Eurasia Press & News
American sources claim that Vladimir Putin is offering to renounce his claims to the partially occupied Kherson and Zaporizhia regions in exchange for full control over Donbas, making this a condition for a ceasefire. By the end of the fourth year of the war, Russia has managed to capture only 70% of the Donetsk region. Kramatorsk, Sloviansk, Kostyantynivka, and Pokrovsk—important industrial centers and well-defended fortress towns—remain under Ukrainian control. The Insider spoke with residents of the unoccupied part of the Donetsk region about how they have endured shelling for three years and how they view the prospects of a “Russian world” coming to power in exchange for an end to the war.
Vladimir Putin is prepared to freeze the front line if Ukraine withdraws its troops from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, Reuters sources claimed after the Alaska summit in August 2025. Putin repeated these demands in an October phone call with Donald Trump. Ukraine refused: losing the remaining part of the Donetsk region would mean surrendering important fortified areas, as The Insider previously reported . The Slavyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration is also important economically. Kramatorsk is a center of heavy engineering , Slavyansk is a center of electric power , Pokrovsk is a center of the coal industry ( it has the only coking coal mine), and Konstantinovka was famous for its glass production. However, due to the fighting, access to these enterprises is limited; many have been destroyed, and others are surrounded by minefields.
According to a poll by the Kyiv International Institute of Sociology, 75% of Ukrainians oppose the “peace plan” proposed by Russia, which involves giving up Crimea and the Luhansk and Donetsk regions.
The population of the Ukrainian-controlled part of Donetsk Oblast has almost halved in a year: from 525,000 residents in August 2024 to 225,000 residents by August 2025. Despite the fighting, for many, this land remains their only home, which they are unwilling to abandon.
Kramatorsk
Kramatorsk, the largest city in the free part of Donetsk Oblast, had a population of over 150,000 before the full-scale invasion. In January 2025, the number dropped to 80,000, and in July, to 53,000. The city lives in a “frontline” environment under regular shelling. The two deadliest strikes occurred on April 8, 2022: a missile attack on the train station, which killed 61 people, and a bombing of the Ria Pizza cafe on June 27, 2023, which killed 13.
In the summer of 2025, shelling intensified: in July, the Russian army used a Tornado-S MLRS, which injured three people and damaged civilian infrastructure; in August, several attacks by “shahid” drones were recorded, one of which hit a medical facility and residential areas.
The massive shelling on August 22, 2025, lasted over an hour: approximately 30 explosions were counted in the city. A few weeks later, on September 10, a new series of attacks began , and on September 14, 2025, Russian aircraft dropped four FAB-250 aerial bombs on the city center, damaging 35 high-rise buildings, three educational institutions, administrative buildings, stores, and a bank.
Ekaterina, pastry chef and owner of the Coffee House coffee shop and pastry shop: “Just try to come here, I’ll go to war myself.”
“When the full-scale war began, everyone in Kramatorsk who had money fled. All the local shops and establishments closed. We somehow managed to scrape by, but only because we didn’t have the money to relocate anywhere. So I became a monopolist: my establishment was the only one operating in the city. It was mostly men, soldiers, who frequented it.
And if before the war I excelled thanks to a good pastry education, a French school, now there was no point. There was no electricity, no logistics, the recipes needed to be reworked to make them more shelf-stable, and the young people were leaving, leaving no one to work. And if, say, a big, bearded man came along, he wouldn’t take molecular gastronomy or some truffle-fueled perversion. He needed something understandable, tasty, and home-made—so I started making wafer rolls and Napoleon cakes. The same things their mothers and grandmothers used to make.
In April 2025, the shelling intensified, forcing us to close, and my child and I moved to Dnipro. Renting a place became incredibly expensive: an apartment cost $300–400, plus you had to pay the first two months’ rent upfront and the realtor’s commission. How could people afford that kind of money, when the average salary in Kramatorsk is $250, and a good salary is around $400? Many couldn’t leave even in 2022 because they simply didn’t have the money.
We found a small house in Dnipro, or rather a barn, where someone had died and been lying there for a long time, and we cleaned it all up ourselves. I was hysterical. It cost $150 a month. To pay for rent and food, I got a job in a pastry shop, making desserts and delivering them. I worked 15 hours a day, six days a week, and they paid me $15 a day. It was enough to live on, but I couldn’t have lasted that long.
There’s a feeling that no one cares about us, the people of Donbas. Ukrainians in other regions call us “Donbasians”—it’s like “Downies,” only “Donbasians.” They say we’re to blame for everything, that we’re all Russian-speaking and pro-Russian, but that’s all untrue.
