“How is life under fire? Sh*tty”. Report from Kupiansk

Sunday, September 10, marked the first anniversary of the de-occupation of Kupiansk, a strategically important city in the Kharkiv region. Recently, in honor of this date, Vatutina Street and entrance were renamed.

In recent months, shelling has become more frequent in the Kupiansk sector. The chief of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Ministry of Defense of Ukraine, Kyrylo Budanov, assured that the Russians are not building up their forces here, but are rotating. However, recently, the head of the Kharkiv Regional Military Administration, Oleh Syniehubov, said that the occupiers were forming assault units and would try to capture Kupiansk for the second time.

On the eve of the first anniversary of the liberation of Kupiansk, hromadske visited the city and talked to its residents about life under fire and their unwillingness to leave their homes, despite everything.

— How do you live here? — we ask a man in dark glasses and a hat riding a bicycle in the center of Kupiansk.

There are no surviving buildings around, only burnt-out shops and roofless houses. The town has turned from a near-frontline town into a frontline town. Even the silence is depressing.

— We live... And what is it like to live here under fire? It's a shitty life!

There is a ruined historic building on Dukhovnyi Lane. This is the main building of the former Theological School, built in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Through a huge hole in the facade, you can see decorative stars left over from some kind of celebration. Not far away is the central square with a vandalized city council building with patriotic graffiti and yellow and blue flags. There is not a single person around, and black smoke is visible on the horizon.

The facade of the five-story building bears the inscription “Russian soldiers do not die” with the word “not” crossed out. Opposite is a monument to Shevchenko. In October last year, there was an MLRS missile shank sticking out of it, but it has now been removed. Further on, there are the ruins of another historic building, which the Russians have hit more than once, and the local history museum, of which only the facade remains. The occupiers hit it in April, killing two employees.

At the bus stop, there is graffiti by Kharkiv artist Hamlet Zinkovskyi: “Beware, life goes on”. His handwriting is on the plywood-boarded window from which they sell coffee. There are traces of debris on the building.

“[When the museum was hit,] it was covered in debris,” explains barista Sofiia.

Sofiia is from Izium. Before the outbreak of full-scale war, she managed to finish 10 grades. Now her school is in ruins. Sofia and her family spent the entire occupation in their hometown, in their house. They did not go down to the basement, because if “the house collapses, they will at least clear the rubble, but if you hide in the basement they will not know whether you are there or not”.

In April 2022, Sofiia and her mother were detained by the Russians and held for three days in a house people had left. The occupiers accused them of being “snipers”, and then “adjusters” and “gunners”.

“We were going to the village of Hlynske with my mother, where my grandparents lived. [We were detained because] every time we left the village, shelling started,” Sofia recalls. “Since I was a minor, we were given a room in the house. Under escort, we went to the toilet and to eat. Then the FSB officers came and started checking our documents, our briefcases, and our suitcases. I was reading a book in Ukrainian, a fairy tale, and they started to inspect it.

They took my mom away, but before that, they said it was us [the adjusters] because there had been no shelling for three days. They came to our house and turned everything upside down. They brought my mother and said we had half an hour to leave this village and not to return.”

Sofiia moved to Kupiansk shortly before its liberation, on September 3, 2022. There were no “green corridors” to get to the territory controlled by Ukraine at that time, and she did not want to go to Russia.

“We had just been told that there would be a liberation and that Kupiansk would be taken faster than Izium, so we came here,” explains the barista. “In fact, [in Izium] it's just like here, but here [at first] nothing was touched, because the city was simply surrendered [the prosecutor's office announced the suspicion of treason to the then mayor of Kupiansk, Hennadii Matsehora — hromadske], and there [in Izium, the Russians] still had to fight for it.”

On September 13, a shell landed near Sofiia's house at night. The explosion smashed the windows in the house, shattered the fence in the yard, and damaged the gas pipe.

“It was 11 p.m., everyone was already asleep, I thought I was dreaming, and I went back to sleep,” Sofiia recalls. “But no - something hisses outside. We went out, and our gas pipe was damaged. We wrapped it with tape. Hot fragments hit my [15-year-old] sister in the head and she had to shave her head.”

After that, the family stayed with neighbors for four days, then returned home. When the volunteers offered to evacuate to Dnipro, they packed their belongings in an hour and were in Dnipro around midnight.

“We were accommodated in a former gym, with 40 people living in one room,” says Sofiia. “They told us the schedule: get up at eight, eat, pray. We had to pray three times a day: on Friday we went to the children's service, and on Sunday we went to the adult service. It was like a sect, you were told the same thing every time: ‘You have to pray, you have to believe in God.’”

