Five months later, anger and despair reign in the Donbas

Fatigue, desperation and anger are rife in eastern Ukraine after five months of what humanitarian volunteer Oleksiy Yukov has described as “a war gone mad without mercy.”

The vast industrial area of ​​Donbass — made up of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions — has been fighting since 2014, when Russian-backed separatists seized part of the area.

But the February 24 invasion of Moscow took the suffering to another level in a working-class neighborhood where there can be as much resentment against Ukrainian troops as against Russian ones.

Towns and villages along the frontline are hit by shells every day and lives are cut short.

At best, only houses are destroyed, one-story bungalows with manicured gardens and decaying vegetable patches.

Even further away from the front, in Kramatorsk, the main administrative center of the Donetsk region, there is a constant threat of strikes.

Regional Governor Pavlo Kyrylenko said over 600 civilians had been killed and more than 1,600 injured since the invasion began.

Russian forces, which have gradually captured almost the entire Lugansk region, are now trying to do the same in Donetsk.

And although the frontline hasn’t moved much in recent weeks, the ongoing war of attrition is wreaking havoc on local residents.

In the mining town of Toretsk, an exhausted soldier, covered in gray dust after a bombing that killed six people – most likely brothers in arms, though he refuses to say so – raises his fist in a victory sign but is in his eyes hopelessness .

In Sloviansk, 54-year-old Andriy shows a huge crater left by a grenade in his mother-in-law’s garden and suddenly bursts into tears.

A woman in Bakhmut on the front lines, her face tense with anger, points at journalists and calls them “harbingers of bad luck” in the ruins of her pharmacy, which was destroyed by a missile she believes to be Ukrainian.

In a region where Soviet nostalgia runs strong, there is sometimes fierce opposition to the government in Kyiv, accused of ignoring local needs for years.

Some locals look forward to the arrival of Russian troops, while others are staunchly opposed.

Everyone has enough.

Many residents say they feel despair, incomprehension and abandonment.

In Chasiv Yar, which was hit by a strike on July 10 that killed more than 45 people, a 64-year-old woman was collecting apricots in a scene of devastation in front of the destroyed building.

“There are still children down there. Her parents call her but no one answers,” exclaimed Lyudmila, a mother of six and grandmother of 12.

“Nobody needs us here. There is nothing more. The officers have left.

Local officials are often absent after strikes while the military remains silent.

“The mayor of one village will be the first to flee, the mayor of another will be the first to collaborate with the Russians,” said a local.

Authorities have called for evacuation many times. But many have nowhere to go.

“I used to love my life. I had my job in a factory nearby. I had a house. Nothing special, but we lived well,” Tatyana sighed.

The woman, in her 50s, was speaking from the city of Pokrovsk after a strike that damaged a dozen houses on a single street.

Many civilians are also more or less openly complaining that Ukrainian soldiers are setting up bases in residential areas – in abandoned schools or houses.

When asked by AFP, a representative of the Ukrainian army in Donbass refused to comment on the allegations.

The issue is very sensitive, as Moscow often claims that attacks on these areas are necessary because of a military presence.

“I shouldn’t be talking to you. I could have problems,” said a woman in Toretsk hours after a strike at an apartment building.

“But I want the military to go and fight somewhere else. There are children and normal people here,” she said.