All those who were pro-Russian showed their support in 2014; they were all registered, and almost all of them left long ago. This is how refugees are received by their own people.
There was a telling incident in Dnipro: I was unloading a car when a digital watch fell out. The neighbors noticed the wires sticking out of it and the Donetsk license plates on the car and decided I’d come to blow up their peaceful Dnipro. They called the cops and the SBU, who arrived, saw that I was sane and that the complainers weren’t, and then left.
And the attitude in Europe is no better. There are so many of these videos from Poland, for example, where they ask, “Why did you come here?” Even though their economy relies on immigrants. Refugees are willing to work for pennies because they have no choice, and they spend their earnings there.
My work caused health problems, and I knew I couldn’t take it anymore. In July 2022, we returned to Kramatorsk, and I reopened the café, brought in coffee, found staff, and started working. But there were no people at all: maybe twenty a day, all men and old people, and there were no women in town at all; they had all left with their children.
It was only through hard work that we managed to keep the café going: I sometimes tended the bar myself because there was no one else, and I’d come home like a vegetable. By 2023, things had quieted down, residents were returning, and business was picking up.
We’re the last [unoccupied] major city in the Donetsk region, so for now, things are more or less better here than in the others. The power goes out for six to eight hours once a week, and if there’s a major air strike, it can last for a day. They bombed the power plant and the hydroelectric power station, and I don’t even know how they supply electricity now. And we’re adapting: we bake a hundred waffle cones on three waffle irons in two hours. They need 220 volts, but ours sometimes drops to 180-185, so we’re slamming on the power as fast as we can to make it while the power lasts.
They bombed the thermal power plant, the hydroelectric power station, and I don’t even know how and through what they supply electricity now.
Prices have gone up everywhere in the city, even though purchasing power hasn’t increased. Logistics are crap; shipping to us is expensive. We compare supplier prices—ours are up 40 percent, if we take the same company that ships, for example, to the Kharkiv region and to the east, to the Donetsk region.
There’s regular shelling here, and I’m shell-shocked right now, which is why I’m occasionally going nuts. Two days ago, they hit me with FAB-250 bombs right under my windows; there are two large craters there now. I was in my room, and the blast wave engulfed me. There’s a loud noise, a severe pain in my ears, like my eardrums are throbbing, like high blood pressure. You feel this pain, but your brain can’t process anything else.
The child managed to hide in the bathroom, but a tile fell on him and he got hurt. When I was inside, I didn’t understand what had happened: just bang—that was it. And from the outside, it was scary to even look. The walls and windows had been blown out, with chunks of them falling out. The house is gone; it’s impossible to live there. Besides, it’s not the first time it’s been shelled: the first time was in 2014. This time, eight people were injured , but we weren’t included in the statistics; there wasn’t time to keep track of all that. A friend came over, we treated the child’s wound, and she quickly took him to his grandmother’s. I live here because it’s impossible to rent an apartment with my two dogs; no one will let me.
The walls and windows were blown out, with chunks of them falling out. There’s no house left, it’s impossible to live there.
At the hospital, I was diagnosed with a moderate concussion, and ideally I should stay there for three weeks, taking pills and getting injections, but I have to think about what’s next. For now, the child will be staying with his grandmother in the village of Vesyoliy, which is closer to the front line, and there are drones flying overhead.
The main thing I want is to earn money so I can take my child out of the city and continue working. I can’t leave yet: I have a child and parents, too much responsibility. So I want to work as much as possible and at least leave with something. There aren’t many people left in the city: in my building, there’s only me and an elderly grandmother with her disabled son.
Some people here are waiting for the war to end, others are waiting for it to all go to hell. Many were seduced by Trump’s negotiations and thought the war would end any minute, but I had no hope. I say: there’s no point in waiting, in hoping, the war won’t end.
We were preparing, building fortified areas, digging trenches, building a defensive system. And now we’re like, “Please, sit in our awesome trenches, in our awesome fortified areas, you’ll be warm here. We’ve got everything here.” Let’s also leave them some fucking mothballs, so it’ll be even better.
From these fortified areas, from which it will be impossible to dislodge them, they will advance further—to the Dnieper, to Kharkov, and generally, it will be a complete disco. There is no point in believing that peace will come if the Russians are given territory; it is foolish to agree to such conditions.
I haven’t seen anyone here with my own eyes who supports Russia. A prime example is my neighbor, my granny. We’ve already experienced shelling twice, both in 2014 and now, and we’ve seen who’s doing it. Even she’s perfectly reasonable, saying, “We’ll help our guys”—meaning the Ukrainians.
