‘Millions of broken lives
During a week in Ukraine, Weekend Herald reporter Nicholas Jones spoke to some of the millions of people forced from their homes because of indiscriminate Russian attacks. Here are two stories of heartbreak and strength.
In darkness and without power, heating or running water Oleksii Kvitkovskyi and his family huddled amid the boom of explosions. It was March, a few weeks after Russia launched a full-scale invasion of its neighbour, and Severodonetsk in the east of Ukraine was under nearconstant bombardment.
That included civilian apartment blocks like the one where Oleksii, 47, lived with his wife, Tetiana, 39, and two boys, Matvii, 7, and Makar, 3.
“There were no sirens indicating incoming attacks, because the attacks were literally all the time — sirens would ring constantly,” he says.
“I lived on the eighth floor, and could see cluster bombs exploding everywhere. The explosion waves broke our windows. The temperature was around 8 or 9 degrees, so the kids slept in their beanies, coats and gloves. There was an electricity blackout, and no candles left in any shops.”
Ukrainian armoured vehicles and tanks patrolled outside. Nearby housing blocks were smashed. The sound of people crying filled the spaces between explosions.
On March 8, Oleksii hurried to a nearby supermarket. At the checkout, a missile strike flung him to the floor. He lay there for 40 minutes until the attack ended.
When he stumbled outside, glass covered the ground and bodies were scattered among the debris — many killed, others badly injured.
Back home he prepared to escape but the family car was damaged by shrapnel and undriveable.
Eventually, his eldest son from a previous relationship, who was living in another part of the country, secured the family exorbitantly priced tickets for a small evacuation bus. Every spare space was filled. They could take only two bags between them — packing clothes and some favourite toys for the kids — “they cannot survive without toys”. Oleksii was reluctant to board. “We had everything in Severodonetsk — it was a small but cosy city, we had schools, kindergarten, friends, everything was comfortable for us.
“Inside, I was very resistant — I just didn’t want to leave. But my older son, Valentine, said, ‘Look, Dad, you can always come back, but if you won’t come now, it might be too late.’
The cramped, cold bus trip covered 1600km and ended in Lviv, a city near the Polish border that has been relatively untouched by Russian attacks.
A few days after they fled, a neighbour sent back word from Severodonetsk: their apartment had been destroyed by a direct missile strike.
“We had been hiding behind the concrete wall in the corridor, which was hit by the rocket — we would have been in the epicentre of the explosion,” Oleksii says.
“All the things we couldn’t take with us were burned.”
RUSSIAN FORCES fully captured Severodonetsk in June. Lviv, at the other end of the country, saw its population swell by an estimated 200,000 new residents at one point, as Ukrainians in the east and the south fled the fighting. It is where I meet Oleksii and his family, in a city centre that still bustles with people shopping, working and dining in trendy cafes and rooftop bars.
We talk over dinner at a restaurant named after a local family who established the world’s first vodka brand in 1782, and known for its homemade liqueurs. White-shirted waiters attend to a nearby couple celebrating with champagne.
However, the apparent normality is undercut by daily air raid sirens, military checkpoints on major roads and a night-time curfew. Anti-tank obstacles and sandbags surround Unesco World Heritage-listed buildings that date back centuries.
The freezing conditions of winter are rapidly approaching and accommodation is difficult and expensive to find, with thousands of people in unsuitable and crowded conditions, often without working utilities, including heating.
Oleksii found lodging with a friend of his eldest son, but the threat of missile strikes even in Lviv meant his wife and youngest boys travelled on to Lithuania.
A wartime decree has banned most men aged 18 to 60 from leaving Ukraine, in anticipation that they may be called to fight.
Oleksii wants to stay anyway, to continue his work helping some of the most vulnerable members of Ukrainian society.
He founded the Volna Donbas Resource Centre of the All-Ukrainian Association of People with Drug Addiction, a non-governmental organisation working with people who inject drugs. They provide opioid substitution therapy, which replaces illicit drug use with medically prescribed, orally administered opiates such as methadone — cutting the risk of HIV, hepatitis and overdose.
Food, water and other support are also given.
