Life Under Attack in Kramatorsk
Close to the frontline, the city in eastern Ukraine endures regular shelling on residential buildings and key infrastructure.
Also see
Battle Rages in Fortress Bakhmut
Russian troops are determined to gain control of the eastern city that has become a key political prize.
Life Under Attack in Kramatorsk
Close to the frontline, the city in eastern Ukraine endures regular shelling on residential buildings and key infrastructure.
After a year of war, the sound of air-raid sirens in Kramatorsk has become so routine, it blends into the city’s everyday noises.
Located in Ukraine’s industrial east, Kramatorsk was formerly the regional administrative centre. Its significance, however, has been steadily increasing since Russian proxies took over vast swathes of Donetsk and Luhansk, the regions that make up the Donbas, in 2014. It became the seat of the Donetsk region and its relevance has grown further with the full-scale invasion of 2022, as Russian forces push to take over the regions entirely.
Now, the frontline is merely 20 kilometres away, according to the Deepstate map, and the effects of this proximity are visible.
An estimated 80,000 of its 148,000 pre-war residents have left. Those who remain have had to endure regular shelling and widespread destruction to the city’s infrastructure.
One of the deadliest attacks of the war thus far came on the morning of April 8, 2022, when the city’s railway station was hit.
Thousands of civilians had crowded the station to board evacuation trains when a Tochka-U missile hit the station, killing 61 people and injuring more than 160. Military experts believe that the missile was armed with cluster munitions. It left an indelible mark on the city and its people.
Deadly explosions continue to hit residential areas almost every week, explained local resident Olha.
“It is scary to go to bed,” she said, adding, “I fled from here once to Dnipro, at the beginning [of the war] My daughter paid for my accommodation. But the money ran out, and I had to come back.” She does not know what to do next.
Most recently, in the early hours of March 14, a rocket hit the centre of Kramatorsk, killing one person and wounding nine others. The blast was so strong, it woke all the district's residents.
“People lived here, why did they [Russian forces] hit here?” wondered one man who lives in a house near the blast site and declined to give his name. He recalled how, woken by the explosion, he ran to one of the six apartment blocks damaged by the attack.
Despite the threat of a second strike, he joined the rescuers searching for people trapped under the rubble. Employees of the State Emergency Service climbed one-by-one up the ladder to the damaged apartments.
In one they found Larysa, who had been leaving her flat to go to work when the missile struck the hallway. Rescuers pulled her out, then found her husband Oleh, still in his underwear.
Reunited outside the ruins of their building, shaken but unharmed, Larysa and Oleh fell into each other's arms.
Not all were so fortunate. The body of a 60-year-old pensioner who lived in one of the houses lay next to his building, covered with a white blanket, as police officers documented the crime scene.
OFFENSIVE POTENTIAL
The map of hostilities in the Donetsk region constantly changes. While fierce fighting continues in the areas of Kreminna, Torske, Bilohorivka and Spirne, the combat’s epicentre remains the frontline city of Bakhmut.
Kramatorsk lies only 55 kilometres away from Bakhmut: should Russian forces manage to take control of the city or what remains of it, they could more easily access Sloviansk and then Kramatorsk.
In early 2023, Valerii Zaluzhnyi, commander-in-chief of Ukraine’s Armed Forces, said that the task of the Ukrainian army in the near future was “first of all, to hold this line and not lose any more ground. It is crucial, because I know that it is ten to 15 times harder to liberate it than not to surrender it. So our task now is to hold on”.
The rapid reaction brigade of Ukraine’s National Guard is currently operating in Bakhmut specifically to contain the Russian advance towards Kramatorsk.
“[Russians] now want to carry out major offensive operations to seize the maximum territory because their offensive potential is not eternal,” Maksym Taran, the brigade’s press officer, explained to IWPR. “They are undergoing a [new wave of] mobilisation. We may soon begin a counterattack. That is why they want to take more territory.”
The Russian army had been tasked with taking the whole of Donetsk region by the end of March 2023, but Ukrainian forces managed to hold the line - although at a high cost of human lives.
As spring approaches, the strengthening of missile and air defence, training reservists and acquiring more military equipment remain the main goals. Kramatorsk, given its significance as a large settlement, remains exposed and vulnerable.
