“It’s like the world’s gone mad.” Life in and around Severodonetsk

BBC News Russian has spoken to residents of Ukrainian town of Severodonetsk. Their stories give a vivid insight into how life has changed since the start of Russian invasion.

By Elizaveta Fokht

The bomb-destroyed House of Culture in Rubizhne, April 23, 2022 © AFP

It’s more than three months since Russian and Ukrainian forces began fighting in Severodonetsk, Rubizhne and Lysychansk. Large portions of these cities and their surrounding areas have been reduced to rubble. Amidst the violence, the Russian state maintains that people living in these areas continue to look forward to their “liberation”.

Having spoken to residents of Severodonetsk and the surrounding regions, the BBC has found that, while there are those who support the Russian state, they live alongside others who vehemently oppose the invasion and the concept of the “Russian World”. Their stories give a vivid insight into how life has changed since the war began.

(The names of all interviewees in this story have been changed for security reasons. They are known to the BBC. The story was published on 27 June 2022.)

Severodonetsk, Rubizhne and Lysychansk mark out an area which locals call the "triangle." This piece of territory is the only part of the Luhansk region that is not yet fully under the control of either the Russian army or the forces of the self-styled Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) and Luhansk People’s Republic (LPR).

Over the last few months, this area has seen fierce fighting. Back in the spring, pro-Russian forces managed to capture Rubizhne. By the end of June, Severodonetsk had also fallen.

This is not the first time the cities which make up the points of the “triangle” have been occupied by invaders. During the Second World War, this important industrial hub was seized by the German army. More recently, supporters of the separatist movement “Novorossiya” gained control of the territory for two months. Aleksei Mozgovoy, one of the more well-known separatist field commanders, even based himself in Lysychansk. It took an offensive conducted by the Ukrainian armed forces in the summer of 2014 to force pro-Russian forces to retreat from the “triangle”.

In 2014, Severodonetsk was made the administrative centre of the Luhansk region. Many former-residents of cities that had fallen into the hands of the self-styled LPR moved into the Lysychansk-Severodonetsk region. Before the Russian invasion, more than 350,000 people found themselves living in the “triangle”. These citizens are predominantly Russian-speaking.

Even after the 2014 occupation, many of those living in the “triangle” continued to exhibit pro-Russia sympathies. For example, in the 2019 parliamentary elections, many in Severodonetsk, Lysychansk and Rubizhne voted for the Opposition Platform For Life party (although candidates in these cities did not win individual mandates). The party’s de-facto leader at the time was Viktor Medvedchuk. Vladimir Putin is godfather to his daughter. Medvedchuk has since been charged with treason and Opposition Platform for Life party activity has been banned.

Russian state officials and Kremlin-friendly media claim that people living in the occupied territories of Donbas welcome the Russian military as liberators. In reality, residents of Severodonetsk and neighbouring cities have told the BBC that the number of people living in the area who support the concept of the "Russian World" has been dwindling over the past eight years. Many also claim that this number declined even further following the February invasion. There were, however, people living in the community who stated they were, in fact, looking forward to the arrival of the Russian army.

 “How can you look forward to the Russians arriving while you are hiding from their shells?!”

"Were there any pro-Russian sentiments in Severodonetsk before 2014? I heard them from certain groups. But most people here were not at all interested in politics. People were mostly Russian-speaking, but this did not make them Russians - they identified themselves with Ukraine,” 45 year-old Arif Bagirov told the BBC.

Arif was born in Severodonetsk and has lived in the area all his life. The city, standing on the left bank of the Siverskyi Donets river, owes its existence largely to a chemical plant which was opened nearby in the 1930s.  A village was built near the plant, which over the course a couple of decades grew into a city.  Before the war, more than 100,000 people called the city home.

Arif worked in the media for over 10 years. He tried to introduce "social innovations" in an attempt to energise Severodonetsk’s arts scene. He helped organize festivals in the city and has been working to preserve its cultural heritage.