In 2014, some people had illusions that everything would be fine under Russia; now they’re either in Donetsk or in Russia. I haven’t heard such statements here since then.
Thank God we have internet access and access to information. When you see what’s happening in Donetsk, it’s pure fucking propaganda, a complete disregard for the people there. A friend of mine in Yalta in 2014 was sent to a basement, beaten, tortured, then released, his mother was threatened, and his dacha with vineyards was confiscated—all for his pro-Ukrainian stance. And after that, he suddenly switched to Ukrainian and practically became a nationalist. That’s what they achieved.
That same year, 2014, my ex-husband worked at a car dealership with 150 cars. Some so-called Don Cossacks showed up, stared down at everyone, including the manager, and told them, “Give me the keys if you want to live.” They stole the cars, leaving the people jobless. “Come, see, take it,” they said—like pirates, though even pirates have a code, while these guys are just thieves. How can anyone maintain any illusions about these people’s motives after that?
My homeland is Ukraine, even though I’m mostly Russian-speaking. I’ve always wanted to stay here, I’ve never even traveled abroad and I didn’t want to live in Kyiv, much less Moscow. I’ll never work under Russia. How can you work and earn money, pay taxes, or anything else to a government that does this? Fuck you, seriously. That’s the sentiment of all the Ukrainians I know, and they consider themselves Ukrainians. I’m not just saying this: the more this bullshit gets worse, the angrier it gets.
We started developing in 2014, and Western investment poured into the city. In 2017, I received a grant for my business from the United Nations Development Programme as a woman entrepreneur. The city was being rebuilt, fountains, playgrounds, and various children’s activities appeared.
If Russians had stopped in 2022, when they realized they weren’t needed here, things would have been much better than now, when the more shit they do, the more anger they provoke. With every destroyed home, with every murdered acquaintance, friend, or family member who went to defend the homeland, illusions diminish, and now there are none left. All of this could have been avoided.
“And you understand: just try to come here, I’ll go fight myself. Regardless of the fact that I have a child and a business. I go volunteering to visit those affected by the shelling in Kostiantynivka, for example, and I know for sure: no one wants to give up their cities.”
Slavyansk
Before the full-scale invasion, Slovyansk had a population of over 100,000, and by November 2024, it was approximately 50,000. Of these, Slovyansk Mayor Vadim Lyakh estimates that 5,000 are children. In November 2024, he called on families with children to leave the city due to shelling. Slovyansk is subject to intense Russian military attacks: in June, School No. 14 was damaged by a drone attack; in July, the Lesnoy microdistrict was hit, injuring two people, including a child; in August and September, there were air strikes on the city center, the industrial zone, residential buildings, and infrastructure.
Nikolai Karpitsky, Doctor of Philosophy, religious scholar, and journalist for postpravda.info: “No peace agreements are possible, just as life under occupation will be impossible.”
“I’m from Siberia, from Tomsk, where I graduated with a degree in philosophy from the university, taught, and defended the rights of religious believers who were subjected to repression. I often traveled to Ukraine, researching local religious communities. In 2014, I condemned the actions of the Russian army, speaking out openly in the Tomsk media.
Because of this position and my trips to Ukraine, the university refused to renew my contract, and there was no longer any point in staying in Russia. So in 2015, I moved to Kharkiv, where the local Hare Krishna community helped me find a teaching position at Luhansk National University, which had left because of the war.
When the Debaltseve cauldron broke out, I was traveling along the front lines in Donbas, writing a column about how Christians were living during the fighting. In Avdiivka, I was delivering food to pensioners by bicycle with other volunteers. Among us and the local residents, there were people with both pro-Ukrainian and pro-Russian views, but no conflicts arose.
Only once did I encounter problems related to my Russian citizenship. In 2015, I was detained at a checkpoint as I was leaving Avdiivka—at the time, the military had a directive to stop anyone with a Russian passport. They called in an anti-terrorist unit, who took me away to discuss my views, which, as a teacher, I even found interesting. In the end, the officers said, “Don’t bother the military anymore,” and let me go. I then drove past that checkpoint without any problems.
Slovyansk was deserted in 2014: everyone who could fled from war-torn Ukrainian cities. People feared both shelling and repression. A friend of mine’s husband was a deacon; the Girkinites took him away, tortured him, and executed him. In 2015, residents returned, but of the 110,000 residents, only about half are here now.
