Shades of grey

Outside Krasnohorivka. Photo: Kateryna Pryshchepa

In the spring and summer of 2024, Russian troops continued their creeping offensive in certain parts of the front line in Ukraine. Using significant manpower and ammunition, Russian troops are using the so-called tactic of “squeezing out” Ukrainian troops in the Donetsk region. As a result of the use of a huge amount of ammunition, the settlements that have been the target of direct attacks by the Russians are being destroyed very quickly. First, all public institutions are evacuated and no public transport is available anymore. After that, the power disappears and any mobile signal becomes unstable. And if the Russians manage to capture at least part of the territory of a settlement, a no man’s land – the territory between the Ukrainian and Russian-controlled parts of the town – begins to appear. On top of all the dangers of the war zone, civilians also face the dangers of forced disappearance by the Russian army.

We learnt about the living conditions faced by civilians in towns that have been targeted by Russian attacks by talking to witnesses from the town of Krasnohorivka in Donetsk Oblast. For several months in the spring and summer of 2024, we talked to representatives of the White Angels police unit, who evacuate civilians from settlements on the front line. We also talked with civilians evacuated from Krasnohorivka, and followed messages on the social network Telegram, where residents and their relatives exchange information and seek help.

According to Ukrainian police, as of April this year, when the Russians gained a foothold in one of Krasnohorivka’s districts, about five hundred residents remained in the town out of the several thousand who lived there before the full-scale Russian invasion in February 2022. As of the end of July this year, when most of the town was occupied by the Russians, there may have been around 200 people left in Krasnohorivka.

The “lost” Russians

Until the last moment, the Ukrainian police maintained contact with some residents of Krasnohorivka who remained in the town. During the battle for Krasnohorivka, the police actively disseminated information about contact numbers that could be called to request assistance in order to be evacuated from the town.

The locals called to request evacuation assistance for themselves and also report the deaths and injuries of their neighbours. In late April, police officers were informed about a bloody Russian-made bulletproof vest and a Russian first aid kit found in an area not yet occupied by Russian troops. This indicated that a wounded Russian soldier was hiding somewhere among the abandoned houses in the Krasnohorivka area and possibly had been helped by someone among the local residents.

Earlier in April 2024, during one of the evacuation trips to the town, police officers saw and detained a suspicious looking man who turned out to be a Russian soldier who had left his unit and was living in the house of a local resident in the territory still controlled by Ukrainian forces.

Over time, the information available to local residents about the situation there in Krasnohorivka became more limited. They simply did not risk going outside their yards and often spent most of their time in their vegetable cellars, escaping the massive shelling of the area.

Valentyna, who was evacuated from the town in late May, says that Ukrainian troops were stationed on her street and a mortar was stationed near her house for some time, which made her afraid of being shot at by Russians who would target the Ukrainian soldiers. A grey zone, an area not controlled by either the Ukrainian or Russian troops, has also emerged in the town. Halyna, who was evacuated from Krasnohorivka in mid-July, says that in the weeks before she left the town, she saw neither Ukrainian nor Russian soldiers, but she knows that her house was in the centre of the action. “Every evening we could hear someone walking past our house, through our yard, the sound of the steps on the rubble,” she says. “My son and I never dared to look out of the house and find out who these people were.” By that time most of the houses on Halyna’s street were either destroyed or damaged and she and her son did not have any direct neighbours.

Destroyed house in Krasnohorivka. Photo: Kateryna Pryshchepa

Hesitant to leave for too long

According to various accounts, some local residents had pro-Russian views and hoped for the arrival of the Russian army. Therefore, they stayed in the town despite the danger of dying from indiscriminate Russian shelling. Others, however, simply did not want to leave their homes or did not want to evacuate as they would have to leave their animals behind.

The longer the people waited though the more difficult their escape became. Until mid-May the police rescue team still managed to enter the town in their van, picking up the people stranded there from their homes wherever possible. This gave them a chance to take some of their belongings with them. Having been the target of Russian direct shelling and a kidnapping attempt, the police eventually had to change their tactics, setting up pick-up points that the Krasnohorivka residents wishing to escape the town would now have to reach on their own.

Valentyna, who evacuated Krasnohorivka in late May, had to walk with her companions to the evacuation point for about an hour and a half. On the way, the woman says, they came under artillery fire and were afraid that they would not reach the assembly point alive. Halyna, who left the town in July, had been walking to the assembly point for about four hours. She and her companions tried to find the safest route through the town. On the way, they saw the bodies of dead civilians from Krasnohorivka and Ukrainian soldiers, who could not be evacuated due to their proximity to Russian positions.

With the Russian advancements in Krasnohorivka, the evacuation assembly points had to be moved away from the outskirts of the town and into the fields outside it.

Olena, who was evacuated from Krasnohorivka at the end of July, had to walk 12 kilometres under shelling across the town and through the field to reach the point where the police evacuation team was able to meet them in their van. Olena says she did not believe that they would make it. It was not only the walking under the shelling that was difficult but also finding the evacuation point in the field. They had to walk through paths in the fields instead of on the asphalted road.

Disappearances of people

Those who stay behind are at grave risk of injury or death. Kranohorivka’s Telegram groups are now full of messages about residents of the town who have not been in touch with their relatives for some weeks. Among them are messages about several men who disappeared after being taken from their homes by the Russian military from the same street in Krasnohorivka which had been held by the Ukrainian army till the very last days in July.