According to Arif, the cities of the "triangle" are very different, despite their geographical proximity. For example, he thinks that Severodonetsk has historically been home to more members of the intelligentsia than the "factory towns" of Rubizhne and Lysychansk. These intellectuals settled in the city thanks to scientific institutes and the Azot chemical plant - as Arif puts it, “you need a lot of scientists to do chemistry."

The importance and size of the city’s science sector has meant that the fate of its chemical plant has largely echoed that of the Azovstal plant in Mariupol. Throughout June, heavy artillery bombardment meant that many were trapped on its grounds - not only the Ukrainian military, but civilians too.  Today, the plant is controlled by pro-Russian forces.

An injured woman at a humanitarian aid center in Severodonetsk, 23.05.2022. © Getty Images

Arif recalls that politicians from the Party of Regions, led by Viktor Yanukovych, trumpeted pro-Russian views the loudest.  In 2004, Yanukovych and his political allies staged the so-called "All-Ukrainian Congress of Deputies" in Severodonetsk in response to the political crisis that followed the presidential election (known as the "orange revolution").

It was at the Severodonetsk congress that Yanukovych's supporters first publicly discussed the ​​creating a South-Eastern autonomous area of the country which would operate independently from the rest of Ukraine. They threatened to take this step if Yanukovych’s opponent Viktor Yushchenko came to power.

While Yushchenko eventually became president, the proposed idea of ​​autonomy did not come to pass. The Ice Palace, where the congress was held, was virtually wiped off the face of the earth during the spring battles for the city.

Arif admits that until 2014, like the majority of Severodonetsk residents, he was not interested in politics. That changed following the outbreak of war and he "really got carried away."  That period made many "think about who they are and what they believe in" he recalls. Some turned towards Russia, but Arif went in the opposite direction and began leading a local underground art movement which repainted scrap metal and handed out tokens and drawings of symbols - all in Ukrainian national colours.

It was at this time that Arif had to flee Severodonetsk. The authorities had begun looking for him and wanted to stop his activities. Arif was only able to return to his hometown after Ukrainian forces had wrestled back control of the territory. He has now turned away from his previous career, describing himself as a fully-fledged “social activist”.

The result of shelling in residential Severodonetsk. 18.05.22. © AFP

According to Arif, there were very few people with pro-Russian views in the city after the Russian invasion in February.  This does not mean that there were none - Arif recalls how, after the start of the war, he spoke with an elderly, well-educated teacher "with cotton wool" in her head. As she hid in the basement amidst intense shelling, she explained that Russian forces were forced to intervene because of "NATO biolabs."

Arif admits that the question of why some people still hold these views “is probably a matter for a psychiatrist”. He would, however, ”like to understand how you can hide from Russian shells while at the same time waiting for Russia to arrive”.

Some residents of Severodonetsk were unhappy with the Ukrainian artillery that appeared in the courtyards of residential buildings. They feared that their apartments could be destroyed by return fire.  Arif’s view was that "of course, it was not very pleasant that the military would operate in the city because it increased the likelihood of shelling. But on the other hand, there was a war going on. What can you do?"

Arif wanted to ask those who were annoyed by the deployment of military equipment in residential areas: “Do you really want the city to be handed over just so you don’t have  any more “boozing” in your yard (many people in the Luhansk region use the word “booze” to describe explosions caused by shelling and artillery strikes)? No, this is not an option. It's not the military hiding behind us, it's us hiding behind them."

Residents of Severodonetsk on their way to Kramatorsk, 25.05.22. © Getty Images

As an activist, Arif went to the aid of Ukrainian authorities. He helped to evacuate museum and university collections and brought "cat food" to local residents.

During the fighting, the Ukrainian authorities frequently came into contact with "collaborators". Arif remembers three people being detained. He explains that Ukrainian authorities "said these people were  wha he called ‘target spotters’.  “They helped the Russian troops by starting fires and giving away information about the Ukrainian military positions in the city," he said.  Arif doesn't know for sure what happened to these “collaborators”.