I moved to Sloviansk in 2020, bought a small house with the help of a local Christian community, and received permanent residence in Ukraine. Before the full-scale war, life was quiet: maybe once a week, at most, there would be a bang. Until drones appeared—even eight kilometers from the line of contact, the shelling was barely audible, and you felt as safe as if you were in the rear. But since 2022, the front has felt and actually been much closer.
Now, when there’s a boom, no one takes shelter—it’s pointless. The alarm goes off five times a day, and the arrivals may not coincide with them, because it’s impossible to track and warn about every one. Yesterday we were sitting under the drones, and today I read that a local resident was killed. It’s incredibly scary when you live in all this, but you get used to it over time.
A couple of months ago, there was an explosion here, 500 or 800 meters from me, completely destroying my house. I was on my way to the market, and the people around me seemed oblivious to what had happened: they were calmly walking the streets, working, buying groceries. It makes a big difference whether it hits a city regularly or sporadically.
Right now, Kostiantynivka is being systematically destroyed: there’s no power, no water, no gas, and drones and missiles are destroying house after house. When even utilities and repair services can’t function, it’s systematic destruction. In Slovyansk, everything is being quickly restored after the strikes, and people have resigned themselves to the fact that anyone could be hit, that it’s a kind of Russian roulette. I’ve decided to stay until the last moment, but if things get really bad, I’ll leave for Kramatorsk.
In Slavyansk, people have come to terms with the fact that anyone can be attacked, that it’s a kind of Russian roulette.
Since the start of the full-scale war, prices have doubled or quadrupled, depending on the product. Food variety has diminished, but there will never be famine here, because Ukraine is a breadbasket. If a major war breaks out across the country, people will live on meager porridge, but they will still survive.
Even after the outbreak of full-scale war, no one here cared about my citizenship or nationality. No one looks at my passport; they look at my convictions. Everyone knows that Ukrainians criticize Russians, but among themselves they criticize even more.
The war has created a highly charged political culture: every issue is perceived as a matter of life and death. Even within religious communities—Hare Krishnas, Christians—there are debates about whether to adopt a pacifist or radically patriotic stance, whether to support the front or distance themselves and pursue spiritual matters, whether to actively speak out or maintain neutrality. But everyone is united in their pro-Ukrainian position, while no one is pro-Russian. And the pacifist position, traditional for Hare Krishnas, is also pro-Ukrainian: everyone wants Ukraine to win and criticizes Russian Hare Krishnas for their different, pro-Russian “pacifism.”
Everyone is united in their pro-Ukrainian position, but no one has a pro-Russian one.
Naturally, the main blame here falls on the Russians: they’re bombing us. But sometimes they also project blame onto the local authorities: why didn’t they take care of this, why aren’t there enough shelters, is there corruption here, and so on. Russia is perceived as the aggressor, and everyone understands that the Russians want to kill them. Therefore, any peace agreements are impossible, just as life under occupation will be impossible.
Even with anti-war Russians, Ukrainians are currently struggling to communicate. I myself participate in some discussions, but just like any other Ukrainian, in both Ukrainian and Russian, without any problems. And I hear that no one here believes in dialogue or cooperation with Russians.
In 2022, Ukrainians naively imagined they could explain what was happening to Russians—and they would understand and support them. But it soon became clear: no one could be persuaded. And it was as if, as if it were dead, it was dead—even I couldn’t communicate with like-minded people in Russia.
Someone declares, “I support Ukraine, Ukrainians are our allies, we’ll now work together to dissuade other Russians from going to the front, let’s look for common ground…” And the Ukrainians will respond, “That’s your problem. We’re living here under bombs, defending the country, and you want us to take part in some kind of activity. The internal struggle against Putin is your responsibility, and we’re fighting for our survival here.”
It also depends on the person: if someone speaks on behalf of Russians and takes responsibility for everything Russia does, or if they speak on their own behalf, they’ll be talked to. But when someone speaks on behalf of some hypothetical “Russians who are against Putin,” that’s a no-no.
Transferring our lands through any kind of agreement is completely unrealistic, even unimaginable. I myself will not live under occupation, and no one would want to. This isn’t the Middle Ages, where people are being handed over like serfs from one state to another.
Firstly, there’s a common misconception in Ukraine and Russia that the east is entirely pro-Russian and the west pro-Ukrainian, but this isn’t true. Indeed, many in the Luhansk and Donetsk regions formally voted for pro-Russian parties. But there’s no real Russian identity here: it’s either Ukrainian or post-Soviet.
