After our visit to Kupiansk, we drove a few hours south-east to Kramatorsk, which was to be our first stop in the Donbas, the eastern Ukrainian mining-and-factory belt that was the heart of eastern Ukraine’s pro-Moscow rebellion back in 2014.
Since the full-scale war began in February 2022 the area has seen some of the worst fighting in the country, and Kramatorsk, an unlovely sprawling monument to late Soviet architecture, is statistically one of the most dangerous cities in Ukraine.
But, even though the air raid siren accompanied us throughout our visit, for some reason that is difficult to describe exactly we loved this decrepit city with its shabby buildings, soulless squares and unglamorous but warm-hearted people.
When I visited the Ria Pizza restaurant in Kramatorsk last year it was a bustling and welcoming place. There was catchy music on the sound system, plenty of chatting and laughter, and the waiters and waitress were upbeat and friendly.
In a city known for its smokestacks and crumbling concrete that is only a half hour from a very active part of the frontline the restaurant offered welcome respite and attracted soldiers, aid workers and journalists alike.
The food was good too. The Russian Salad I ordered (they call it olivier in the former Soviet Union after the Belgian who invented the dish in 1860 while working for an upmarket restaurant in Moscow) was excellent.
A few months later, on 27th June last year, a local man walked through the door of the pizzeria and began filming surreptitiously with his phone.
There were around 80 people in the restaurant at the time. One of them was a well-known poet and novelist called Victoria Amelina. Another was a former US Marine.
The man took two short videos from inside the restaurant. Then he forwarded them to his Russian handler using the social media platform Telegram.
A short time later two Russian Iskander ballistic missiles slammed into the building. When the smoke cleared 13 of the 80 people inside, including Amelina and many of the staff, were dead. Dozens more were wounded.
Last week the man who had taken the videos and sent them to the Russians, Volodymyr Synelnyk, was sentenced to life in prison.
Synelnyk had lived in Kramatorsk all his life and worked at the state-run gas transmission company and the Novokramatorsk machine-building plant.
Investigators concluded that he had met his handler, "Arthur", while serving with the Soviet Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
A day after Synelnyk was sentenced I returned to the pizzeria. The roof had been blown in and the ceilings had collapsed. The floor was covered in rubble.
I wouldn’t have even been sure I was in the same place were it not for the flowers, candles, and framed photographs of the dead gathered to form a makeshift memorial.
Outside I spoke to Tatiana, 72, a local resident, who was born in the Donbas and spent her working life on a collective farm.
“These poor young people were just coming for a bite after work,” she said. “And now they are all dead.”
I asked Tatiana how she felt about the war. Like many in the Donbas her opinion was nuanced. (She was also one of the few people I met on our trip who was happy to speak to me in Russian.)
“In the Donbas we are Ukrainians and we are Russians,” she said. “We are a mix. Putin says we are to blame, and Ukraine says Putin is to blame.”
Despite its awful drabness there is something about the Donbas that really draws you in. Perhaps it is the lack of pretention, or the absence of chest-thumping rhetoric. Or possibly the almost bossy friendliness of the locals.
It reminds me, in some ways, of the Rhondda Valley in South Wales where my mother grew up.
Both regions were built on coal-mining, and both are proudly blue collar. And in both, perhaps coincidentally, the vernacular is the language of another country (in Kramatorsk - Russian, in the Rhondda - English.)
The two regions are connected in other ways too. Donetsk, which is the capital of the Donbas and now controlled by Moscow, used to be called Yuzovka after its founder, a Welsh engineer called John James Hughes, until Stalin changed the name.
I first visited the Donbas in 2017. I was on a six-week trip following in the footsteps of John Steinbeck, the writer, who visited the Soviet Union in 1947 with photographer Robert Capa.
Then I visited again last year and spent a few days working with an old friend, Mark MacKinnon, who writes for Canada’s Globe and Mail.
One day Mark and I accompanied Ukrainian volunteers who were recovering bodies from the battlefield. We found two dead Russians. The volunteers bundled them into body bags. They wanted to swap them for Ukrainian dead from the other side of the line.
A quiet, young man called Denys Sosnenko was one of the body collectors. He was coincidentally the Ukrainian Muay Thai champion. I asked him how he felt about his job.
“Everybody has a role to play in this war,” he said. “This is mine.”
A few days after we left, after another day out collecting bodies, Denys’s crew returned to their van. Denys jumped in and backed the van off the road to turn it around. The van hit an anti-tank mine. Denys was killed instantly.
As we drove east towards Kramatorsk, we passed the muddy turn-off where I had spent the day with Denys and the others. The road was littered with smashed buildings and destroyed armour.
The first two hotels we tried to book – Hotel Kramatorsk and Hotel Gut - had been both been destroyed by Russian missiles. But we found a place with patterned curtains and shell-shaped armchairs.
That evening we walked through the city. Most of the shops and many of the workers flats were abandoned.
For dinner we chose a kitchy restaurant that was partially underground. (I’ll withhold the name – no point in putting more potential targets out on the internet.) We sat out on the terrace.
In the huge open square three teenage girls were practicing synchronised dance moves to the beat of a boom box. The next day we headed south closer to the frontline.
Please ‘like’ this if you liked it, and please offer comments, positive or negative. It helps me adjust my offerings to the interests of my readers, and especially those who have been so generous as to pay for a subscription. Paid subscribers can also see the extra content below and may ask questions and I will endeavour to answer them.
IMPRESSIONS, INSIGHTS, PHOTOS & VIDEO
Photos from the road: Tatiana, on the road to Kramatorsk, and the Ria Pizza restaurant last week.
Central Kramatorsk
Girls dancing in the main square
And our wonderful hotel in Kramatorsk
A few audio clips from the road to Kramatorsk.
And finally, relations with the car hire company deteriorated a little.
it’s actually unreal or very real to hear your voice driving thru the war zone….why war? it makes so little sense… where do so called leaders get the energy for this level or destruction of human life and destroying the land they want to own!
thinking of you all- be safe - maybe see you at the ranch early August. Pauline