According to Arif, by the end of April, Severodonetsk’s civilian infrastructure began being systematically destroyed.  Undertakers stopped working normally in the city and the graves of those who died during shelling began to appear in the courtyards of residential buildings, just as they had in Mariupol.

The exact number of victims among the civilian population of Severodonetsk and neighbouring cities is not known, but the numbers being discussed indicate hundreds of deaths.  In mid-June, the New York Times discovered a mass grave near Lysychansk containing the bodies of at least 300 people.

The New York Times claims that these are residents who have died in Rubizhne, Severodonetsk and Lysychansk since the beginning of April.  The grave itself looks like an ordinary trench - the military explained to the newspaper that all the equipment that is needed to bury the bodies in bags is thrown into digging trenches.

By mid-May, Severodonetsk was already badly destroyed.  "This young and beautiful city has become like a ghost," said the then-head of the Luhansk region, Sergei Haidai who was himself born in the city.

It was at this point that Arif realized that he had to leave.  An avid cyclist, on May 21 he got on his bike and rode along the road to Bakhmut. The road has been nicknamed the “road of life” due to its important role in supplying Ukrainian forces during the months of fighting. The road is 70 kilometres long and in normal times an experienced cyclist can complete the route in a few hours.

Damage to the road surface caused by several months of shelling, as well as the intense battles which continue to rage across his route, meant Arif had to frequently divert off-road. It therefore took him almost a full day to complete his journey.  Several times he even came under airstrikes whilst en-route.

“When I heard explosions, or a plane overheard, I immediately jumped into a ditch,” Arif recalls. When asked if he was afraid, he responds “How can I explain this to you? Before my journey, I had been in Severodonetsk for three months, so I wasn’t so scared anymore. It’s scary when you sit at home and don’t know if a rocket will fly to your apartment now or later”.

To get to Bakhmut, Arif crossed the bridge leading from Severodonetsk to Lysychansk.  Apparently, he was one of the last who managed to do so. “It turns out I slipped in between bombardments. When I was driving, the bridge was still intact, despite some big holes. But in the evening I saw that it no longer crossed the entire river.”

View of Severodonetsk (in the background) from Lysychansk, 9.06.2022.  Lysychansk, located on the other side of the Siverskyi Donets river, stands atop a hill. © AFP

By mid-June, all three bridges leading west out of Severodonetsk had been destroyed. This created problems with supplying the Ukrainian troops who continued to defend the Severodonetsk industrial areas. According to Haidai, there were 15,000 civilians left in the city, but it was no longer possible to get them out.

On June 24, the head of the Luhansk region announced that Ukrainian troops would leave the city, 90% of which had already been destroyed. He stated Ukrainian forces and would withdraw to "new fortified areas”. He explained that “unfortunately, we will have to withdraw our guys. There is no longer any point in being in positions that have been broken for many months, just to say we are there.”

The next day, Alexander Stryuk, head of the Severodonetsk military administration, announced that the city was "completely occupied" by Russia.

Arif had this to say about the battles that were fought for Severodonetsk: "If you have to sacrifice Severodonetsk, but the enemy does not go further and the war stops - God bless him, and let him have the city. I have the right to say that, because I was born and raised there".

“I want them to surrender and leave the city”

70-year-old Tatyana Valeryevna realized that the war had begun when she heard “thumping” on the night of February 24th.  She and her husband were asleep in their apartment in their hometown of Rubizhne, a city home to more than 50,000 people before the war.  The couple’s first thought was that the Ukrainian army was shooting.

Tatyana says that she and her family always wanted to be closer to Russia. In her mind, the collapse of the USSR has always been a grievous mistake.

Tatyana was born and raised in Rubizhne, but lived in Moscow for many years, working in a flower shop.  She wasn’t in Rubizhne at the beginning of the war in 2014, when the city was occupied by pro-Russian separatists for several months.

