in the intervention, according to spokesman Yevguen Vassylenko.
“One of our firefighters died under the bombardments, right in front of me”, remembers the head of barracks N.11, without saying more.
In addition to their outfit, which is as uncomfortable as it is protective and weighs around 10 kg, some firefighters also wear bulletproof vests.
But the volunteers are not lacking.
“At present, 3,000 firefighters from the Kharkiv region are working together as a team. We have enough people, we have enough equipment,” said Roman Katchanov.
Short hair, sharp physique, Clint Saint-Martin, an ex-Marine who served in Iraq, is part of the small team who came from the United States to provide assistance to Ukrainian colleagues.
After a visit to the barracks closest to the North-East districts of Kharkiv, he bends with a smile to the photo pose, wearing the emblematic helmet of American firefighters.
“This is the first team (of volunteers) and I hope many more will come to Ukraine to support Ukrainian firefighters and their mission against this senseless war,” he told AFP.
“It’s really impressive. I have a lot of respect for them (…) I will come back to Kharkiv, these guys inspire me,” says the former Marine.
Roman Katchanov, he “just hopes that everything will end”, even if “nobody knows when it will be the end”.
“We hope that the Russians understand who this + Putler + is and that they will kick his ass,” he said, using a pejorative expression associating the name of Russian President Vladimir Putin with that of Hitler.