According to the Ukrainian police, in Krasnohorivka, as in other occupied settlements of Ukraine, the Russians set up a filtration camp. It was there that the missing men could have been taken. Local residents who are recognized by the Russians as loyal are being taken from Krasnohorivka to Donetsk, while the fate of others is still unknown. The phone of one of these missing men had been silent for several weeks, after which his profile on messenger apps and the social network Telegram became active for several hours. When the relatives called the number of the brother and son, it was not him who answered the phone, but a stranger who spoke poor Russian and said that he was in Donetsk and had found the phone in a field. When the women tried to ask him more questions, the man suddenly said they could come to Krasnohorivka and pick up the phone themselves. The man later signed off from the social networks.

The disappearances in Krasnohorivka occurred even before it was completely captured by the Russians.

At least one of these disappearances in May this year was the result of a raid by a Russian military group. According to the police, Russians abducted the husband of a local activist who had previously coordinated the distribution of humanitarian aid on her street. The woman had already left by that time, but the man remained in the town. His disappearance is likely to be related to his wife’s activities.

Among the civilians who disappeared in the town was the twenty-year-old son of Iryna, who was evacuated from Krasnohorivka with her husband in June this year after they were both injured by artillery fire. At the time of the evacuation, Iryna and her husband had not known for several weeks about the fate of their son, who disappeared in late May this year. Iryna says that one day her son got on his bike to meet a friend who lived in a house on the border of the so-called no man’s land in Krasnohorivka, the area between the streets occupied by the Russians and those controlled by the Ukrainian army. He did not return that day and there was no more news from him. An acquaintance of Iryna’s son claimed that the boy had not reached him. A few days after he disappeared, Iryna saw a photo of a bicycle very similar to the one belonging to her son in one of the groups of Krasnohorivka residents on Telegram. The bike, according to the announcement in Telegram, was found abandoned somewhere in a green area on the outskirts of Krasnohorivka. Iryna’s search for information about her son brought no results.

Damaged houses in Krasnohorivka. Photo: Kateryna Pryshchepa

White Angels in the crosshairs

According to police officers from the White Angels squad, they too could have been targeted by a Russian sabotage group. Vasyl Pipa, one of the team’s members, recounts an incident that the police believe could have resulted in their kidnapping in the territory of the town. This incident, which occurred in early May this year, was one of the reasons why the team refused to travel to the town in late spring and began to negotiate with local residents about an evacuation point on the outskirts of the town. According to Pipa, the team was supposed to pick up civilians in the part of the town still controlled by the Ukrainian military. As the team was on its way from Kurakhove, where the unit is based, to Krasnohorivka, the unit leader received a call from a man who introduced himself as a resident of a house near where the team was going and asked to be evacuated as well. The man who called the White Angels was calling from the number of a local resident known to the police. He used the man’s first and last name but it was clearly not him. He spoke Ukrainian with a pronunciation uncharacteristic of Donbas and used words from western Ukrainian dialects.

On that day, the police cancelled the evacuation trip and also tightened their security protocol when working in the Krasnohorivka area. To this day, it is not known whether the man who called the White Angels number was a Russian agent or a Ukrainian prisoner of war who spoke on the phone under duress.

Killing of civilians

At least some of the disappearances can be attributed to the direct killings of civilians. In May this year, the White Angels evacuated a local resident of Krasnohorivka who was wounded by gunfire when he went outside his yard. As the injury occurred very close to the territory already occupied by the Russians, the police had to enlist the help of local residents who might have had contacts with the Russians but wanted to help their neighbour, who would not have survived without medical assistance.  At the request of the police, they moved the wounded man closer to the outskirts of the town, where Ukrainian police could still reach him, and thus managed to bring him to the hospital.

Serhii, who remained in the town until the end of May 2024, also fell victim to the deliberate Russian targeting of civilians with firearms. Although he had wanted to evacuate from Krasnohorivka earlier, Serhii was kept there by his parents, who were reluctant to leave their home.

Eventually, one day in May, Serhii’s parents decided to leave the town, and the man went in search of a wheelchair or a cart so he could take his mother, who could not walk well, to the civilian evacuation point. But Serhii failed to find a wheelchair that day. At some point, as he was walking down the street, he heard shots behind him and at least one bullet flew past him. He tried to dodge the next ones coming at him, but one of them hit him in the back. Fortunately, the bullet did not seriously injure his lungs. Serhii managed to hide from the gunfire by running into one of the yards. He said that he continued to move between the yards of private houses without going out into the open. In one of the abandoned houses, he found some sheets, which he used to make a bandage for himself. At some point, he reached a house on the outskirts of Krasnohorivka still occupied by two women. The women were able to call the police in Kurakhove, and Serhii was evacuated to the Kurakhove hospital. On the day I spoke to Serhii, he did not know anything about the fate of his parents. He was afraid that they would not have been able to survive for long without drinking water and with a dead power bank that he charged using small solar panels.

There have also been numerous cases of civilian deaths from shelling in the town. Natalia, who managed to leave the town at the end of July, says that she witnessed at least one case in which people have been killed by rubble after an artillery shell hit their house. On a Telegram group of Krasnohorivka residents, one can also see messages in response to requests from people looking for their relatives who have died from shelling and have been buried by their neighbours near their place of death.

Much of what is now known about the Russian offensive on Krasnohorivka repeats the information that shocked the world when it came to the Russian capture of Mariupol. The indiscriminate destruction of infrastructure, disregard for the safety of civilians, targeted shooting at civilians and even filtration camps. It is important to remember that despite the decrease in the number of reports on the situation faced by civilians on the front line, their fate remains the same as that of the residents of Mariupol.

Kateryna Pryshchepa is a Ukrainian journalist and a contributing editor with New Eastern Europe.

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civil protection, eastern Ukraine, Russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukraine at war, Ukrainian army