Tatyana returned to the city where she was born in 2017 in order to take care of her ill and bedridden mother, who died a few weeks before the Russian invasion. She has no surviving children after the death of her only son.  After coming back to Rubizhne, she did not find work in the city’s chemical and paper industries.

Tatyana says that she has long been dissatisfied with "this idiotic clown" (as she calls President Zelensky) because of the dominance of the “nationalists" who support him. She admits that she hasn’t seen any “nationalists” in Rubizhne herself, but she has seen them via her television screen. She puts this down to the fact she "took care of my mother for five years (and) rarely went out into the street."

Tatyana’s views echo the rhetoric of Russian state channels and the military, which throughout all four months of the war have claimed that Ukraine is deliberately shelling civilian infrastructure, while Russia delivers only "precision" strikes on military targets.  In reality, an OSCE mission had documented (among other things) that Russian shells have hit civilian targets more than once.

As in Severodonetsk, Ukrainian artillery positions were established in the apartment block courtyards of southern Rubizhne, where Tatyana and her husband live. The couple and their neighbours were not happy about this. "To be honest, I would like them to just surrender the city and leave," Tatyana says.

The pensioner tells us that life since the outbreak of the war in February 2022 has been a nightmare for the people of Rubizhne. She claims that the Ukrainian military was constantly “working” around the city with heavy weapons.  She dismisses the BBC’s question about why the Armed Forces of Ukraine would want to shell the city, which they defended from Russian units, as "provocative".

Due to the intensity of shelling, the couple had to move to a safe basement in the Dzerzhinsky Palace of Culture.  It was freezing cold there, she says, and her 70-year-old husband caught a chill and was ill for several months.

Tatyana says that the residents of the basement were provided with everything necessary by the Ukrainian military: “Despite my attitude, I can’t say anything bad. I must give them their due. We had everything we needed, we never went hungry.”

Food had to be cooked on bricks outside in the yard.  "It was very scary. Once the shelling started when I was outside. It was so scary that I… wet myself. Can you imagine?" Tatyana told us, embarrassed.

By that time, there was no official Ukrainian authority in this part of the city.  On March 4, Ukrainian media reported that the mayor of the city, Sergei Hortiv, who collaborated with representatives of the self-proclaimed republics back in 2014, had disappeared without a trace.  A month later, he was found in Russian-occupied territory.  He explained that he fled out of fear for his life and was working alongside pro-Russian forces.

“There was no other way”

The Ukrainian military offered everyone who wanted to go west passage out of the city on the buses that also brought humanitarian aid.  Tatyana did not want to go. She asked herself "Where are we going? Who is waiting for us there?"

Everything changed on the night of the 9th of April. "We were bombed for two and a half hours, it was unbearable."  The couple realized that they could no longer live like this and decided to leave the city.

They went west on a private bus for 2,000 hryvnias (about £56 GBP). “I wanted to take my things but still be able to sit down. There are not even seats on the buses which bring humanitarian aid,” explains Tatyana.

The buses eventually reached the city of Dnipro via Severodonetsk and Lysychansk. It was there that the couple decided to get to Russia by any means possible. They discovered it was possible to leave Dnipro on private buses to Starobelsk in the Luhansk region. This city had been occupied by Russia since the beginning of March.  Tatyana and her husband decided that this option was their best bet.

“The Ukrainian guards at the checkpoints didn’t let us out of the city on our first two attempts. How do I know why? They probably wanted money. I saw the driver talking to one of the soldiers, he was talking to him so rudely,” Tatyana recalls.  The passengers had to return to Dnipro, where sirens howled all night.

Their third attempt was on April 14, when a convoy of three buses tried to leave the city. This time, there was no-one at the checkpoint.  “We managed to go further. Then, suddenly, we braked suddenly and everyone fell over” says Tatyana.

It turned out that the buses had come under artillery fire.  The first of the convoy was incinerated by a rocket. “There was nothing left of the passengers. Not even bones. Nothing to bury.”

Tatyana and her husband, both covered in blood, got out through a broken window and ran to the verge by the road, lying there “like moles.”

