How Russia wiped this Ukrainian metropolis ‘off the face of the Earth’

Vovchansk has no nice historical past however its geography couldn’t be extra tragic. Simply 5 kilometres (three miles) from the Russian border, drone footage from the Ukrainian army this summer season exhibits a lunar panorama of ruins stretching for miles.

And it’s got worse since.

“Ninety p.c of the centre is flattened,” stated mayor Tamaz Gambarashvili, a towering man in uniform, who runs what’s left of Vovchansk from the regional capital of Kharkiv, an hour and a half’s drive away.

“The enemy continues its huge shelling,” he added.

Six out of 10 of Vovchansk’s buildings have been completely destroyed, with 18 p.c partially ruined, in line with evaluation of satellite tv for pc pictures by the unbiased open-source intelligence collective Bellingcat. However the destruction is way worse within the metropolis centre, which has been levelled north of the Vovcha River.

AFP journalists in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Paris labored with Bellingcat to inform how, constructing by constructing, a whole metropolis was wiped off the map in only a few weeks — and to indicate the human toll it has taken.

The sheer tempo of the destruction dwarfed that of even Bakhmut, the “meatgrinder” Donbas area metropolis the place among the most brutal killing of the conflict has been achieved, a Ukrainian officer who fought in each cities informed AFP.

“I used to be in Bakhmut, so I understand how the battles unfolded there,” Lieutenant Denys Yaroslavsky insisted.

“What took two or three months in Bakhmut occurred in simply two or three weeks in Vovchansk.”

Invaded, then freed

Vovchansk had a inhabitants of about 20,000 earlier than the conflict. It now lives solely within the recollections of the survivors who managed to flee.

Past its factories, the town had a “medical college, a technical faculty, seven faculties and quite a few kindergartens,” Nelia Stryzhakova, the top of its library, informed AFP in Kharkiv.

It even had a workshop that made “carriages for interval movies. We have been even attention-grabbing, in our personal means,” insisted Stryzhakova, 61.

Add to {that a} regional hospital, rebuilt in 2017 with almost 10 million euros ($10.8 million) of German assist, a church packed for spiritual feasts, and an enormous hydraulic equipment plant. As soon as the city’s financial lifeblood, its ruins at the moment are being fought over by each armies.

Vovchansk was rapidly occupied by the Russian military after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, however was then retaken by Kyiv in a lightning counter assault that autumn.

Regardless of enduring common Russian bombardment, it was comparatively calm. Then one thing very totally different occurred on Might 10.

Badly defended

Exhausted after weeks of laborious preventing 100 kilometres to the south, the Ukrainian 57th Brigade was regrouping close to Vovchansk when considered one of its reconnaissance items observed one thing unusual.

“We noticed two Russian armoured troop carriers that had simply crossed the border,” recalled Lieutenant Yaroslavsky, who was main the unit.

They have been the advance guard of some of the intense Russian offensives because the starting of the conflict, with Moscow throwing a number of thousand troopers on the metropolis.

“There have been no fortifications, no mines” to decelerate their advance, Yaroslavsky stated, nonetheless livid on the “negligence or corruption” that allowed this to occur.

Some “17,000 folks misplaced their properties. Why? As a result of somebody didn’t construct fortifications,” fumed the 42-year-old officer.

“We management the town immediately, however what we management is a pile of rubble,” he added bitterly.

President Volodymyr Zelensky cancelled an abroad journey to hurry to Kharkiv, admitting that the Russian military had pushed between 5 and 10 kilometres into Ukraine.

The folks of Vovchansk, in the meantime, have been dwelling a nightmare.

Drones like mosquitoes

“The Russians began bombing,” stated Galyna Zharova, who lived at 16A Stepova Avenue — an house constructing now decreased to ruins, as pictures analysed by Bellingcat and AFP confirmed.

“We have been proper on the entrance line. Nobody may come and get us out,” added the 50-year-old, who now lives along with her household in a college dormitory in Kharkiv.

“We went all the way down to the cellar. All of the buildings have been burning. We have been crammed into basements (for almost 4 weeks) till June 3,” her husband Viktor, 65, added.

