Under the howl of the sirens, the teenager with the still childish face spins on his skateboard, passing in front of a bombed-out hamburger stand before reaching the Peace Square of Kramatorsk, in the heart of Donbass under Ukrainian control.
Roman Kovalenko, 18, unsuccessfully tries a few flips on this huge square in the city center, completely deserted.
On this beautiful May evening, great white vapor trails criss-cross the sky above him, witnessing rockets rocketing all around the city. Five have already descended on Kramatorsk before dawn. Floors and walls shook, rows of buildings – long abandoned – had their windows shattered and their apartments turned upside down.
But Roman slips on the asphalt, with a feeling of invincibility mixed with disbelief.
“On the one hand, it’s sad, but on the other, it’s a very special atmosphere,” he says.
Standing on his board, with his sneakers and his white baseball cap, Roman looks like an ordinary teenager, who looks like parachuted in the middle of the war.
“I feel a bit melancholy because there is no one there,” he says. “But walking alone before curfew makes me feel like the king of the streets.”
– “Nothing else to do”
Kramatorsk had a population of 300,000 before 2014, when the Donbass conflict began between pro-Russian separatists backed by Moscow and authorities in kyiv. When the region’s capital, Donetsk, fell to the separatists, the Ukrainians relocated their administrative center to Kramatorsk, one hundred kilometers to the north.
A Soviet-era industrial city, Kramatorsk is lined with factories and warehouses, lined up along a railway line and a river that cross it from north to south. These facilities are prime targets for Russian forces, which are closing in on the Kramatorsk Valley from the hills further north.
Weeks of trench warfare, waged with increasingly powerful weapons, brought Russian and pro-Russian forces within artillery firing range of Kramatorsk.
The Ukrainians usually retaliate with artillery fire in the morning. They then try to move their weapons in the daytime, hoping that the Russians won’t have a clear target in the evening when they fire long-range missiles.
While crisscrossing the city on his skateboard, Roman witnesses the damage that this warrior routine has inflicted on his city.
“I have nothing else to do,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “All my friends have left for other regions of Ukraine. I’m bored.”
– “I accept my fate” –
Before the war, Place de la Paix was the meeting point for skateboarding enthusiasts and teenagers looking for a cheap outing.
When the sun goes down and the administrative buildings all around turn orange, the place suddenly acquires an unusual charm, in a city where most passers-by today are burly men armed with an assault rifle. , looking tired and gray.
Roman struggles to explain why he didn’t leave. “Of course I would like to find my friends and go out,” he says, “but that’s not really possible right now.”
He lives alone with his mother, briefly mentions financial difficulties before adding that others have problems much more serious than his.
“The time has not yet come for me to be afraid,” he said. “I am a fatalist. I accept my fate”.
The warning sirens sound again, from loudspeakers placed directly above him. He’s not moving.
“When a siren sounds, in 80% of cases nothing happens,” he says.
He easily recognizes that even if it is only in 20% of the cases, the chances are quite high that something can happen to him. “I realize it’s war, but not completely.”