The Ukrainian authorities blamed the shelling, which killed seven people, on Russia. Tatyana reluctantly admits that the shells could indeed have come from the Russian side: “There’s a war going on, such things are inevitable.”

Residents and firefighters from the nearby village of Borovaya, which by that time had already been almost completely captured by the Russian army, helped evacuate the wounded.  The passengers were taken to the hospital.

Tatyana and her husband had no serious injuries.  By the twentieth of April, control over the area finally passed to Russia, and they were able to leave for the Russian border.

The Ukrainian military inspects the destroyed house of culture in Rubizhne, 8.04.2022. © AFP

The authorities were trying to send elderly couples who asked for help to the Far East. Tatyana, thinking of her sick husband, refused this option.  Having exchanged Ukrainian hryvnias for Russian rubles from the "currency changers", she bought bus tickets to Moscow.

From there, the couple went to the Tver region to visit relatives, and then returned to the Russian capital.  Eventually, a woman Tatyana had worked with helped them find housing in one of the towns near Moscow.

One might think that her story indicates that the assistance given to refugees in Russia was insufficient or at least badly organised, but Tatyana does not think so. She does, however, admit that she misses home and one day wants to return. She complains that “the potatoes here are so expensive! And last year I planted flowers for 4,000 hryvnias at home.” Despite these gripes, she continues to believe that “the decision to start a war was the right one. There was no other way.”

“We don’t have Nationalists here. They’re all back in the west of the country.”

While Tatyana and her husband were hiding in a basement, 45-year-old Lyubov, her husband, 18-year-old son and eight-year-old daughter continued to live at home in the 8th district of Rubizhne.  While in the southern area of the city, where the elderly couple lived, there were artillery battles, the northern neighbourhoods had long been occupied by pro-Russian forces.

“We saw how the Ukrainian military left. They stood about in the yard, and then on one glorious  day they got up and left. Then, on the twentieth of March, the forces of the LNR arrived,” Lyubov says.

Like Tatyana, Lyubov and her relatives were waiting for Russia.  She acknowledges that, since 2014 Ukrainian society has been split.  Lyubov says that her family did not support what she calls the “coup d'état in Kyiv.”

“In general, while they went to the Maidan there and “jumped up and down”, here in the Donbas, we worked,” she says. “We supported for Yanukovych. We pinned blue ribbons to our clothes.”

When pro-Russian forces occupied Rubizhne in 2014, Lyubov was glad.  But a few months later, the Ukrainian authorities returned to the city.  "We were very disappointed, it felt like we were abandoned," she admits.

Life went on.  Lyubov and others did not talk openly about their “disappointment”. She puts this down to the fact that she is “a lawyer with friends and family who were in the civil service.” She says they “were afraid to speak out.”

Lyubov was pleased by Vladimir Putin’s decision to recognize the independence of the self-proclaimed LPR and DPR. She did not, however, imagine that a war would begin, nor that the east of Ukraine would bear the brunt of the fighting. She claims that “we don’t have any nationalists here. They are all back in the west. Now they’ve ended up bombing the Donbas, that's how it happened.”

Like Tatyana, Lyubov is convinced that the Ukrainian army carried out the attacks on the houses where she and her neighbours lived.  And - again like Tatyana - Lyubov admits that she wished that Ukrainian forces would surrender Rubizhne without a fight.  As they did not, the city was at the epicentre of the fighting.  Electricity, running water and heat supplies went out in the city. She says it became ”so cold in that all the fish in the aquarium froze to death.”

The fighters of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic were only based in housing estate where Lyubov lives for a few days. On one occasion, she met them when she left the house to walk her dogs. She says “two guys were standing about. It was immediately clear that they were not career military men. One, it seems, was a banker. He asked if I could give him a phone to call his relatives. He said that he was taken to the army right from the street when he went for bread, and no one knew where he was.”

