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Ukraine evacuees leave war in the east for safety and uncertainty in the west
Refugees from Debaltsevo: Yuri Sherbakov, 59, center, in Svetlogorsk, Ukraine (Sergey Ponomarev/for The Washington Post)
By Karoun Demirijian February 6 at 5:00 AM
ARTEMIVSK, Ukraine — As the minibus crammed with elderly evacuees idled at the
gas station on the outskirts of town Tuesday, Olga Tarasenko, 65, broke down.
For several weeks, Tarasenko was holed up in the basement of her apartment building
30 miles southeast in the city of Debaltseve, hiding from near-constant shelling that
has turned the area into the latest bloody epicenter of fighting between Ukrainian
troops and pro-Russian rebels.
Ukrainian soldiers are nearly surrounded by separatist forces in Debaltseve, which
until recently was best known as a rail hub connecting several mining towns in the
industrial east — a valuable prize to the victor, if the infrastructure survives the battles.
But after two weeks without water, electricity, heat and dwindling hope, thousands of
residents of Debaltseve say their hometown is more akin to hell. Tens of thousands
more hiding out in other towns along the front line are also seeking to escape. But
wartime conditions and meager resources have prevented the rescuers — mainly
adventurous volunteers — from shuttling out more than a few dozen at a time.
“We thought it would end,” Tarasenko said, clenching her teeth through tears as she
recounted melting winter snow for water, and taking pills to numb the hunger pains.
“We are hostages of this situation. We’re not for anybody anymore. We’re just for
nobody shooting us anymore.”
On Friday, rebel leaders announced that there would be a temporary ceasefire for
several hours to allow for the evacuation of additional civilians from Debaltseve area.
It is not clear exactly how many residents will be evacuated during the ceasefire, which
is scheduled to end shortly after nightfall.
When the war came to Debaltseve in mid-January, chaos and disorder soon followed.
Escaping residents described dead bodies left in the streets: If the bullets don’t get you,
many warned, the packs of dogs prowling the smoldering city might.
Getting to safety by going to the main city administration building — itself the target of
shelling that officials believe is intentionally directed at civilians — or by climbing to
the upper floors of a building to get a cellphone signal is dangerous.
No one knows exactly when help will arrive, but when it comes, evacuees must move
quickly and lightly: Only one or two bags each because there are almost always more
people than spaces on the minibuses. Full-size busses would be sniper targets on the
one road back to Ukrainian-controlled territory.
.
‘Just go’
Alexander Petrov, 23, was sitting at a desk in the Temple of the Holy Spirit in
Kramatorsk, a church that has been turned into a shelter for fleeing women and
children that sees more than 70 new families a day, when his phone started ringing
Monday afternoon: People in a basement in Myronivka, a village near Debaltseve,
needed help to escape the shelling.
For the next few minutes, Petrov, the church pastor, and a few potential volunteers
conferred about whether they should go. Just the day before, one of their minibuses
had been hit on a run to Debaltseve, and they had to leave it behind.
“We have to go. Just go,” Petrov said, ending
the debate. “These people have been waiting
since seven in the morning to get out.”
The road to Debaltseve runs through wide-
open country, while the city sits above on
higher ground, increasing the risk of sniper
or rocket attacks against volunteer drivers inRaisa Drobitko, 73, with her husband Vadim, 76, refugees from Debaltsevo pose for photo in Svetlogorsk, UKraine. (Sergey Ponomarev/for The Washington Post)
unarmored cars. Though Ukrainian emergency services ministry and Donetsk regional
authorities have gotten involved, rescues are still largely volunteer operations.
Natalia Kirkach, 40, who founded Slavic Heart, a volunteer organization she has run
since June, started evacuating people from various towns and cities along the front two
weeks after she was displaced by fighting in Slovyansk this summer.
Kirkach specializes in door-to-door rescue operations — a high-risk approach because
it requires spending more time in cities under constant shelling. There are few places
Kirkach will not go to rescue people, but before every evacuation run, she still gets a
knot in the pit of her stomach.
“I wake up, and I look at my sleeping children,” she said, with a break in her normally
businesslike and confident tone . “I kiss them, and I hope I will come home.”
There is also an adrenaline rush that comes with this work, especially when it’s
successful. Since she started, Kirkach said her volunteers have evacuated more than
23,000 people.
On Monday, six hours after he scrambled together a quick rescue mission, a sweaty
Petrov strode into the Slovyansk train station on the crutches he’s used since surviving
cancer as a teenager, and collapsed, satisfied, on a bench in the waiting room.
“I saved 21 people today, eight of them children,” he said. “It was cool.”
Truly lost
Where the road ends for volunteers, a harder one begins for the new evacuees.
On Monday night, the Slovyansk train station was overrun with Debaltseve evacuees,
some claiming spaces on stationary sleeper cars that had been set up as temporary
shelter, others clamoring at the ticket office for spaces on the few trains to safer
destinations: Kharkiv, Kiev and even Lviv, about as far west as one can get without
leaving Ukraine.
Piotr Oponasenko, 68, was headed to Kharkiv to stay with a daughter. But the reunion
would be bittersweet, he said, as a few days before, his disabled wife and younger
daughter had gone to Russia. It was easier for her to escape in that direction in her
wheelchair, he explained, since he couldn’t carry her. He doesn’t know when he will
see them. “But it is better to be alive than to have my things,” Oponasenko said.
But without home, some are truly lost.
“Nobody needs us,” said Natalia Petrenko, 33, whose husband, a firefighter in
Debaltseve, stayed behind. “There is no accommodation, no work.”
“We don’t know where to go,” said Oksana Antonova, 38, who dodged shells in
Debaltseve to deliver humanitarian aid from basement to basement, until she decided
it was time to go. On Tuesday, Antonova piled her son, husband, and mother- and
father-in-law into one of Kirkach’s minibuses to Svyatogorsk, a mountainside summer
resort full of mostly unheated cottages that has been transformed into a camp nearly
overflowing with people displaced by the war.
When the evacuees talk about where they’re going, there is a mix of emotions: relief to
be away from the shelling, frustration and fear for loved ones left behind, and whom
they cannot reach by phone.
Their choices are also colored by politics. Going to Russia was an option. But these
evacuees are mostly not in favor of the rebels, and want to be a part of Ukraine. Most
prefer some sort of federalized status, to restore the region some of its former Soviet
glory as an industrial center.
Perhaps it was fate, then, that after winding through rows of cottages, the minibus
carrying the Antonovas stopped in front of a small building called the Slavia:
Ukrainian for Slavic land. Once inside, their faces brightened.
Two rooms, each about 10 feet by 10 feet with one queen-sized bed, would have to fit
five. Not all the lamps worked. But it was heated, and — most exciting , as Antonova
pointed out — there was a shower, promising untold comforts after two weeks of
hiding out in a basement.
“Compared to the way we were living,” Antonova said, “this is heaven.”
Natalie Gryvnyak contributed to this report.
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