Finally, the couple determined to flee on foot. “Drones have been flying round us like wasps, like mosquitoes,” Galyna remembered. They walked for a number of kilometres earlier than being rescued by Ukrainian volunteers.

“The town was stunning. The folks have been stunning. We had all the pieces,” sighed librarian Stryzhakova. “Nobody may have imagined that in simply 5 days, we’d be wiped off the face of the Earth.”

The 125,000 books within the library she had run at 8 Tokhova Avenue went up in smoke.

Greater than half of the households in jap Ukraine have family in Russia. In Vovchansk, earlier than the conflict within the Donbas area started in 2014, folks crossed the border each day to buy, with Russians flocking to the town’s markets.

“There are a lot of combined households,” stated Stryzhakova. “Mother and father, youngsters, we’re all related. And now we’ve turn out to be enemies. There’s no different option to put it.”

The Russian defence ministry didn’t reply to AFP’s questions asking for its account of what occurred within the metropolis.

Mayor Gambarashvili, who was hit within the leg by shrapnel as he oversaw the town’s evacuation, shook his head when requested to estimate the variety of civilian casualties.

Dozens, little question. Maybe extra. There have been nonetheless round 4,000 folks in Vovchansk on Might 10, principally older folks, since most households with youngsters had been evacuated months earlier.

Households divided by conflict

Kira Dzhafarova, 57, believes her mom, Valentina Radionova, who had lived at 40 Dukhovna Avenue in a small home with an enthralling backyard, is probably going useless.

Their final telephone dialog was on Might 17. “At 85, I’m not going wherever,” her mom insisted. Satellite tv for pc pictures and witnesses have since confirmed that the home was fully destroyed.

“Since then I do know it’s over,” sighed Kira, who offered DNA for identification, if and when the preventing ends.

In a very merciless irony, her mom, a Russian nationwide, had moved to Vovchansk so she may very well be equidistant between her two youngsters, who had fallen out.

Kira has lived in Kharkiv for 35 years and have become formally Ukrainian two years in the past. Her older brother, who she believes helps Russian President Vladimir Putin, remained in Belgorod, the household’s hometown and the primary huge Russian metropolis on the opposite aspect of the border.

Kira, a psychiatrist, now solely refers to him as her “former brother”.

AFP was unable to contact him instantly.

Volodymyr Zymovsky, 70, can also be lacking. On Might 16, he determined to flee the bombardment in a automotive together with his 83-year-old mom, his spouse Raisa, and a neighbour. Zymovsky and his mom have been each shot useless, “almost certainly by a Russian sniper”, Raisa stated.

Amid the hail of bullets, the 59-year-old paediatric nurse had barely obtained out of the automotive when she was grabbed by Russian troopers and held for 2 days. She managed to flee, hid in a neighbour’s cellar for an evening, and ultimately fled by the forest.

She recounted her harrowing odyssey in a peaceful, measured voice. One factor alone appears to matter to her now: discovering the our bodies of her husband and mother-in-law and giving them a correct burial.

They took my son

A hearsay has circulated among the many survivors that the our bodies that littered the streets of Vovchansk for days have been thrown right into a mass grave. The place and by whom, nobody is aware of.

A handful of civilians nonetheless stay in Vovchansk. Oleksandre Garlychev, 70, claims to have seen no less than three when he returned to his former house on a bicycle in mid-September to retrieve belongings.

Garlychev lived at 10A Rubezhanskaya Avenue, in a southern a part of the town that was comparatively spared. He solely left on August 10.

Vovchansk’s survivors — and even a couple of of its officers — quietly wonder if it is going to ever be rebuilt given its proximity to the border, no matter how the conflict ends.

Requested whether or not she may ever forgive her husband’s killer, Raisa Zymovska fell silent for a very long time. Then, in a whisper, she replied: “I don’t know, I actually don’t. As a Christian, sure, however as a human being… What can I say?”

As for the librarian Stryzhakova, she will not convey herself to open a Russian e-book, even the classics, since her solely son Pavlo was killed within the Battle of Bakhmut.

“I do know that literature is to not blame, however Russia, all of it disgusts me. They took my son, it’s private.”