Later, units from Chechnya entered the northern part of the city.  Lyubov made friends with them.  “They are so simple, not greedy at all. They shared everything, including their rations. They offered me Snickers bars for my daughter,” she says. It is, however, true that the arrival of the Russian army in the city was accompanied by the start of more widespread looting. Soldiers even used explosives to open ATMs.

Lyubov laughingly recalls how soldiers “sometimes even handed out money to civilians. They didn’t understand what to do with Ukrainian hryvnias and had no idea how much the currency was worth in rubles. They would just say: here you are, two thousand. And people took it.”

The Chechen military began carrying out a “cleansing operation” in the city. In practice, this meant them going door-to-door and searching apartments.  Lyubov claims that “if the apartment was locked, but the neighbours had keys, they just let them in and showed them inside. But if there were no keys, they blew up the door. And then the apartment stood open, and all the possessions were taken.”

Lyubov has seen first-hand the apartments where the military had been living. She noted that none had televisions in the sitting room. A rare phenomenon in the city.

Lyubov showed the BBC a group on Viber where residents of Rubizhne discuss cases of fraud and looting.  Every day there are dozens of messages about missing cars, bicycles and other valuables.  In the group, residents are also trying to draw up a list of complaints that they propose to send to the military commandant's office, and discuss with the head of the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic, Leonid Pasechnik via a newly created hotline. They have even discussed putting their complaints to Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov.

One of the chat’s participants says: “I went home to Rubizhne. It was known that “liberators” lived in my apartment. When I arrived home, what I saw was shocking... They had defecated in the bathroom, in all the buckets, in the toilet. There were cigarette butts everywhere. "My husband's things were all missing, from socks and shoes to winter clothes. All the equipment has been taken away - portable speakers, a coffee maker, a slow cooker, vacuum cleaners, a curling iron, a TV, a computer system unit. They even stole my jewellery.”

Lyubov herself also experienced looting. In mid-April, she and her husband decided to get out of the almost destroyed city to Russia in the family Toyota.  Fighters from Chechnya promised them that they would "look after" the car.  And then they drove it off to an unknown location, depriving the family of the opportunity to leave.

 "We were in shock, we didn't know what to do," Lyubov says, choosing her words carefully.  A few days after the complaints, the car was unexpectedly returned - battered and with no petrol left.  “But at least they returned it, we were very lucky,” she notes. “As a result, I have very mixed feelings about the Chechens.”

As a result, Lyubov’s family, along with their numerous pets - cats, dogs and two parrots - was able to leave for Russia via Starobelsk.  Through acquaintances who remained in Rubizhne, Lyubov learned that the city where she was born and raised is now more or less wiped from the face of the earth.

Lyubov now has mixed feelings about the so-called “special operation”.  “It seems that this decision was eight years too late,” she says. “In general, now people don’t care what happens - as long as the shooting stops.”

The combined forces of Russia and the self-proclaimed LPR managed to establish final control over Rubizhne in mid-May, although since March, the Russian media had been assuring viewers that the city had been taken.

“Everyone with a brain is against it”

Judging by the group chats and chat rooms in which the inhabitants of the "triangle" keep in touch with each other, the views expressed by Tatyana and Lyubov are not uncommon in the region.  For example, those joining the "Lysychansk. Severodonetsk. Rubizhne" community on Telegram (which has more than 20,000 members) are required to answer a question: "Who owns Crimea?"  There’s only one answer: Russia.

The chat administrator describes the forum as a "Russian triangle group".  Discussions featuring "right-wingers,” by which he means supporters of a united Ukraine, are prohibited.

In addition to messages about the search for relatives and requests to find out about the fate of residential buildings, posts appear in the group with offers to help the Russian army. For example, an announcement to raise funds for quadcopters for "the frontline military who are liberating the triangle."