People here considered themselves locals because their perception of Ukraine hadn’t yet formed—it’s forming now. Those who voted for the Party of Regions, for example, didn’t want to join Russia and didn’t consider themselves Russians: they wanted compromise, a peaceful life, open borders, like in their Soviet past.
And in Donbas, more than half of them were like that. Pro-Russian politicians capitalized on their dreams and passed it off as pro-Russian sentiment. It’s important to keep in mind that Ukraine lacks the centralized propaganda that exists in Russia, so there’s complete anarchy in terms of information, making politics difficult to understand. Every blogger, every party, every leader is their own propagandist. People are accustomed to voting for local politicians without considering their “pro-Russian” leanings. And, in general, Russian propaganda is heavily nostalgic for the Soviet Union. Apparently, this sometimes influences some young people: they didn’t live under the Soviet Union, but they long to go there because it’s portrayed as a paradise. But they, too, don’t want to be part of modern Russia.
Some people are politically illiterate. In Avdiivka, they once delivered food to an elderly pensioner whose balcony had been hit by a Grad rocket. Her apartment had been burned down, and inside were icons, including a portrait of Yanukovych. The grandmother said that under him, life was peaceful, livable. Another man was hiding from conscription, hid, certain that when the Russians arrived, he would be given an apartment in Donetsk and a job. In another house, an elderly man said that “it’s unknown and unclear who was shooting at us.”
Such people don’t unite and cannot act as a political entity demanding independence. More and more people in Slovyansk identify themselves as Ukrainians, especially the young—and they speak Ukrainian perfectly, unlike the older generation. Even the elderly already realize that they live in Ukraine and that this is not only their local territory, but also Ukrainian territory.
In 2015, half of the residents said, “We don’t care who’s in power; we’ll live under any government.” But now, no one here wants to give up any territory under any circumstances. If you asked, “Would you agree to join Russia so that these regions could be handed over to Russia?” the overwhelming majority would say, “No way.” Even in exchange for peace.
When the referendum took place in Donbas, a lot of people actually came out to vote. It was a psychological reaction. People felt completely helpless: they could see what was happening, they had no control over it, they feared for the future. And the referendum created the illusion that by voting, they could influence something. It was a compensatory mechanism at work.
I believe that in the future, the use of artificial intelligence by both sides will impact the course of military operations. The front will freeze, and we will lose our rear: the entire territory of both Russia and Ukraine will become a war zone. Because of drones, there will be no peace anywhere, unfortunately. But without the drone revolution, the situation here would have been much worse, because it was a war of attrition, leading to Ukraine’s defeat. Now the odds have evened out, technology is developing symmetrically: what we see in Slovyansk and Kyiv will happen throughout Russia. No one in either Ukraine or Russia will feel safe.”
Konstantinovka
Since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, Kostyantynivka has been subject to regular shelling due to its strategic importance: Ukrainian and Russian media call it “the key to the Druzhkovka-Slovyansk-Kramatorsk agglomeration.” The Institute for the Study of War calls the area around Kostyantynivka part of the Donetsk Oblast’s “belt of fortresses,” making it a strategically important area for maintaining defense.
In 2023, one of the deadliest missile attacks by the Russian army occurred here: on September 6, a missile struck the central market, killing 17 residents and wounding 36. Both shopping arcades and nearby residential buildings were destroyed. Almost a year later, an airstrike again killed numerous civilians: on August 9, 2024, a missile struck a shopping center, killing 14 people and wounding 44. By the spring of 2025, city authorities reported that 25-30% of residential buildings had been destroyed, and no more than 9,000 of the city’s 67,000 residents remained.
In the summer and early fall of 2025, the intensity of shelling increased: the National Police of Ukraine reports that the city is subject to 10 to 25 airstrikes daily, along with artillery shelling and drone attacks, damaging dozens of residential buildings. The shelling results in mass casualties: on September 3, 2025, artillery strikes and drone strikes killed nine people and wounded seven in Kostyantynivka. According to authorities, communications and electricity are frequently out. According to Serhiy Gorbunov, head of the Kostyantynivka Military Administration, as of October 14, 2025, 5,469 residents remain in the city.
The evacuation continues with the help of the Konstantinovskaya MVA, the State Emergency Service’s Phoenix evacuation team, the White Angels special forces unit, the National Police, and the charitable organizations Angels of Salvation and Proliska. More than a dozen residents are evacuated in a single trip: for example, on September 25, 2025, Proliska volunteers visited 19 addresses and rescued 11 people.
Tatyana, a nurse: “So it turns out that so many people died in vain?”