Sofiia and her relatives could not stand the pressure and returned to Kupiansk after three weeks. Then they tried to move to Kharkiv, but due to the high price of renting a house, they returned to Kupiansk after a week.

A minibus stops outside the coffee shop. Sofiia is taking boxes out of it. She has been volunteering with the HUB Vokzal Humanitarian Aid Center for almost a year now. She met the volunteers by chance.

On July 8, the center, together with a chain of Kharkiv coffee shops, opened a new location in Kupiansk, and Sofiia was invited to work as a barista.

“I was recommended as a reliable person, and two weeks later I left [for Kharkiv] to study to become a barista. After less than a week of training, a coffee shop opened here.”

Sofia works every day of the week. The cafe's opening hours are from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Sometimes they close earlier. On August 20, when the Russians hit the Nova Poshta building, 400 meters away, they were forced to close at noon. Then, 11 people were injured in the center of the city by artillery shelling and several fires broke out.

“Bam — an explosion. I went out [to the street], and there was a column of smoke, I was hysterical. Then my sister and I were walking home, and a car with open windows was speeding by — the guy's neck was covered in blood. I was completely overwhelmed, I came home, took a bunch of sedatives, and went to bed,” Sofiia recalls.

Before the Great War, in her native Izium, the Ukrainian language teacher “couldn't stand Russians”, but most residents were neutral toward them. However, in the villages closer to the border, “they glorified Russia”. Now, according to her observations, the residents of Kupiansk are pro-Ukrainian. Everyone who wanted to go to Russia has left.

“They immediately packed up their belongings and followed the Russians,” she says. “I don't see anyone who worked for the Russians now. There were many of them here. [If] someone says something to me concerning Russia, they only say bad things and swear a lot.”

In the background of our conversation, distant sounds like explosions can be heard now and then. Sofiia says she is used to them, and she sleeps “like a log”.

“I've been hearing such sounds for a year and a half now. You get used to it,” she smiles. “In Kharkiv, when I was training [as a barista], it was unusual to not hear explosions, hits, and shelling, it was boring.”

Now she lives in a house with six relatives, and her stepfather is serving near Kherson. In the future, Sofiia is going to go to Kyiv to study to become an investigator.

“I didn't want to stay [in Kharkiv], I was drawn to Kupiansk because it’s my home now,” she explains. “No, [I don't want to return to Izium], I don't have two houses, and I don't want to go there either. In the future, I see myself studying at the Academy of Internal Affairs in Kyiv and then working in the police. And if I don't succeed [in entering the academy], then I will become the military.”

Next to the coffee shop, a gray-haired elderly woman wearing glasses is rummaging through second-hand boxes. The volunteer is writing down information about visitors and their “acquisitions” in a table. A tattered Ukrainian flag flaps in the wind nearby.

“My eldest granddaughter made me a great-grandmother, she's four months old, I came to get a blanket, and also found pants and a jacket for my great-granddaughter,” she says, breaking into a smile. “The girls gave diapers for my great-granddaughter and for me. Every time [when there was a hit] I twitched, and because of this now I have incontinence, and so does my sister. But today I don't twitch, and I don't know why. I'm probably getting used to it.”

Hanna Mykolaivna was born in the village of Vilshana in the Kharkiv region, which is now located near the front line and is under occupation. She has lived in Kupiansk since 1961. She worked in trade, as a nurse, a janitor, and is now retired. She did not leave the city during the occupation.

“I avoided talking [to the Russians], I avoided contact. If I saw someone watching, I pretended that my shoe was untied,” she says. “But they abused the boys. For example, they approached those who were running a business, took whatever they wanted, and didn't pay them. I also had an acquaintance, a former policeman, who died in the hospital after being beaten by the Russians.”

Hanna Mykolayivna wears a pendant with national symbols around her neck and similar earrings in her ears. She ordered the patriotic accessories from a TV store. On the eve of the de-occupation of Kupiansk, Hanna Mykolayivna had two dreams about the liberation of the city. One of them also featured her late son, who went to work at a furniture factory in the Moscow region 5 and a half years ago and went missing on the eve of the great war.

“I'm so sensitive, I believe in dreams and natural beads, I treat myself with necklaces and amulets,” she yawns. “I was dreaming, I get up and say: ‘Son, remember how you said: ‘Mom, fill the shower with water’?’ And he said: ‘Only warm water, and don't pour cold water.’ And so I get on the shower, pour it out, and say: ‘Oh, my God! Tanks are coming with our flags!’ And they answer me in my dream: ‘Mom, get off, everyone sees what they want.’ I said: ‘No, look!’ And my son climbs up and waves: ‘Our guys are back!’.”

