Editor TLN
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The town, one of the most important retaken in September by Ukraine, lives in the midst of the aftermath of the war, with no hint of normality and with a large part of its buildings still destroyed by the hostilities of the conflict.
At ten in the morning, the most disturbing noise in Izium is a rumbling coming from a neighborhood in this city in eastern Ukraine. But they are neither bombs nor air raid sirens. They are the deminers who are blowing up some antipersonnel mines on the outskirts of the city. The smell of gunpowder mixes with the melting snow and sticks to your shoes. But no one flinches. The sounds and smells of war here have long since ceased to seem like the abnormality.
As you progress through the city, destruction graces the landscape. Almost half a year has passed since the city was retaken by Ukrainian forces after months of Russian occupation. But there are factories, shops, schools and even part of the hospital that are still damaged and the houses are seen with the windows covered with wood; they are remnants of resistance, now abandoned. A large part of the bridges are also destroyed, so cars make their way through parallel routes that are reached after passing some checkpoints and in which you have to go very slowly and pray that some hanging debris does not suddenly collapse .
Maksim Strelnikov is a regional government official from Izium who returned to the city after the Russians withdrew. He says there are hundreds of buildings that need repairs and he doesn’t know how long it will take to fix them. “We lack construction materials. We also lack many tools, as they have been stolen or rendered useless during the fighting,” he complains, in front of a floating bridge placed there during the hostilities by the Ukrainian army and now abandoned and almost completely submerged in the waters of the Donets River.
“For the inhabitants this river was a cult. Everyone has spent a lot of time as children on this site. So it hurts to see him like this. At this time it is not visible due to the ice, but remains of mortars and projectiles have remained in its waters. Now it is contaminated,” Strelnikov says. “The truth is that if you don’t come here, you can’t imagine how destroyed our city is. We have an immense job ahead of us, which will last for years”, observes this 30-year-old civil servant who, at times, loses his gaze on the horizon.
War garbage, indeed, is everywhere. On the outskirts, a burnt-out tank lies helpless a short distance from some men fishing on a small frozen lake. It is also not uncommon to find land blackened by trees burned or split in two. “Fishing is a way of not thinking. So some avoid remembering what they have lived through,” says Oleg Borisovic, a fisherman and geologist who, during the Russian occupation, says he jumped into the Donets River to escape from an area where the Russians were.
The scars of war are omnipresent in a place that still hasn’t ruled out another invasion and where both sides still suspect its neighbors of collaborating with Russian forces. At the side of the road are still visible the earthen mounds under which some 400 murdered city dwellers lay — some with torture marks — and which were found in the forests after Ukraine retook the city. “They have already removed them all. At least the ones they managed to locate,” explains a resident.
Fear still creeps in many, who have not returned to their homes or have begun to rebuild them. Igor, a soldier in the Ukrainian army, has his wife and his children in Kharkiv, a city 200 kilometers north of Izium. “I think they are safer there,” he says when we meet him in another town in this important Ukrainian region bordering Russia and where 29 towns are still under Russian occupation.
The difficult humanitarian situation has also led to the proliferation of various UN agencies operating in the area, often moving around in well-equipped vans. Together with the presence of journalists, the result is that the locals are no longer surprised to hear the most unknown languages. Although the number of local volunteers who, for little or nothing, and with no training other than their own experience, risk their lives to help those who are worst off, is also impressive.
