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Tuesday, April 12, 2022 12:25:57 AM
A Stricken Ukrainian City Empties, and Those Left Fear What’s Next
"How a Chechen Abduction Exposes Putin’s Problems at Home"
The parking lot of an apartment building in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Sunday was littered with debris from Russian bombings. Credit...
After the deadly strike on the train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, those who stayed behind are grim about the future: “We think we will be swept off the face of the earth.”
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia Yermak Photographs by Tyler Hicks
April 10, 2022
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Two days after more than 50 people were killed on its platforms by a missile strike, the only sounds at the Kramatorsk railway station on Sunday morning were a distant air-raid siren and the rhythmic sweeping of broken glass.
“The town is dead now,” said Tetiana, 50, a shopkeeper who was working next to the station when it was attacked as thousands of people tried to board trains to evacuate the eastern city, fearing it would soon be besieged by Russian forces.
Friday’s strike was a gruesome turn...
[...]
With Moscow’s decision to shift the focus of its war to eastern Ukraine, the people who remain in Kramatorsk fear that they will soon be shelled into oblivion, like the residents of Kharkiv and Mariupol, two other cities that have been ruthlessly assaulted by Russian forces. It feels like an assault here is inevitable: Cutting off Kramatorsk would partly cut off Ukrainian forces fighting in the eastern breakaway regions where Russia is consolidating.
[...]
Kramatorsk and the neighboring, but smaller, city of Sloviansk are likely to be the first two cities that will be attacked by whatever Russian forces are able to reconstitute in the region following their defeat and withdrawal from around Kyiv, the capital. For now, the Russian front line traces like a jaw around the two cities.
Encircling and cutting off Kramatorsk and Sloviansk would allow the Russians to isolate the Ukrainian forces that are holding their old front lines in the two breakaway regions — a maneuver, if successfully carried out, that would mean disaster for the Ukrainian military, as much of their forces are there.
Sgt. Andriy Mykyta, a soldier in Ukraine’s border guard, was in Kramatorsk to try to head off that fate.
An apartment building heavily damaged by recent Russian bombings in Kramatorsk on Sunday. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
“There will be a serious fight,” Sergeant Mykyta said. “This is a tactic of the Russians: They take cities as hostages.”
On Sunday, as he bought an energy drink and some snacks from one of the remaining open grocery stores in the city, the sergeant looked much like every other uniformed Ukrainian service member: a blue stripe on his arm, weathered boots and a jagged tattoo jutting above his collar.
But he was, in fact, one of the most valuable members of the Ukrainian armed forces, a part of the select group that was quickly trained by NATO forces (a several-day course that was supposed to last at least a month, he said) to use some of the more complicated weapons that were helping push back Russian forces: the Javelin and NLAW antitank systems.
But he played down the missile systems’ importance, saying, “These weapons are like a doughnut at the end of the day.” He said that the real fight would come down to whatever side could withstand its enemy’s artillery the longest and who retained the will to fight.
[...]
Maria Budym, a 69-year-old resident of Kramatorsk, shrugged off the artillery and the evacuations. She was staying. When Russian-backed separatists briefly held Kramatorsk in 2014, they were welcomed to the city by some of the pro-Russian population before being driven off by Ukrainian defenders, she said.
This time, she added, the Russians will have to deal with her.
“Only cowards and people already displaced by the war have fled the city,” she said, standing in a blue fleece pullover in front of her hollowed-out Soviet-style apartment. “Our soldiers will defend this city to their last breath.”
Besides, Ms. Budym added, with anger in her eyes: “I have a pipe in my apartment. I’ll use it on whoever comes in that door.”
An apartment building that was damaged Friday. “We are being encircled. We understand that,” said one woman, who planned to stay in Kramatorsk to care for her ailing mother.
Tyler Hicks contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/world/asia/ukrainian-kramatorsk.html
"How a Chechen Abduction Exposes Putin’s Problems at Home"
The parking lot of an apartment building in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, on Sunday was littered with debris from Russian bombings. Credit...
After the deadly strike on the train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, those who stayed behind are grim about the future: “We think we will be swept off the face of the earth.”
By Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Natalia Yermak Photographs by Tyler Hicks
April 10, 2022
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine — Two days after more than 50 people were killed on its platforms by a missile strike, the only sounds at the Kramatorsk railway station on Sunday morning were a distant air-raid siren and the rhythmic sweeping of broken glass.
“The town is dead now,” said Tetiana, 50, a shopkeeper who was working next to the station when it was attacked as thousands of people tried to board trains to evacuate the eastern city, fearing it would soon be besieged by Russian forces.
Friday’s strike was a gruesome turn...
[...]
With Moscow’s decision to shift the focus of its war to eastern Ukraine, the people who remain in Kramatorsk fear that they will soon be shelled into oblivion, like the residents of Kharkiv and Mariupol, two other cities that have been ruthlessly assaulted by Russian forces. It feels like an assault here is inevitable: Cutting off Kramatorsk would partly cut off Ukrainian forces fighting in the eastern breakaway regions where Russia is consolidating.
[...]
Kramatorsk and the neighboring, but smaller, city of Sloviansk are likely to be the first two cities that will be attacked by whatever Russian forces are able to reconstitute in the region following their defeat and withdrawal from around Kyiv, the capital. For now, the Russian front line traces like a jaw around the two cities.
Encircling and cutting off Kramatorsk and Sloviansk would allow the Russians to isolate the Ukrainian forces that are holding their old front lines in the two breakaway regions — a maneuver, if successfully carried out, that would mean disaster for the Ukrainian military, as much of their forces are there.
Sgt. Andriy Mykyta, a soldier in Ukraine’s border guard, was in Kramatorsk to try to head off that fate.
An apartment building heavily damaged by recent Russian bombings in Kramatorsk on Sunday. Tyler Hicks/The New York Times
“There will be a serious fight,” Sergeant Mykyta said. “This is a tactic of the Russians: They take cities as hostages.”
On Sunday, as he bought an energy drink and some snacks from one of the remaining open grocery stores in the city, the sergeant looked much like every other uniformed Ukrainian service member: a blue stripe on his arm, weathered boots and a jagged tattoo jutting above his collar.
But he was, in fact, one of the most valuable members of the Ukrainian armed forces, a part of the select group that was quickly trained by NATO forces (a several-day course that was supposed to last at least a month, he said) to use some of the more complicated weapons that were helping push back Russian forces: the Javelin and NLAW antitank systems.
But he played down the missile systems’ importance, saying, “These weapons are like a doughnut at the end of the day.” He said that the real fight would come down to whatever side could withstand its enemy’s artillery the longest and who retained the will to fight.
[...]
Maria Budym, a 69-year-old resident of Kramatorsk, shrugged off the artillery and the evacuations. She was staying. When Russian-backed separatists briefly held Kramatorsk in 2014, they were welcomed to the city by some of the pro-Russian population before being driven off by Ukrainian defenders, she said.
This time, she added, the Russians will have to deal with her.
“Only cowards and people already displaced by the war have fled the city,” she said, standing in a blue fleece pullover in front of her hollowed-out Soviet-style apartment. “Our soldiers will defend this city to their last breath.”
Besides, Ms. Budym added, with anger in her eyes: “I have a pipe in my apartment. I’ll use it on whoever comes in that door.”
An apartment building that was damaged Friday. “We are being encircled. We understand that,” said one woman, who planned to stay in Kramatorsk to care for her ailing mother.
Tyler Hicks contributed reporting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/10/world/asia/ukrainian-kramatorsk.html
It was Plato who said, “He, O men, is the wisest, who like Socrates, knows that his wisdom is in truth worth nothing”
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