Not much has changed in Karlivka since the start of the Russian invasion. There are indeed these explosions, sometimes muffled and distant, sometimes more muted and close, which have been ringing out for several weeks with worrying regularity. Electricity cuts too, caused by these same bombardments. There are also these military vehicles hidden under trees and camouflage nets in order to escape the Russian air force, a new threat for the Ukrainian army.
The disaster of war
But the rest is sadly familiar for locals whose prospects have been extinguished since 2014 by the war and, fifteen short kilometers to the east, the presence of a front line. Two checkpoints, tired assemblies of concrete blocks, sandbags, barbed wire and an improvised casemate, guard since 2014 the narrow dam which marks both the end of Lake Karlivka and the entrance to the village . Nothing new either in the constant comings and goings of police and soldiers, which simply intensified with the Russian offensive. While the fighting is unleashed across the Donbass, even the front line, in this fortified area very close to the former regional capital of Donetsk, has hardly moved.
→ REPORT. In the Donbass, Ukrainian soldiers between fatigue and determination
But the Russian-Ukrainian war started by Moscow on February 24 has above all changed nothing in the feeling of exhaustion and abandonment of the inhabitants. “We are stuck here, there is no exit door, no transport, without a car it is impossible to leave”, laments, twisting her fingers Olga, a frightened 70-year-old pensioner. “We can’t take it anymore, eight years that we live like this, that nobody helps us”, adds Halina coming out of her garden.
Karlivka lived, not so long ago, in a very different world. “Come and escape the noise and bustle of the city, breathe fresh air, enjoy the setting sun far from the skyscrapers of Donetsk!” », enthused at the time the only hotel in the village. Its location on the road to Donetsk, the lake that borders it – rich in carp and zander – and the sanatorium that was installed there have long made Karlivka a popular vacation spot for locals.
A soldier’s bulletproof vest and weapon, in Karlivka, May 14, 2022. / Astrig Agopian for La Croix
The village was transformed in the summer of 2014 into a battlefield, just a few weeks after the annexation of Crimea by Moscow and the start of the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The hotel along the road soon closed. Devastated in fighting between Ukrainian paramilitary battalions and pro-Russian separatists, the gas station and sanatorium were never rebuilt.
The war has also accelerated in the region a phenomenon of rural exodus already common in the countryside of Ukraine. In Karlivka, “all the young people have left here, there are only pensioners left”, assures Olga. Dressed in a pink bathrobe, Halina also claims that “all those who had a little money in their pocket left”without being able to say how many of the 414 inhabitants listed in 2001 still live there.
An extremely rare example of a recent settlement: Valentina and Oleg, a couple in their fifties who decided in 2015 to flee their hometown of Donetsk, captured the previous year by separatists under Moscow supervision. The exception rather than the rule, while the presence of a 450 kilometer long front line acted as a foil.
parallel worlds
Although Karlivka has been emptied of its inhabitants, the village has seen the arrival in recent years of a new population of soldiers and activists, between units of the National Guard, medical services of the ultranationalist Right Sector group and Trizub Dental, an NGO based in the village in 2015 to provide dental care to soldiers in the area. All moved into the empty houses near the sanatorium, a neighborhood separated from the villagers by the road leading directly to the front line. “They don’t bother us and we don’t bother them”, summarizes Olga to describe the coexistence of two universes which, in Karlivka, only rarely mix. On the door of the house hosting the practice of Trizub Dental, a poster thus directly discouraged the inhabitants of Karlivka from seeking medical care: ” Attention ! For locals, a dentist’s office is operational in Galitsnivika. »
Lida will go “nowhere, because there is nowhere to go”. / ASTRIG AGOPIAN FOR THE CROSS
And while Igor Yachenko, the enthusiastic activist behind Trizub Dental, was at the same time launching Trizub FM, a patriotic radio station for Ukrainian soldiers within a 30-kilometre radius of Karlivka, locals often continued to watch Russian television or even Novorossiya TV, a channel created by the separatists and broadcast from the other side of the front line. “We have very good relations with the soldiers. In 2014, they came to see me when I had health problems, they even brought me food,” remembers Lida, whose house was damaged by an explosion in 2014.
But the war didn’t just change the face of Karlivka. It has also deeply isolated its last inhabitants, who previously benefited from the proximity of a regional capital of one million inhabitants. “Before the war there were young people here, they could work in Donetsk, we had transport, today you have to pay 500 hrivnas (15 €) for a taxi to the nearest hospital,” laments Halina in Surjik, a mixture of Russian and Ukrainian particularly common in rural Donbass.
The Unthinkable Escape
“We could go wherever we wanted, Donetsk, Krasnoarmiysk, anywhere. Today this is no longer possible.” nostalgically confirms Olga, a red scarf tied on her head. As if the presence of the front line had displaced Karlivka, making it leave the peripheral zone of the largest city in the region to place it in the depths of the Donbass.
The isolation is cruelly felt by locals who have very often kept ties to the other side. Olga has not seen her daughter for four years while she lives in Donetsk, barely 30 kilometers to the east. Lida mourns her son who was killed in November 2014 – “he fought in the separatist ranks”whispers a neighbor a little later.
Olga has not seen her daughter for four years. / ASTRIG AGOPIAN FOR THE CROSS
As Russian troops slowly continue to nibble away at Donbass, the village’s isolation becomes increasingly oppressive. Along the dam closing Karlivka Lake runs the only road leading to Pokrovsk, the first city in the region still under Ukrainian control. The infrastructure is fragile and could easily be destroyed by a retreating Ukrainian army, in order to turn the whole area into a swamp and block the advance of Russian troops. Valentina and Oleg would then flee with the last Ukrainian soldiers. “I will be there as long as Ukraine is there”, declares Valentina in the middle of her vegetable garden, not far from the cellar where the couple goes during the bombardments.
But the prospect is unthinkable for those who already lived in Karlivka under the Soviet Union. “I was born here and I will die here”, whispers Olga in a weak voice. Tears in her eyes, the retiree evacuates everything. The presence of Russian troops? ” I do not care. » Information ? “I don’t know who to believe anymore.. » She prefers the cinema, wishes she could watch Love and Pigeonsa Soviet romantic comedy that she particularly cherishes.
Same weariness at Lida, who will not go “nowhere, because there is nowhere to go”and at Halina. “We can’t take this music anymore”, she says in reference to the bombings which, in the middle of May, are still relatively distant. “I just want a night’s sleep without hearing it. »
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Eight years of war in eastern Ukraine
18 mars 2014. Vladimir Putin signs the decree confirming the annexation of the Crimean peninsula to the Russian Federation.
8 avril 2014. A group of pro-Russian separatists seizes the Ukrainian security service building in Luhansk and declares the “People’s Republic of Luhansk”.
15 avril 2014. The interim Ukrainian president announces the launch of an “anti-terrorist operation” to regain control of eastern Ukraine.
February 12, 2015. The signing of the Minsk 2 agreement after several months of fighting and the intervention of the Russian army, freezes a 450 kilometer long front line in eastern Ukraine. This has always remained active, the scene of artillery duels and regular skirmishes between the Ukrainian army and separatist groups.
21 avril 2019. Volodymyr Zelensky is elected president of Ukraine, notably by promising peace in eastern Ukraine.
February 24, 2022. Russia invades Ukraine.