Intense shelling of Kupiansk began shortly after the de-occupation, Hanna Mykolaivna recalls, and a new escalation began about a month ago. However, she and her sister have no plans to leave the town.

“When the guys [from the Ukrainian army] came back to us, one of them said: ‘Mother, if you have a car and a place to go, leave, because if we fail to take Kupiansk, they will smash it to pieces.’ Another said: ‘Not all of it, they only want the left bank,’” she recalls. “There is no [forced evacuation] here, but those, who want, write applications and call, and they are evacuated. I'm not going to run away, everything here is native. What am I, a rat? We, Ukrainians, are not afraid of anything, and we will defend what is ours. [If] we are destined to die, we will die on our native land. And let the young people go.”

Hanna Mykolaivna lives alone in a detached house. She divorced her husband, and her two granddaughters and great-granddaughter live in Kharkiv. She has a pension of UAH 3,700. In December she received pensions for five months, and she says it is enough to live on.

“My girls are in Kharkiv. ‘If you need anything we'll send you medical supplies’, they said. I said: “No need, it's hard enough for you there without me, and I'll treat myself with stones,’” the pensioner says.

Hanna Mykolayivna is happy when positive news comes from the front and prays for the Ukrainian military every week in church. When the church collected humanitarian aid for the soldiers in the winter, she donated her son's cotton pants and knitted socks.

“I only ask the Lord for victory and for fewer of our guys to die,” she emphasizes. “They are young guys, they have parents, families, and children, but Putin does not think about that.

It seems to me that he's gone crazy. I wish him to regain his memory and to be forever scrolling through what he has done. And in general, I wish our Ukrainians to catch him. And the entire leadership.

We cry during the whole service [in the church]. Artists come from Zakarpattia, Lviv, and Kharkiv, singing songs for Ukraine, for Kupiansk, about the war. You can't listen to them without crying.”

We move to the left bank of the Oskol River, passing a pillar with faded “Z” signs. It is about 10 kilometers from the front line from here. Opposite the smashed gas station are the remains of armored vehicles with an inscription in support of the fake presidential candidate who has become a meme: “For Lebigovych”. Amidst the post-apocalyptic landscape, this irony looks surreal.

“These are *** [Russian — hromadske] tanks. They have been here from the very beginning,” explains Oleksandr Luzhar, our driver and a volunteer with Help People, an organization that is involved in evacuation and helping with humanitarian aid. There is no rush to leave Kupiansk, he says.

“There were a lot of applications when they announced the forced [evacuation] with children,” thevolunteer recalls. “Then many people left, mostly the left bank, because it was louder there. Sometimes people don't want to leave, then a shell hits somewhere, smashes half the house, and they pack up and leave. And on the right bank, there are applications, but not so many anymore.”

We return to the right bank, to the five-story Yubileinyi neighborhood. Here, near the shopping center, there are several kiosks. Behind one of them, a man puts bags of groceries into a blue VAZ2104. It is only about two o'clock, but he is already closing.

“Most of the traffic here is in the morning, [trade] is not very good,” admits Serhii Borysenko, “We traded [during the occupation], we didn't communicate with anyone [from Russia], we were paid in hryvnia.”

Borysenko was born in Kupiansk. He does not leave the city because of his business and retired parents.

“Both of them are in their late seventies, it's impossible to convince them [to leave], and it's impossible to leave them behind,” he explains. “Probably a quarter [of Kupiansk residents remained]. Mostly they go to Kharkiv, we also have children in Kharkiv. Sometimes we go there on a day off.”

Serhii recalls that Kupiansk used to be almost a resort town: there were many people on the beaches on the banks of the Oskol River, and concerts were held on the central square. Large enterprises operated here, including a dairy cannery and a meat processing plant, which are now damaged by shelling. In his opinion, it is difficult to find logic in the shelling.

“When our forces pushed them back [in September 2022] and drove them to the other side of Oskol, they started to fight back,” says Borysenko. “I think [they were shelling] to cause more damage to the city's infrastructure: ‘We couldn't hold it, so let's destroy it’. If you hear a whistle, you run to the cellar if you're at home. If you are here at work, where do you run to? We used to duck, but now we're more relaxed about it.”

In two and a half hours, at least two dozen dull “pops” are heard in Kupiansk. And although the locals say that these are our troops shelling enemies it is psychologically uncomfortable to be in the city.

Despite our conclusions, volunteer Oleksandr Luzhar, who has been here many times, summarizes: “It was quiet today.” Tomorrow he will return here again.