An estimated 350,000 people inject drugs in Ukraine, with more than one-in-five of them living with
HIV and more than half living with hepatitis C.
The majority live in southeast Ukraine, and Oleksii — a former drug user who quit with the help of substitutes — says a large number have died and will die as a result of the war.
After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, opioid substitution therapy stopped overnight, and scores of patients died in the following months and years, mostly from suicide or overdose.
Even in Ukrainian-held territories, the conflict has interrupted supplies of medicines, and there are thousands of drug users caught near the frontline, without the support or means to leave.
That unfolding crisis is why he decided to move to Zaporizhzhia, a city on the Dnieper River in southeastern Ukraine. There, Oleksii has continued to drop off medicine and aid. This can be dangerous — before leaving Severodonetsk he was detained by Russian forces while on a drop-off, and his vehicle was pierced by shrapnel from a missile attack.
Zaporizhzhia has become a hub for people fleeing the fighting. Each day two or three columns of evacuees arrive, and there isn’t nearly enough housing.
This week Oleksii visited a group living in the surrounding forest, in an unfinished house with no windows or doors, and cardboard on the ground. He paid for one of the men, who had no money or documents, to be hospitalised for a life-threatening infection.
THE FRONTLINE runs through the wider region. Russia seized a nuclear power plant in the nearby city of Enerhodar at the start of the invasion.
The UN has warned fighting around the station — Europe’s largest — could lead to a nuclear disaster.
An engineer at the plant told ABC News this week that shelling was getting closer and closer to spent fuel storage, risking “another Chernobyl”.
Oleksii wanted his wife and sons to stay abroad, but Tetiana wouldn’t have the family split up any longer.
The move to Zaporizhzhia has been yet more upheaval.
Oleksii and Tetiana used to live in Luhansk, a city near the Russian border which fell under the control of Moscow-backed separatists after the outbreak of conflict in 2014.
At that time he spoke mostly Russian, like many others in the region, and had a relative who became a prominent leader in the separatist movement.
Around 30 per cent of the wider population were pro-Russian and supported the separatists, he estimates, and the same proportion were pro-Ukrainian, including himself. The rest, “just cared about security and having something in their stomachs”.
During 2013, separatists became brazen enough to set up checkpoints on key roads.
Many people refused to stop, but the separatists soon secured Kalashnikov rifles and fired on such cars. Oleksii knew a family killed in such an incident.
“That was the beginning of everything. For me, it was a period of unreality,” he says.
Not long afterwards, he and Tetiana had friends over to celebrate her birthday, when they heard what sounded like fireworks. Separatists had destroyed the electricity network, plunging the neighbourhood into darkness.
People perceived as a threat or pro-Ukrainian were being snatched off the street. One of his activist friends was rescued after a month and a half of captivity and ill-treatment.
“He was resilient and strong … but after his rescue , he said, ‘No, I give up, I’m going to leave this area — and you should do the same.”’
Oleksii and Tetiana, who was then seven months pregnant, fled to a town near the Sea of Azov, hoping the situation would soon improve.
However, separatists seized swathes of territory and in April 2014 declared “people’s republics”, including in and around Luhansk. Soon afterwards Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula.
In July that year, a Malaysia Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur was hit by a Russianmade missile over eastern Ukraine, killing 298 people, including one New Zealand citizen and one New Zealand resident. An international team of investigators later concluded the missile was brought in from Russian territory and fired from an area controlled by Russian-backed separatists.
About 14,000 people were killed in the Russia-Ukraine conflict from 2014 until January this year, the UN says, more than 3000 of whom were civilians. That toll has massively increased since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February, days after it officially recognised the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic. Moscow claims the war is a “special military operation” to “deNazify” Ukraine.
“Everything began in 2013. They started with Kalashnikovs. Now it’s Iskanders [missiles] and bombs,” Oleksii says. “I saw it from the beginning. It’s getting madder and madder.”
Ukraine will prevail, “100 per cent”, he insists — but needs the help of New Zealand and the international community, including to rebuild the war-shattered economy.
“People in Ukraine did incredible things even during peaceful times, but now with the war, they are doing impossible things.
“The invasion is like a kind of illness or a cancer … but we will stop this at our border.”