The residents of Velyka Pysarivka had almost finished renovating their municipal library.
They laid the floor with large white tiles, built a special section for hundreds of brightly-coloured children’s books which they brought in from the city, and even painted a large cartoon giraffe with oversized spectacles on one wall to make the place feel welcoming.
Although the Ukrainian village was close to the Russian border it had, until last month, escaped the worst of the war. And with no end to the conflict in sight the townsfolk decided they had to get on with their lives and look to the future.
Then, three weeks ago, huge Russian bombs began falling. One of them wrecked the new library. Another one destroyed the post office down the street. A third punched a hole the size of a small building into the middle of the village school.
By the time the attack finished, four days later, the town had been almost completely gutted, the streets were strewn with bricks and rubble, and the children had all gone – evacuated in convoys of buses.
We arrived in Velyka Pysarivka on the second day of our Ukrainian road trip.
On Easter Sunday we had set out from Kyiv and headed for Kharkiv, the country’s second city, a six-hour drive to the east. There we booked three days in a city centre hotel we would use as a base.
Velyka Pysarivka, with a prewar population of 4,000, was on the banks of the river Vorskla, two hours north-west of Kharkiv and only four miles from the Russian border.
We had heard that Moscow had used its new glide bombs against the town – a weapon that comes with different sized warheads and has great destructive power.
Basically – and military experts might want to weigh in here – a glide bomb is a large conventional airplane bomb fitted with fins that can glide many miles before hitting its target.
It was pivotal in the fall of the south-eastern city of Avdiivka to advancing Russian forces in February.
According to one Ukrainian soldier defending the city, a glide bomb turned even the most well-built bunker into a crater. The Russians were reportedly dropping up to 150 a day in the final days of their assault.
(The US-made patriot missile system is the only weapon the Ukrainians currently have that can effectively counter the glide bombs. And Kyiv has precious few of those. Because of that some analysts are now predicting that glide bombs could be a game-changer in the war.)
But it wasn’t just destruction we wanted to see. We also wanted to to weigh the human toll that these attacks were having on communities. To see how ordinary Ukrainians were living under the shadow of these new Russian weapons.
The road to Velyka Pysarivka began as a busy artery that flowed west from Kharkiv. After about an hour we veered north and came to a smaller road with a tiny army checkpoint.
Here the Ukrainians had begun building new trench systems, and bunkers reinforced with wood. Dragon’s teeth, triangular concrete blocks designed to stop tanks, had been stockpiled by the roadsides.
Occasionally we saw a tractor working the fields. Otherwise the road was almost deserted, and badly pot-holed.
We were soon paralleling the Russian border and about five miles from it, well inside the 15 kilometres that is the range of another weapon, the FPV or first-person-view drone, that is redefining the conflict in Ukraine.
Keep your windows open, your ears pricked, and, if you hear a drone, ditch the car and run like hell, a friend, who has spent much of the last two years covering the frontlines in Ukraine, told us.
With minefields on each side of the road – some marked out with small warning signs, others not – we decided we would have to run along the asphalt.
Eventually we came to another checkpoint, right on the edge of Velyka Pysarivka, and drove into the village itself.
We were met with a scene of devastation. The roofs of many of the small peasant houses had been blown off, metal sheeting that had been used for fencing was lying in the road, and bits of building material were flapping in the wind.
At first we thought the village had been deserted. There was not a person or a car in sight. But then, in the main square, we found a small shop with its windows boarded up.
Natasha, 47, was minding the wares: cigarettes, chocolate, toilet paper, biscuits and a selection of cured meat and cheese.
“Of course we are scared,” she said. “But where would we go? And what would we do?”
Natasha is one of three women – the others are Oksana and Vika - who still work at the store. (The owner, perhaps unsurprisingly, has retreated with the village’s children to a safer town 30 miles away).
For an hour we sat outside and chatted. There were in any case no customers to serve.
“I was born in the next village,” Oksana said. “I met my husband Zhenya at a dance just across the way. That was 16 years ago now.”
“It was all so different before the war,” she said. “When we were bored of our discotheque we used to go across to the one in the next Russian village. In the summer we would all gather together at the lake and eat kebabs and play the guitar and sing.”
I asked Oksana about the war. Why had it happened? Who had caused it? She was vague.
“I don’t really understand the politics,” she said, frowning. “I know one thing though. It wasn’t the children that caused it. And they are the one who are suffering.”
It was a warm and quiet day. We heard two explosions but they were in the distance.
Oksana said: “I remember my grandfather saying to me when I was small: I went to war so you wouldn’t have to know what war was like. He could never have imagined this.”
We spoke a mixture of Russian (a language I speak moderately well), Ukrainian (a language I don’t) and Surzhyk (a local dialect of which I speak almost nothing but can pick out a few Slavic-sounding words.)
It was time for Oksana and Natasha to close up shop for the day. Natasha readied her bicycle for the short ride home.
Oksana prepared to hitch-hike the hour long trip to the town where her children, a 14-year-girl and an 11-year-old boy, were now living.
“Why don’t you just leave here for good?” I asked.
“I stay because of her,” she said, nodding towards Natasha. “And she stays because of someone else. And that someone else stays because of yet another. That is how it goes.”
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IMPRESSIONS & INSIGHTS
I would by lying if I said I was completely relaxed as we passed the tiny Ukrainian army checkpoint and headed out on potholed roads into the empty wheat fields as the spring sun beat down yesterday.
There wasn’t another car in sight as we drove, signs of war were everywhere, and just beyond the edge of our vision on the right was Russia.
It wasn’t bullets or artillery that worried me but the increasingly ubiquitous FPV drones. Here is a little audio as I drove with Kim towards Velyka Pysarivka.
And here is a short video of our arrival in town.
And finally a video of a drive through town:
We are now back in Kharkiv, where I am writing this from. The plan is to stay here tonight and then head east tomorrow.
Hi Julius, Thanks for this illuminating piece. It is one thing reading about this stuff and quite another seeing it up close & personal through the eyes of someone you know and trust. Can you say something about the infrastructure? Obviously the roads are poor but you say there's intermittent internet? How do most people get around/communicate with each other? There must be some fuel, how do they cook? Where is the food coming from? What about the mental health of the people you observe? I can't imagine how they are able to keep going.
I've seen the VICE film, excellent as you said & horrifying too; so brave of the makers and those who participated in it but how do you get a film like that in front of the people who most need to see it? Likewise with your posts. Stay safe.
Dear Julius, Thank you for this reply, it is very helpful. Certainly the Russians ( young people ) I know don't want anything to do with this war.