The Kramatorsk Diaries part 10

Siblings

I would typically begin the diary with a few sarcastic comments based on snippets of news from back home in the UK. The prospect of analysing the tsunami of fever dreams haunting the Conservative Party conference was, dare I say, almost arousing. Yet, given recent events in Ukraine, I will suppress my desire for this entry.   

Five days ago, whilst settling down to sleep, I got the following message on my phone;

Dear residents of Kherson and its suburbs, just recently (September 30), we notified you about the identification of indirect traces of an increase in enemy logistics and the RISKS that this entails for your lives/health

The consequences of this were felt by many residents of Kherson and its suburbs.

SORRY, we are forced to INFORM AGAIN about yet another identification of signs of an increase in the level of logistics of the Russian army in our direction (left bank)

Please remain vigilant and do not trust periodic deceptive calms.

Do not take unnecessary walks unless absolutely necessary.

Receiving this news while fully dressed and with my boots on would have been bad enough. However, huddled under a thin, non-ballistic duvet with a window facing the Russian army only added to my growing sense of vulnerability. In particular, I disliked the line, 'Do not trust periodic deceptive calms', because, whilst reading the message, the shelling had subsided, and I was actually in a periodic calm - only now, I didn't trust it. 

We've spent the last three weeks documenting the deteriorating conditions in Kherson; the Russians are dramatically escalating the scale and frequency of their onslaught, and as usual, civilians are paying the price. Sustained GRAD rocket and artillery attacks have replaced periodic deceptive calms, and the increased use of KAB aerial bombs has raised the survival stakes even further.

The KAB is a brutal, air-launched bomb that can carry anything from 250kg to 1500kg of high explosives. It obliterates everything in its path, and the effects in residential areas are catastrophic. We continue to receive air raid alarms, but Kherson is on the frontline, so we get only a few minutes warning before the arrival of a KAB.

Most apartment blocks have a communal seating area outside; ours is no different, and yesterday, Zarina returned, chuckling away to herself.

"What's so funny?" I asked.

"Two old babushkas were chatting on the benches outside," she told me, still laughing. "There's an ongoing air alert, and her husband just leaned out the window and shouted, Oi, you two better tie yourselves to that bench because if a bomb lands, you're both going to come flying through the kitchen window and kill me."

You have to hand it to them, sat at the pointy end of Russia's war machine and still laughing. What's not to love? 

Wednesday night saw an even more intense bombardment than usual. The building shook, and the windows rattled as strike after strike hit the darkened city. We retreated to the corridor, putting as many walls as possible between us and outside, theoretically reducing the risk of blast and shrapnel injury. Dawn finally broke, and exhausted; we sloped off back to our rooms to catch up on sleep.

At 10 a.m., Zarina woke me, "Paul, there's been a hit. There are casualties." 

Grabbing the camera, we raced a few hundred yards to the communal gardens of a housing block around the corner. Elderly residents, many still in shock, milled around, confused and distraught by the carnage. Others were already trying to clean up broken glass from the dozens of shattered windows and collapsing balconies.

The first fatality I found was an older man lying beside a tree felled in the explosion. He wore overalls, workbooks and orange gardening gloves. His head was practically severed, but his wide-open eyes stared skyward; the blood from the gaping throat wound had stained his blue overalls a deep, crimson red.

Fifty yards further on, partially hidden by a parked car, I saw an older woman's feet sticking out. I filmed as the policeman turned her crumpled corpse to inspect the catastrophic injuries to her upper body. She had survived the initial blast, but nothing could have saved her life.  

Sasha and Irina, brother and sister, died together, tending the gardens they loved. Their only crime was being Ukrainian in a world poisoned by Vladimir Putin's apocalyptic vision in which Ukraine ceases to exist. 

Events in Kherson often go unreported, primarily because there are so few journalists present; the reasons for this are twofold. First, getting permission from the military authorities to work here is problematic. Second, after the liberation in November, the world stopped looking, and when that happens, we create the perfect environment for dictators to act with impunity. Monsters always thrive in the shadows.

Hours after the murder of Sasha and Irina, news broke that Russia had attacked a funeral celebration in the village of Hroza, killing 52 people. The cynical and barbaric act, committed in full public view, signifies a growing confidence in the Kremlin that they can, quite literally, get away with murder. 

At a time when shills in Western democracies are clamouring to cut aid to Ukraine, the Russian propaganda machine has gone into overdrive, and Putin's useful idiots are marching dutifully into a barely concealed trap. When a man tells you precisely what he is - believe him. Let the alliance against Putin's invasion blink first at its peril.

Rant alert.

You may have heard much talk from people outside Ukraine who feel tired by the war. Apart from being an oft-repeated Kremlin trope designed to fragment support, it's also nonsense. I've done my fair share of sitting on a couch, remote in hand, shouting at the TV, and it's many things - but it's not tiring.

Let's save the 'tired' word for the troops in the trenches, the women sheltering in basements with their kids, or those digging people out from the rubble. Leave the 'T' word to the Ukrainians - to Sasha and Irina, who somehow found the energy to go and tidy the communal gardens after nine months of occupation and a further nine months of shelling - still feeling tired? 

End of rant. 

In war, it's worryingly easy to lose perspective when dealing with mass causality figures; numbers dehumanise suffering. The greater the number, the less ability you have to process the truly awful scale of the horrors you witness - you feel rage at the atrocity but have less capacity to empathise on a macro level.

That's why I can't shake the image of Sasha and Irina's bloodied, broken bodies from my mind; they were two. I have a brother and a sister. I can empathise with their surviving sibling's pain in a way I can't when the casualty numbers run into the dozens or hundreds. 

I rarely drink, but back at the apartment, the mood was downbeat, and Zarina's offer of brandy was one I couldn't refuse. As the evening's barrage rumbled into life, we clicked glasses - and waited.

"The idiots are off," I grumbled, and Zarina rolled her eyes as the first salvo of the evening struck the city.