A volunteer helps a blind resident of Severodonetsk evacuate, 25.05.2022. © AFP

However, in these types of groups there are frequent disputes about who to support in this war.  In the "Holy Triangle" chat on Viber, the BBC met Ludmila, a 40-year-old resident of Severodonetsk. She wanted to show Russian supporters how badly people have been living in the self-proclaimed Luhansk People’s Republic for the past eight years, and to prove to them that "true Severodonetsk residents" want to stand with Ukraine.

Ludmila tells the BBC that “90% of those in the pro-Russian groups are Russians. And not even those who once lived in the Donbas or who have relatives there, but just people from Russia. The zombie machine works. But there are also patriotic groups, and more of them.”

Ludmila, a HR manager with a financial background, was born and raised in Severodonetsk and has lived there all her life.  Her parents, an architect father and a mother with a Ph.D. in Chemistry, helped build the city.  Ludmila says that Severodonetsk has always been Russian-speaking "and no one has ever had a problem with that in my life."

She says that in 2014, many residents of Severodonetsk sincerely supported the arrival of Russia, “but everything has changed with time. Over the years, everyone who has brains and hands has long left the Luhansk People’s Republic, for Russia or Ukraine. The Republic is a third world country. Many people have relatives and friends there. Maybe there were opportunities back in 2014, but seeing what once beautiful cities turned into, no-one wanted anything to do with us.”

After the Russian invasion, Ludmila believes that there were very few people with pro-Russian sentiments left in Severodonetsk and neighbouring cities. “Everyone who has brains, education and the desire for a better life opposes it,” she claims.

Ludmila herself used to be “loyal” to Russia, but now she feels only hatred for the country. Moreover, she feels this emotion for all Russians, not only Russian President Vladimir Putin, because “it is not him coming here to kill, rape and rob.”  She continues to communicate with her family in Russian, but now, on principle, she does not look at or buy anything Russian.

 Ludmila and her family - an elderly mother, an 18-year-old daughter, a twin brother and his family - spent three weeks under shelling.  And then, together with two cats, they decided to leave for Dnipro.

“We were driving under fire from “grad” rocket launchers and air strikes. We drove on backroads. I only remember everything vaguely because my brother, who was driving, had only bought the car about 3 weeks before the war and still wasn’t used to it. His hands were shaking, and when everything was flying above us, we just prayed,” Ludmila remembers. Her family is safe now.

In Severodonetsk, according to her, the only people left are either pensioners, or “the kind of people who will call anything their homeland if you buy them a drink.”

In Severodonetsk, where Ludmila lived, there is a hotel called “Peace”. At the end of May, a Russian sabotage and reconnaissance group was based there. At the same time, the Head of the Chechen Republic, Ramzan Kadyrov, published a video of the Chechen unit, showing them firing shots from the hotel building.

Among the burnt buildings the fighters were aiming at, Ludmila recognized her own ruined home.

“In Lysychansk, if you are alive, it’s already a lucky day”

How (and whether) the Russian army offensive will develop after the capture of Severodonetsk is a big question. It is separated from its next target, Lysychansk, by the Siverskyi Donets, a river which has caused significant problems for the Russian forces since the start of the war.

For example, in the middle of May Ukrainian officials announced that they had destroyed a Russian armoured convoy that was trying to cross the Siverskiy Donets to encircle Severodonetsk and Lysychansk.

“Russia has struggled to put in place the complex coordination necessary to conduct successful, large -scale river crossings under fire,” the UK Ministry of Defence said at the time.

Ukrainian soldiers besides a destroyed warehouse on the outskirts of Lysychansk, June 17th, 2022. © AFP

Due to problems crossing the Siverskiy Donets, it took Russian forces more than two months to capture the southern part of the city of Izyum in Kharkiv Oblast. Multiple times, Russian forces put together pontoon bridges only for Ukrainian forces to destroy them.

Yet another similarity between southern Izyum and Lysychansk is that, unlike Severodonetsk, which is on the flat, Lysychansk is located on the hills of the Donets Ridge. This is a big advantage for Ukrainian artillery, which can shoot at the enemy from above.