“When the full-scale war began, it was still livable in Konstantinovka. There were frequent strikes, explosions, but it was still bearable. Everything was working, lots of people, lots of children. But in July 2024, the city became like a ghost town—empty, hung with nets. The international highway to Donetsk ran right along our avenue, and everything there was riddled with holes, burnt-out cars. Empty and eerie.
I moved to Dnipro with my younger children in September 2024. My eldest son stayed with his daughter-in-law and her mother until the very end. His biological father lived nearby; he was single and had no plans to leave, so my son helped him. My son and his daughter-in-law had three German Shepherds, a Pekingese, and a bunch of cats—they fed everyone when everyone left.
Their house was hit by KABs in September . The windows were blown out. My son said he didn’t even hear the bomb fly, but felt “something hot sliding down his back.” Shrapnel hit him in the sacrum and abdomen. His daughter-in-law managed to hide in the basement. No ambulance was called; his daughter-in-law bandaged him herself, put him in their Zhiguli, and drove to Druzhkovka, 28 kilometers away.
Two weeks before he was injured, my son said life there had become unbearable. He and his daughter-in-law left with all the animals they could gather. Six hours in a Zhiguli with two cats and four dogs—it was truly an ordeal. Then they met a volunteer, asked him to drive, and he drove them to Dnipro.
My son is currently bedridden, able to move around for a maximum of two hours a day. His spine is partially fractured. He spent seven days in the hospital and was discharged with a purulent wound. He needs to be taken to a private clinic, which costs 3,900 hryvnias ( approximately $80 – The Insider) per day, plus bandages. No one is being cooperative: it’s business, everyone needs to make money.
The city is being destroyed. You know, when it happened in Bakhmut, we saw it on the news and somehow imagined it. And now we’ve experienced it all firsthand; this is a second Bakhmut. Before, I still had hope that I would return to my city, to my job, to my apartment. And then they destroyed the hospital where I worked, and in September 2025, my house. It had four entrances, and the second and third entrances were completely torn apart. People sent me photos of it burning, and then I saw a video on TikTok of it being reduced to rubble. Thank God, no one was there—they moved out.
I knew this would happen, but it’s hard to understand that at fifty, you’re left homeless with two young children, and if I can’t work, what will happen to them? You live from day to day. There’s not a single high-rise building left standing. Now my neighbors and I are trying to file a petition in a Viber group to resolve the housing issue. There’s no help. How difficult everything is when no one needs you. My daughter-in-law went to register the destroyed property, her parents’ house, and they told her, “It’s already occupied territory.” And it’s not even there yet! If it were, we could forget about compensation altogether.
The city is being wiped off the face of the earth. We’ve experienced it firsthand; it’s a second Bakhmut.
Many people remain in Kostiantynivka. Those who didn’t even want to leave stayed not because they were waiting for the Russians, but because they had nowhere else to go—their home, their dogs, their farm. They were mostly elderly, without savings, and alone. Who was waiting for them? When my now-husband evacuated from Kostiantynivka back in 2023, he was simply brought to Dnipro, dropped off at the bus station, and that was it.
Then he found volunteers, and they rented two houses: one for people recovering from addiction, and the other for elderly people: grandparents, and the disabled. When I wanted to leave, the local authorities asked, “Do you need help?” And the kind of help the authorities give is picking you up from Kostiantynivka by bus, then transferring you to a train and taking you to Western Ukraine, where they provide temporary housing for a few months until you find a job.
There’s no water or electricity in Kostiantynivka right now. My son has a house in the village, but it’s in an urban area, and there’s been no water there since the full-scale disaster. They stocked up on drinking water, and the fire department brought in emergency water, and that’s how everyone lived. I’m scared of what will happen when the cold weather sets in. I’m an operating room nurse and a surgical nurse; I worked at the hospital in Kostiantynivka when people with frostbite were being brought in from Bakhmut. Finger amputation is the most minimal treatment; feet and legs were often amputated.
Living conditions in the city are such that you might be alive today and not wake up tomorrow. Drones fly around, watching: wherever there’s movement, they fly. They deliberately kill. When I remember how people live there, my heart stops. But everyone helps each other, sticks together: there are still men who are afraid to leave, and their wives who are by their side.
Here in Dnipro, the shelling has also become more frequent. The attacks were like those in Kostiantynivka: first, they hit facilities, factories, and then homes. When I got a job at the hospital here, they told me, “Oh, at the beginning of the war, the Luhansk and Donetsk regions should have been simply wiped off the face of the earth.” And this is Dnipro, which has been Russian-speaking all my life, and I didn’t even speak Russian, but that’s their opinion. Although this isn’t just true for Dnipro.
