For six months Prudyanka went through what you might call hell. It was only three kilometers from the front line and was the last settlement controlled by Ukraine north of the city of Kharkiv. In February the Russian army crossed the border and advanced as far as Chupivka, the next village on the road. Since then, most of Prudyanka – population 3,500 – has been destroyed or destroyed. Federenko returned to his damaged home on Wednesday to retrieve some belongings. Earlier this month, Ukraine’s armed forces launched a stunning counter-offensive in the northeastern region of Kharkiv. They recaptured Tsupikva, as well as dozens of other towns and cities. It was a humiliating moment for the Kremlin and a potential turning point in the war. The explosions, however, did not stop. They just moved a little further north. “You hear banging all the time. I don’t know what it is,” Federenko admitted, as a loud crash sounded nearby. The Kremlin’s guns are now firing from inside Russian territory. Every few minutes they drop shells into newly liberated areas, including the border town of Kozacha Lopan. Many fled. But some remained on both sides of this rural front line, living in squalid conditions without electricity, water or a telephone connection. Nikolai Vakula and his wife, Zinaida, stayed in Russian-held Tsupikva with 120 others, out of a pre-war population of 600. Twenty people lived in the nearby hamlet of Lobanivka and seven in tiny Tokarivka, Vakula said. From left, local residents and friends Zinaida Vakula, Nikolai Vakula, Claudia Reboval and Anatoli Federenka pose for a portrait at Federenka’s home on Prudyanka. Photo: Daniel Carde/The Guardian “It was a humbling time. The Russians broke into houses where the owners had gone and took everything,” he recalls. “I talked to them. There were young people from Chechnya and Buryatia in Siberia. And maybe South Ossetia. The worst were the soldiers from the Luhansk and Donetsk People’s Republics. They were pigs. You couldn’t answer them.” Vakula said a Donetsk separatist fighter called “The Count” punched him in the face, causing him to panic. “He called me an old pedagogue. I explained that I was 67 and had had two heart attacks. He said that every fourth Ukrainian was a Nazi. Putin has zombified an entire nation.” The pensioner added: “I have relatives in Russia. “They called me and said, ‘Wait. We are coming to set you free.” I cut off contact.” Zinaida said she had cooked over an open fire and relied on canned goods she had made before the invasion of Moscow. The Russians delivered humanitarian aid just twice. They tried to get the locals to wear a white armband, without much success. In larger areas such as Kozacha Lopan they distributed Russian passports, giving a one-time payment of 10,000 rubles to anyone who accepted. “When the Ukrainian flag was raised over our village I cried all day,” he said. Only two people in the village supported the Russians, he explained – Artyom and Viktor. Artyom told his neighbors that he was the new mayor. On Monday, Ukraine’s SBU intelligence service arrived in the village and picked up the couple on suspicion of collaboration. In Prudyanka some residents returned on Tuesday to check the condition of their properties. Vladimir Kazlov, a security guard at the village school, discovered that his house had burned to the ground. During the summer, a Grad rocket had landed next to his nut. He pointed to his ruined vegetable plot – hops, vines, tomato plants – and the outbuilding where he used to keep ducks and rabbits. They had disappeared. Vladimir Kazlov’s Virgin Mary survived the Russian missile attack that destroyed his home in Prudyanka. Photo: Daniel Carde/The Guardian “I didn’t think it would be this bad,” he admitted, poking through the shattered shell of his living room. His image – miraculously or not – was intact. Kazloff said he would like to rebuild, but he didn’t have the money. Since Easter, he and his wife had been renting temporary accommodation elsewhere in the Kharkiv region. Another shell hit the playground across the street, leaving a dent. The center of Prudyanka was a crazy tangled mess. A Russian bomb had landed on the village’s Soviet war memorial. He dropped a piece of a statue of a grieving mother, leaving a hole in her gray chest and severing several fingers. A piece of shrapnel had erased the initials of one of the soldiers who had fallen in battle. Only his last name remained: Onoprienko. It was a similar story in nearby Slatyane, once a thriving urban community of 7,000 people. Its railway station was on the route between Kharkiv and Belgorod. Power poles had fallen around him. On the wall of the platform waiting room someone had written: “Welcome to Ukraine, bitch.” Across from the tracks, the mall had been reduced to a tangle of broken metal. About 500 people had refused to leave, despite regular shelling. One of them, Alexander, was busy repairing his roof. Last month, just after breakfast, an incendiary device blew a hole outside his front gate. Notably, no one was injured. “We consider ourselves lucky,” he remarked. “We don’t have power or anything like that. But we are alive. It’s okay and not okay,” he said. More than half the houses on his street, Station Street, were dilapidated. Yuri Postol and his wife, Yulia, said some locals were reluctant to leave because they were afraid of looters. “The Russians were never really here. They were Ukrainians who were stealing,” he explained. He added: “We were hit by rockets and cluster munitions. A bomb fell on our house. My father missed death for two hours.” Yulia and Yuri Postol examine a fragment of a Russian missile embedded in the road as they walk to their home in Slatiane. Photo: Daniel Carde/The Guardian It was unclear whether Slaine could ever recover. An air raid had destroyed her school. Inside glass corridors hung on a bulletin board eight years of Ukrainian history books and photos of students. Water dripped from the ceiling next to a gym with basketball hoops. It was eerie. The only sign of life was a pigeon, resting on a thatched roof. Back in Prudyanka, Federenko said he could not forgive Putin for destroying Ukraine and disturbing its peace. His widowed relative, Claudia, agreed. She wiped her eyes. “I hate him. This is not war. This is terrorism,” he said. “Russia will not allow us to walk away and be free and independent. We just want to live the way we want to live.”