“In a strategic sense, the city of Severodonetsk is not very important. In this regard, Lysychansk is significant; it is located higher and more lucratively— a dominant height,” said the governor of the Luhansk Oblast, Serhiy Haidai.

However, the head of the Luhansk Oblast doesn’t rule out a retreat from Lysychansk: “In order to avoid encirclement, our command may order the troops to withdraw to new positions. The whole of Lysychansk is within reach of Russian fire. It is very dangerous in the city.”

At the moment, the city is blocked off from multiple sides, with pro-Russian forces trying to enter it from the south, Haidai said.

According to the US-based Institute for the Study of War (ISW), an offensive from these positions, and not directly from Severodonetsk, would allow Russian forces to avoid crossing the river. The institute considers the advance of pro-Russian forces in this direction a "clear failure" of the Ukrainian forces.

According to Haidai, fighting in the southern outskirts of the city has not let up for a single day. The city is constantly being shelled, there is a huge amount of destruction, and at this point Lysychansk “is almost completely unrecognizable,” he says.

Destroyed House of Culture  in Lysychansk, June 17th, 2022. © AFP

According to the ISW, after the fall of Severodonetsk, Ukrainian forces will continue to “exhaust” the Russian army, defending themselves in the region of Lysychansk. At the same time, experts suggest that Ukrainian forces are likely to leave the city if Russia can create a serious threat to its strongholds.

However, at the beginning of the summer the ISW predicted that even if Russian forces managed to take Severodonetsk and Lysychansk, it would be difficult for them to further pursue an offensive in the Donetsk Oblast due to the challenges of the Donbas terrain and the ongoing problem of crossing rivers.

Lysychansk used to be known as the ‘cradle of the Donbas’. A mining town with a pre-war population of 100,000, it is one of the oldest places in the region. For now, it remains in Ukrainian hands, but the local authorities say 60 per cent of the town has now been destroyed.

“In Lysychansk, if you are alive, it’s already a lucky day,” the chief of police of Luhansk Oblast told BBC journalist Orla Guerin, when she visited Lysychansk in the middle of June.

In the artillery battle currently raging for Lysychansk, Ukrainian forces do not have enough weapons or ammunition, she reported. For every one Ukrainian weapon there are 10-15 on the Russian side.

Ukrainian officials also speak openly about the lack of weapons. If the West provided Ukraine with the weapons we need, we could “clean up” Severodonetsk in less than a week, Luhansk governor Serhiy Haidai says.

“Governor Haidai says he still believes in victory,” Orla Guerin wrote in her despatch from the city. “That view is echoed in Kyiv. But here on the ground in the Donbas region it looks like Ukraine is fighting a losing battle, and this will be a summer of defeat.”

A resident of Lysychansk kneels over the body of a family member killed as a result of shelling, June 18th, 2022. © AFP

There is currently no way to contact those who are left in the city. Apart from journalists and military personnel, the only people who can still get into Lysychansk are volunteers helping to bring in humanitarian aid and to evacuate local residents.

When they return to the villages west of Lysychansk, the volunteers are bombarded with questions from people who’ve left the city and are anxious for news about the relatives and homes they’ve left behind. More of than not they are disappointed.

In an online forum for people sharing news about the city, the BBC met Anastasia, who still has loved ones living in Lysychansk. “The situation there is very dire,” she says. “There is no water, electricity, or gas. Everyone is very tired and wants peace in Ukraine.” Nobody in her family is or ever was in favour of the idea of a “Russian World”, she adds.

Some of Anastasia’s family have managed to leave Lysychansk, while others have chosen to stay despite the shelling and the risk that the city may soon be captured by Russian forces. It’s difficult to say why they choose to stay, she sighs. “Some of them don’t want to leave their pets behind, others are defending their homes, and some simply want to die on their own land.”

The BBC thanks “Grazhdanskoe Sodeystvie”, a charity organization offering assistance to refugees and displaced persons (designated an “foreign agent” by the Russian government), for their help in contacting the people featured in this story.

Read this story in Russian here.