A woman went to Lviv, and they asked her, “Where are you from? From Dnipro? Well, then they’ll sell you a house.” She asked, “Who won’t they sell it to?” The answer was, “To those from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.” They think the war started because of us. But Donetsk is a mining region. Hard-working, strong people. Why do they hate us so much in our own country?
When I heard that Putin wanted to take back our regions and then supposedly bring about a peace agreement, I had questions: how would the mothers and brothers-in-arms of those boys who died react? So, did they die in vain? So many people died in vain? Then they should have given up the territory right away; they wouldn’t have had to sacrifice so many lives, right?
At first, those were the thoughts, but then, when Kostiantynivka started getting bombed, even residents who were very much pro-Ukrainian said, “Let’s just be under someone else’s flag. It doesn’t matter what flag, as long as this is all over.” It’s better than living under constant attack and anxiety.
In Dnipro, they were rather positive about the possibility of ending the war this way, because they don’t want the war to continue. This isn’t their territory. It’s someone else’s territory, you understand? It doesn’t concern them. So, they just want everything to be good here.
I don’t know how I would live under occupation if the territories were captured. How can you live with people you hate and because of whom all this happened? I really want to go home, but where would I go? To devastation? To live where every house is destroyed? For now, everything is very unclear.
We’re all tired. And when it’s all over, we can start thinking about what to do next. But right now, there’s no money to buy a house, and there’s no point in doing so. At this rate, the war will continue here in Dnipro. Why buy a house if it’s only going to be destroyed and we’ll have to leave again? So we’re living in a holding pattern, one day at a time. I really want it all to end at least next year. And even if they take back the territories where, say, an agreement was reached, so be it, as long as it’s all over. How long can people, civilians, and children die, and how long can houses collapse?
Last September, my ex-mother-in-law was denied entry into Donetsk due to a phone check. My neighbors traveled through Poland, Belarus, and Moscow in August—they were also denied entry. People with passports and residence permits can’t return to territory that is now part of the Russian Federation. The selection process takes place at Sheremetyevo Airport, where they check your phone: if you like a post for Ukraine or leave a comment, you’re an enemy. They confiscated their passports, put them on a flight to Belarus, where they returned them and said, “That’s it, you’re free to go,” without even asking if they had money to get home. And so Russia pretends to be saving the residents of Donbas, but in reality, it’s not letting them go home. It’s illogical, but that’s how it is.
Did they want to liberate the Donetsk region? Then they would have purposefully entered the Donetsk region from the start. But they’re dispersing. Kostiantynivka is about the size of Bakhmut, and they’ve been trying to take it for two years, and how long it will be before they occupy it is unknown. Maybe they don’t need the territory so much as the war: factories are opening, producing equipment, money, and for some, it’s just business. The worst thing is that the human factor is the last thing on their minds.
Maybe they don’t need the territory as much as the war: factories are opening, they’re making equipment, money, for some it’s just business
I recently saw a TikTok video where a girl, apparently from Russia, said, “Do you think Russia is coming to liberate Donbas? You’re wrong. No one was planning to liberate anyone.”
Alexey, a pensioner: “Even if there is a peace agreement, it’s impossible to forgive this.”
“Until April 2025, the city was not quiet, but the electricity, gas, internet, and water were working. Utility workers were also in the city, so people stayed, and stores were open. There were some arrivals, but not as frequent, of course, as now, when there are crazy KAB flights.
And still, almost every day—boom-boom-boom: you just run to the window, looking where the smoke was coming from. From my second floor, I had a good view of the city. And then, every night, there were three or five strong strikes. Kabat bombs or, I don’t know, rockets—something serious was landing. And they didn’t let them through, not a single night, and they bombed during the day. And the electricians worked: where something was broken, they fixed it, and that’s why the residents stayed.
The shelling intensified in April, and from August to September the city was under heavy fire, devastated. Shops were still open in June; I remember the Detsky Mir store in the center. By September, it was already battered, everything was gone. Maybe somewhere on the outskirts of the city, closer to the rear, some private owner still runs a small shop, but neither the markets nor the stalls have been open since August.
My friends left in October and said it was impossible to stay. Of the ten houses, only three or four were intact. The entire street was damaged. There was no water in the summer, in June and July. There was no power, no gas, no internet, and the utility workers had all left. Drones are flying around and hitting not only cars, but also cyclists and pedestrians. The situation is dire.
