A nurse cares for a local resident at a makeshift hospital in Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, on Jan. 22.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
Bohdan Gritsenko didn’t flinch as artillery thundered Sunday over his hometown, and the front line of an increasingly bloody war drew nearer. “This is a quiet day,” the 11-year-old explained, as the adults around him looked nervously at the sky. “Yesterday was worse.”
Bohdan was more focused on filling his arms with as much candy as he could carry from the lone truck of humanitarian aid to arrive that day in Chasiv Yar, the closest Ukrainian-held town to the beleaguered front-line city of Bakhmut. There’s not much else for a fifth grader to do in a place now just five kilometres from Russian positions to the south.
Bohdan Gritsenko and his mother, Rimma Morozowa, walk the central street of Chasiv Yar on Jan. 22.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
Most of Bohdan’s friends have left, so the only outdoor fun he gets are walks with his dog and the daily trip to Chasiv Yar’s main square to see what donations he’ll receive. “I’m usually lucky. I was just going to the shop the other day and some random volunteers on the street intercepted me and gave me a bag with toys and candy,” the boy said proudly, clutching Sunday’s armload of chocolate bars to his chest. “It happens almost every day.”
The Ukrainian military, as well as the local authorities in Chasiv Yar, have repeatedly asked local residents to evacuate. It’s an appeal they’ve repeated in recent weeks as the Russian military has begun to slowly push forward in the Donbas region, seizing the salt-mining town of Soledar earlier this month and slowly pushing into the outskirts of Bakhmut, a key railways hub that has been under assault since August.
Some analysts believe Chasiv Yar could be the next objective for Russian forces as they seek to encircle Bakhmut, where thousands of Ukrainian civilians remain. There are fears that Russia is preparing a large-scale offensive this spring, comparable in size to the one it launched at the start of this 11-month-old war, and that capturing all of Donbas – which Russian President Vladimir Putin claims to have annexed – will be a key aim.
Bohdan’s mother, Rimma Morozowa, is the deputy director of one of two schools still partially functioning in Chasiv Yar. Though all classes are now being held online – most students have left the city, and only nine of 30 teachers remain in town – Ms. Morozowa says her job keeps her, and Bohdan, in Chasiv Yar.
“I’m responsible for the salaries of the teachers. I’m responsible for the curriculum. I’m responsible for the school maintenance. So, I can’t leave,” she said on Sunday as she gave The Globe and Mail a walking tour of her city while the booms of artillery resounded several times a minute. “For as long as we have light, electricity, water, gas – unlike in Bakhmut – I believe it’s my mission to stay here.”
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An apartment building destroyed by Russian airstrikes, which resulted in the deaths of 48 civilians in July, 2022.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
The municipal school where Bohdan’s mother Rimma Morozowa is the deputy director. It is one of two schools still partially functioning in Chasiv Yar when The Globe and Mail visited on Jan. 22.
The roof of School Number 15, where Ms. Morozowa works, was struck and damaged during what she described as 11 minutes of continuous incoming fire on Thursday. But she said she’ll be back at her desk on Monday, and online classes would continue as normal. “Even the schools that have been completely destroyed continue to operate online. Teachers continue to teach.”
Just 130 metres away, part of the local arts school has been reduced to rubble by a September airstrike. “The Russians decided it was a military target,” Serhiy Chaus, the head of the local military administration, said bitterly, adding that Ukrainian troops had never been inside the building.
Mr. Chaus said the administration’s main challenge is finding a way to continue to deliver electricity, heat and water for the estimated 5,000 people – down from 12,000 before the war – who remain in Chasiv Yar. That number includes an unknown number of Ukrainians who have fled here from Bakhmut, which has been without basic services for months.
Mr. Chaus wishes all civilians would get out of Chasiv Yar.
Serhiy Chaus, the head of the local military administration, near the art school in Chasiv Yar, which was reduced to rubble by a Russian airstrike in September.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
“The front line is closer than it was a week ago. We’re very easy targets for artillery here,” he said, standing on the city’s main square, which is dominated by a monument to local residents who served in the Red Army during the 1980s Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, as well as an empty plinth where Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin once stood.
Mr. Chaus said the city has buses on standby to evacuate people on a moment’s notice should they finally decide it is time to go. “It’s the dumbest thing to stay here. People who have children still in the city, we’ve even sent the police to explain to them all the risks connected to staying here.”
Some of those who remain, he said, were likely nostalgic about the Soviet era and unbothered by the prospect of Chasiv Yar falling under Russian occupation. Others, he said, were unwilling to contemplate – or like Ms. Morozowa unable to afford – life anywhere else. “But as the Russians are moving closer, the stream of people leaving is rising.”
Said Ismagilov, a volunteer Ukrainian army medic who is responsible for evacuating wounded soldiers from Bakhmut and the surrounding area, said the region’s remaining residents were “a big problem” that hampered his ability to help the military. He said his team’s ambulances frequently had to abandon their missions to rescue civilians injured by Russian shelling.
Said Ismagilov, a volunteer Ukrainian army medic, serves as a frontline medevac driver in Kostyantynivka, Ukraine.Anton Skyba/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Ismagilov, who before the war was chief mufti of Ukraine’s Muslim community, said he frequently argues with those he’s called to rescue. “All the time I’m asking them: ‘Why didn’t you evacuate?’ and they say they didn’t know where to go or how they would live. And I tell them: ‘Well, now you’re bleeding, and I’m forced to evacuate you.’ ”
Soldiers involved in the battle for Bakhmut describe a ferocious fight with rising casualties. The conditions have been made worse by a harsh winter in Donbas.
“The Russians are just sending a railway car of artillery. We just dug into our positions and they started hitting us with every calibre you can imagine. We had only 20 mortar shells for the whole battalion. The story is that there’s no Ukrainian artillery there. We can’t suppress their fire,” said Roman, a 37-year-old soldier in Ukraine’s 61st Mechanized Brigade whose unit was rotated out of Bakhmut on the weekend after two months on the front line.
He said his unit had been taking five to seven casualties a day – and not always from enemy fire. “We were standing in the trenches in minus 20, without any way to warm up. People were losing their toes and fingers.”
The Globe and Mail is not using the soldier’s last name because he did not have permission to speak with the media.
“This is an infantry war now. They have a lot of infantry, a lot of people,” said Vsevolod Kozhemiako, a prominent businessman who funds and leads his own unit of 200 volunteer soldiers that was deployed to Bakhmut on Sunday. “The fighting is not for every street. It’s for every house, every building.”
Swaths of Bakhmut have been obliterated in the fighting, the soldiers said, while other parts of the city remain relatively intact, with civilian life somehow carrying on.
Bakhmut’s grim fate could soon be Chasiv Yar’s. But Bohdan only shrugs when asked what he thinks the war is about. The fifth grader says that when he grows up, he wants to be a soldier.