DRUZHKIVKA, Donetsk Oblast — A loud explosion goes off, adopted by a second. Folks start to run in several instructions. Regardless of the chaos, taxi driver Serhiy Pohrebnyakov sits calmly behind the wheel, ready for purchasers.
Pohrebnyakov’s spouse and daughter fled Druzhkivka after the beginning of the full-scale invasion, leaving him alone within the city. Amid near-daily Russian assaults, Pohrebnyakov goes out on his route day by day to make cash to assist his household, he says.
“I work to earn cash for my household, who at the moment are in Germany,” he says. “They don't ship me cash right here, I ship cash to them. I additionally take care of our residence right here as a result of who is aware of what’s going to occur subsequent.”
“When my daughter calls me and says, ‘Dad, I like you,’ it provides me the power to rise up within the morning and drive,” he tells the Kyiv Unbiased.
Druzhkivka is situated a mere 15 kilometers (9 miles) from one of many hottest spots on the entrance line, the embattled city of Chasiv Yar. As Russia advances within the east, it has come underneath elevated shelling and aerial assaults by Russian forces, the top of the Druzhkivka navy administration says.
This isn’t the primary time Druzhkivka has been threatened by a Russian invasion. It was occupied as soon as earlier than in 2014 when Russian-backed proxies took management of the city for almost 4 months earlier than being liberated by Ukraine.
As Russia pushes westward towards the city, an uptick in assaults is damaging houses, companies, and administrative buildings, a lot of which was rebuilt and developed over the previous decade.
Round 36,000 folks — half of Druzhkivka’s wartime inhabitants — have remained within the city. It has additionally change into the brand new residence of round 14,000 internally displaced folks, and a hub for troopers within the rear of the entrance traces.
Those that have stayed, working companies and organizations, protecting retailers open and neighborhood facilities alive, are very important to sustaining a semblance of regular life amid the devastation, in addition to offering items and companies for troopers within the space.
‘We're the place we're wanted’
Halyna Khomchenko watches kids run round on a colourful playground from the second flooring of a faculty in Druzhkivka.
She is an entrepreneur and neighborhood activist who determined to remain in Druzhkivka to proceed serving to the locals. “We’re the place we’re wanted,” she tells the Kyiv Unbiased.
Khomchenko opened the Youngster Improvement and Help Heart in 2023 after the outbreak of the full-scale struggle. The middle has round 50 college students from pre-school-aged kids to fourth graders.
Regardless of its proximity to the entrance line and frequent Russian shelling, the middle has all of the qualities of a traditional faculty life: textbooks are laid out on the desks, math and historical past classes are in progress, and youngsters play throughout recess.
The outbreak of the full-scale invasion in February 2022 pressured all colleges in Druzhkivka to change to on-line studying. Since then, Khomchenko’s heart has been the one place the place college students can examine in individual.
“We noticed that after what that they had skilled, kids not solely want data but additionally emotional help. The middle has change into a spot the place they really feel secure, be taught, and get well from their traumas,” says Khomchenko.
"We noticed that after what that they had skilled, kids not solely want data but additionally emotional help."
Earlier than the full-scale invasion, she ran a rehabilitation heart for households who had adopted kids within the neighboring village of Shchurove. Russian troops destroyed the rehab heart after they occupied the village in Could 2022.
“That wasn’t the one place of my power that was destroyed by the Russians,” says Khomchenko.
When Druzhkivka got here underneath heavy assaults in early 2022, Russia hit Khomchenko's household's bakery, Khoma Khlib — or Thomas Bread, in English. On the time, bread had already largely disappeared from the city’s cabinets as a result of shortages at the beginning of the invasion.
It took Khomchenko a number of weeks to reopen their bakery in a brand new location. “We labored across the clock so that individuals didn’t have to fret in regards to the lack of bread, in order that the panic would disappear,” Khomchenko recollects. Her bakery bought bread at a symbolic value of Hr 10 ($0.24) or distributed it freed from cost to those that couldn’t pay.
Meals is now available within the city, and cabinets are stocked with bread, together with Khomchenko’s, as Druzhkivka adjusts to its wartime actuality. Dependable entry to water is one other story, nevertheless, as Russian shelling often leaves the city’s residents with out water for a number of days, and even typically weeks.
‘We work for the navy’
Halina Radchenko says she’s used to the near-daily Russian assaults at this level. The small store the place she works stands out among the many gray and ruined buildings round it.
“At 5 a.m., all the pieces is on fireplace, shining, illuminated,” Radchenko says, laughing. Her small store, situated in Oleksiyevo-Druzhkivka, a village near Druzhkivka, is at all times busy.
“It’s largely our boys right here. We work for them. We see them off to their positions and meet them after they come again,” she says.
Radchenko calls her store a "misplaced and located." She retains misplaced telephones and even a single misplaced mitten. Beneath the counter, she has a small handmade toy cat that somebody left behind.
“It was the blokes coming from their positions. It was darkish, somebody misplaced it. I would like the proprietor to be discovered. I hope to God that he’s alive,” Radchenko says. She has been searching for the toy’s proprietor for a number of months now, however says nobody has heard something in regards to the soldier whom it belongs to, who goes by the decision signal “Docent.”
The store has change into a spot the place troopers store earlier than and after their missions. It sells sizzling canine, espresso, socks, razor blades, cigarettes, deodorants — all the pieces troopers would possibly want whereas on the entrance. “We already know who likes what. We don't even must ask them,” provides Radchenko.
Russia’s assaults are progressively destroying the world’s companies and facilities of neighborhood life. The historic Druzhkivka manufacturing facility that produced a number of the nation’s most beloved sweets, together with halva, was destroyed in a Russian assault in October 2024. The Altair Ice Area — Ukraine’s largest hockey and determine skating rink — was struck in a missile assault in January 2023.
And an orphanage and boarding faculty in Druzhkivka that served over 200 kids with disabilities earlier than the full-scale invasion was destroyed in March 2023.
Regardless of being so near the frontline, the native authorities are creating a plan to revive the city, even because the struggle continues. They’re assured that Druzhkivka could have peace, improvement, and a future as a part of Ukraine.
“We perceive that we’re heading in the right direction, in the best place, on the proper time,” Khomchenko says.
The Kyiv IndependentEmmanuelle Chaze