War in Ukraine: “We are patriots”, Ukrainians cling to life at the front

Vittorio Lazzaro shares his war-side balcony with binoculars and a small orange snake, his only company in an apartment that appears to be on the edge of the world, Ukraine today.

Binoculars, quite a joke, are hardly necessary: the front is visible all the same, without them. The roar of Russian and Ukrainian bombing is still audible now, even though Lazar says he doesn’t notice. under your balcony there is a crater, one of a few. In the nearby street passes a Grad rocket launcher.

Lazar reckons the Russians are only 10 kilometers distant.

As the war enters its fifth month along the deadly faults of eastern and southern Ukraine, Lazar and his few neighbors in the sprawling and destroyed neighborhood of Saltivka, in Kharkiv, to represent a life without solution in which many are trapped. New communities are told to flee. Not everyone does.

As cities and towns around the capital Kiev started rebuilding after the Russian withdrawal months ago and world powers discuss long-term recovery, others in eastern Ukraine I still can’t sleep soundly.

They once housed Soviet-era apartment buildings in Saltivka half a million people one of the largest neighborhoods in Europe. Now maybe alone there are dozens left. Some of the buildings are blackened, while others are crumbling tile by tile.

“This is my house,” says Lazar, 37, who is shirtless in the summer heat, revealing a machine gun tattoo on his right arm. He claims he is ready to fight the Russians, but his only weapons are kitchen knives.

A broken guitar hangs on the wall of his apartment. Lazarus, what? is a musician, dreams of giving a provocative concert in the streets of Saltivka, full of echoes and cats. In better times she would play to the crowd in the squares of Kharkov, the second largest city in Ukraine, which shows signs of recovery from the war even though it is a short distance from the Russian border.

Saltivka, in comparison, she almost died. After one last subway station dedicated to heroes, all activity shuts down. The shops are closed and the apartment buildings have broken windows. In one of them, a piece of concrete the size of a table slowly twists onto a reinforcing beam, waiting to fall

Overgrown grass occupies abandoned playgrounds, dotted with fallen and ripe cherries. The soldiers’ trenches are bare. In some departments now torn apart, the clothes are still hanging by the thread.

Occasionally, a car creaks in the rubble. It may be that you bring in removals who are trying to save furniture or volunteers who are bringing help.

Outside Lazar’s building, people have set up a modest kitchen with a bell that rings when the day’s food arrives. Next to the kettle on a wood stove, ammo boxes now contain bread that is slowly becoming stale.

Some electricity is back, but no running water. Lazar is crouched in a basement where there is still water for bathing. Two middle-aged women emerge from the darkness, look cool, and walk away.

But life is not that adventurous for those with no options. Pavel Govoryhov, 84, sits in the doorway of a now fragile building like him. He has two sticks at hand. For four months she lived in the basement before moving into his apartment. He stiffens at sudden noises. Just talking about his difficulties makes him cry.

“My children don’t help mesays “What do I need a life like this for?”

Over time, you know winter will return to the buildings of apartments without heating, without mercy.

The Russians could do the same. More than 600 civilians died in the Kharkov region, north of Donetsk, since the invasion, some in Saltiva. Ukrainian authorities said the Russians used banned cluster bombs.

Communities around Kharkiv remain in shaky hands, apparently as part of Moscow’s strategy to keep Ukrainian troops so distracted that it cannot be shipped to places like Donetskwhere the Russians are devouring entire cities.

“This is not wished for anyone,” said Bogdan Netsov, 14, who lives with his family in an apartment with the curtains drawn.

In another building in Saltivka, a scribbled sign on the stairwell warns potential occupants “if you enter they’ll kill you …”.

This is the place to be Victor Shevchenko keep calling home, even if you need your cell phone light to see through the darkness in the daytime.

“I’m the one who speaks for the whole world,” he says, unshaven and invigorated by tea. “We will push Russia away. because we are patriots and we live in our land.

Dishes are broken in his destroyed kitchen. A religious symbol of his Orthodox faith is sung. The wall clock, like the one in the surrounding neighborhood, has stopped working.

Shevchenko takes the watch and winds it.

“It works,” he says, with a hint of pride. “Works”.

Unsteady legs, he returns to Saltivka’s silence, watch in hand.

By Cara Anna and Vasilisa Stepanenko Associated Press

ap