My family had left earlier, and I was simply moving my belongings out of the house until I came under fire on April 4th. All that was left was to remove the boiler, pack it, and take it out, and remove the radiators. So, one evening, I left the house—and bam! There was a flash in the air, then shrapnel. The fence was riddled with holes, and the windows and doors were blown out of the house.
A 24-year-old neighbor who was next to me was killed. It’s such a shame. I was hit by shrapnel, my legs were broken. They took me to a hospital, which, by the way, no longer exists. All that remains of the hospital now are ruins. But back then, in April, it was still standing. They gave me first aid.
As I was later told, they kept watch over me all night because I’d lost so much blood, they were afraid I’d die. And the next morning, I was evacuated, hospitalized in Dnipro, and ended up in intensive care, where I underwent seven surgeries. Then an eighth, and soon a ninth. To this day, I still use a four-wheeled walker.
I see videos posted on social media. A car is driving by, filming the city—utter horror, nothing but destroyed houses. The firefighters have left, so the houses are just burning. And then I came across my house, it was also burned down. I was about to go to the police, to file a report—in the video, my house is completely destroyed, only two walls are sticking out. I had a nice house, two stories. I never imagined that at fifty years old I would become some kind of displaced person without a home.
I was afraid the city would be captured, so my family and I had no intention of staying. I absolutely did not want to be occupied. When they say Putin is ready to sign a peace agreement if they give him all of Donbas, I take it as a lie. If he’s doing this, how can anyone believe it? Most people think like me. But a minority, the so-called “waiters,” were there at the beginning of the war, believing that Russia would come and we’d finally start living well, but that was just idle chatter—they shouted and argued. And then, when the train station, the registry office, and the schools were bombed, they kept their opinions to themselves. They didn’t expect the city to suffer so much. They thought the Russian army would move in and everything would be calm.
And I told them, “Guys, if they come in, you’ll get hit in the head with a rifle butt, they’ll give you a rusty machine gun, and send you off to clear mines.” Because the Russian soldier has already proven himself: we saw him in Bucha, in Irpen. We know what these people are capable of. Such moments of cruelty continue.
The idea of giving up territory for the sake of peace is a double-edged sword. On the one hand, you understand that these are our territories, this is our home, but on the other, so many children continue to die. If we could know for sure that the war would end, that Putin wouldn’t lie again, then perhaps we could draw a demarcation line and end the war.
Almost all of Donbas has been ceded to Russia. Three cities remain: Kostiantynivka, Kramatorsk, and Slovyansk. The rest of the Donetsk region is already under Russian control. Now Kostiantynivka is in ruins. I’m all for keeping people alive. If the city were intact, then, of course, it would be a different story. But as it is… What difference does it make whether it’s with or without the city if no one lives there?
I’ve already stopped following political news. I used to have hope: Trump said he’d stop the war. But I see that it’s very difficult to influence Russia; America is incapable of doing so. And the war continues. Perhaps there’s some grand geopolitical game at play, but again, we don’t know, it’s all speculation. The fact remains: all these meetings and negotiations have come to nothing. The war continues. I don’t even know how it will end. I don’t want to imagine a terrible outcome, the use of nuclear weapons. I hope it doesn’t end that way, otherwise it will be tragic for everyone.
The fact remains: all these meetings and negotiations ended in nothing. The war continues.
But there is hope for Ukraine’s victory. Hope dies last. At the beginning of the war, Ukrainians rallied, stood in lines at the military recruitment offices, but there weren’t enough weapons back then. But we did win something, drove [the Russian army] out of Kherson, Kharkiv, and the Kyiv region. That’s when we needed to help, strongly, firmly, everyone should have pulled together, the whole world, the Europeans, who still buy oil and aluminum and pay Russia in various ways. The hypocrisy has come to light. It’s very sad to see all this. Sanctions are being handed out teaspoonfully, Russia is adapting. And Ukraine, with these weapons, is being kept on a short leash, handed over little by little. It feels like the war is meant to go on and on. If everyone completely cuts off all relations with Russia, then it will be of some use, then the result could be victory.
I wouldn’t live under occupation, and everyone has a negative attitude toward Russians. I understand that people are brainwashed: propaganda has proven to be the most terrible weapon. They’ve been brainwashed to such an extent that it turns out that killing children and taking other people’s property is okay, and that priests bless it… The way they cross themselves, how their hands don’t just fall off.
Even if there’s a peace agreement, it’s impossible to forgive. Little by little, it will fade, wither: the wound will heal, but the scar will remain forever. The more time passes, the less the wound will bother you. But the scar will remain. Ukraine and Ukrainians will remember this for generations.”
