Bombs and bullets are taking their lethal toll, and maiming many others. Homes burn; families are torn apart; innocents suffer. One hundred days into the Ukraine war, the carnage continues but only the killing fields have changed
This extraordinary and astonishing conflict, reshaping modern history, shows no sign of ending.
The end of the beginning came with Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and its second city, Kharkiv, withstanding and repulsing prolonged Russian assaults; the port city of Mariupol passing under Moscow’s control after months of pounding; and the southern city of Kherson under occupation, but Ukraine launching counteroffensives in the area.
The beginning of the end is a long way off. The conflict, vicious and unforgiving, is now focused in the Donbas. It was here that my colleagues and I covered the separatist war in Donetsk and Luhansk which led to the dismemberment of Ukraine eight years ago. And now it is where the Kremlin hopes for a win which will allow Vladimir Putin to claim victory in the invasion he launched in late February.
The shattered towns around Kyiv such as Bucha, Irpin and Cherniev and Kharkiv city, plus the ruined villages around it such as Vilkhivka, Ruska Lozova and Staryi Saltiv, have been replaced as battlegrounds by eastern towns like Sievierodonetsk, Lysychansk and Lyman.
This week, the Russians bombed Slovyansk, where the 2014 insurrection which led to the forming of separatist “people’s republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk started. I watched as the separatists, well-armed and drilled, took over the police headquarters, the municipal building and the offices of the intelligence service, SBU, across a weekend. It was reminiscent, on a much smaller scale, of what we had witnessed a few months earlier, the takeover of Crimea by the Russian “little green men” who had suddenly appeared out of nowhere.
The Slovyansk operation was later to be led by Igor Girkin, with the nom de guerre of Strelkov, who had taken part in the Crimea coup and went on to become “defence minister” of the “Donetsk People’s Republic”. Girkin gained much international publicity and was indicted three years ago by prosecutors in Holland for murder, over the shooting down of the Malaysian Airlines Flight 17 in July 2014.
Slovyansk is of strategic as well as cultural significance. The city and the regional capital Kramatorsk next door are keys to Moscow seizing the east. Attacks are taking place there from the direction of Lyman, 15 miles from Slovyansk, which the Russians have largely taken.
At the same time, there is ferocious fighting in Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk. Capturing these towns would give the Russians control of the Luhansk region, which is half of the Donbas, and an avenue into the rest of the region.
The war in Donbas, a hard land of coal mines and steel plants, is vicious and personal. Many on the opposing sides come from the same communities, even the same family at times. Some used to serve together in the police and the military before in what are now the pro-Russian enclaves.
When Leonid Gubarov died fighting the separatists, posthumously receiving a “Hero of Ukraine” award, his father was fighting for the other side.
Anton Diachenko, a gunner in Lysychansk, spoke of the half-brother he grew up with now serving in the forces of the Donetsk “People’s Republic” who he hopes to see one day “once he has regained his sanity”.
Bogdan, a marine, told me of his attempts to reach his mother and 15-year-old sister who are trapped in a separatist area of Luhansk.
Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, has claimed that his country now holds the momentum in the conflict: “Our obvious objective, of course, is to push the Ukrainian army out of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions and we are going to achieve this objective.”
It may not end there. With occupation of the east, and a land corridor down the Azov Sea established thanks to Mariupol being taken, the Russians may try to push south towards Odesa. It is a port they are already blockading, stopping exports, and inflicting massive damage to the Ukrainian economy.
Local civilians gather to receive pure water distributed by the Russian emergency situations ministry in Mariupol
Ukrainian forces have been severely outgunned on all lines of combat in the east, suffering terrible losses. President Volodymyr Zelensky charges that Russia “wants to destroy the Donbas”. The campaign is taking an appalling toll on lives among Ukrainian civilians and the military, with up to 100 soldiers being killed every day. The number of injured is not known, but, according to the battlefield average, three times more fighters are wounded than die in combat.
On every Donbas front line, the message from the Ukrainian fighters is the same – they are facing ferocious Russian artillery assaults, they do not have enough long-range guns or rockets to respond, and they are being limited in the use of what they do have due to lack of ammunition. Promised advanced western weaponry simply was not coming through fast enough to make a difference.
Some of those who spoke knew only too well about the damage which can be caused by Russian firepower, having been injured in action.
Bogdan, the marine with his family in separatist Luhansk, has shrapnel injuries to his back. “The shelling is brutal, they focus on a target and they just keep pouring in round after round, that gets very hard to face, we are losing a lot, dead and injured Unless we get weapons to counter the Russians, get a fighting chance, then I think a lot of us have to face the possibility of getting killed.”
Russian unit deployed along a road and the aftermath of artillery bombardments with destroyed buildings, in Popasna, a town near the city of Sievierodonetsk
Military vehicles destroyed in the town of Rubizhne, in the Luhansk region
