{"id":87019,"date":"2025-08-23T08:34:07","date_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:34:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/87019\/"},"modified":"2025-08-23T08:34:07","modified_gmt":"2025-08-23T08:34:07","slug":"these-are-ukrainian-lands-people-in-donetsk-pour-scorn-on-putins-territorial-demands-ukraine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/87019\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018These are Ukrainian lands\u2019: people in Donetsk pour scorn on Putin\u2019s territorial demands | Ukraine"},"content":{"rendered":"

In a branch of the Ukrainian coffee chain Lviv Croissants in the frontline city of Kramatorsk, there is a noticeboard where people leave coloured Post-it notes with simple hand-drawn messages. One just says \u201cKramatorsk\u201d, with red hearts below and a yellow and blue semi-circular fan above, the colours of Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Among those looking at the notes is Bohdan, a 26-year-old, who has been serving in the army for the past three years. The soldier, now in logistics, has chosen to spend his one day off in Kramatorsk with his dog Arnold to photograph for himself recent Russian bombing on a city where he was based for 18 months.<\/p>\n

Bohdan, a soldier, with his dog Arnold. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

\u201cI have a history with this place,\u201d he says. \u201cIt is part of my destiny and my puzzle.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kramatorsk is the core of the 30% of Ukraine\u2019s Donetsk oblast that its military still holds in the face of a grinding Russian advance. This week, the region was the subject of what appears to have been a failed negotiation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin<\/a>. The Russian president demanded all of Donetsk \u2013 which together with Luhansk oblast makes up the Donbas region<\/a> \u2013 as part of a peace deal, a proposal that Trump seemed to have briefly endorsed even though Ukraine rejected it.<\/p>\n

Map showing areas controlled by Russia in Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson oblasts<\/a><\/p>\n

Russia\u2019s arguments change, but in Putin\u2019s eyes, Donetsk, traditionally a Russian-speaking industrial region in Ukraine\u2019s east, is culturally closer to Moscow than Kyiv. People who live there, however, have a very different view. They show no interest in seeing the land of Donetsk given up; it is their land after all.<\/p>\n

A few minutes earlier, Bohdan had photographed the nearby site of a Russian bombing in the centre of the city on 31 July that had killed five, taking an image of a damaged tree in front of a ruined apartment block. His plan is to turn the image into a tattoo: \u201cThe tree is symbolic; like Ukraine, it holds on despite the strike.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bohdan\u2019s tattoo with the dates and cities where Russian strikes killed more than 15 civilians. \u2018These dates should stay with me,\u2019 he says. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

It is not his first body art. On the soldier\u2019s left calf is a list of all Russian airstrikes that caused more than 15 civilian casualties anywhere in Ukraine. Bohdan had it done four months ago, while changing units. As the transition was taking place, he says, \u201cI was having a civilian life, mostly. It was so easy to forget what\u2019s going on.\u201d<\/p>\n

The frontline is about 12 miles away at the nearest point, but Kramatorsk remains relatively lively in the daytime August sun. Though the air raid alarm goes off regularly, that is for missiles passing over, locals say; when an attack on the city does come, they add ominously, there is no warning.<\/p>\n

About a quarter of a million Ukrainian civilians live in Kramatorsk and the rest of Donetsk, about an eighth of pre-invasion levels. Many windows are boarded up, but the city is not significantly damaged. Some shops and cafes still open, such as Kateryna Seledtsova\u2019s Sweet Coffee House Bakery, which has an array of fruit cakes, eclairs and other creamy-looking offerings behind the counter.<\/p>\n

Kateryna Seledtsova, the owner of Sweet Coffee House Bakery, in front of her cafe. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

The change in Kramatorsk\u2019s population \u2013 it has become increasingly male\u2013dominated because of the arrival of soldiers into the area \u2013 means that Seledtsova has refined her menu. \u201cMen like simpler food,\u201d she says, explaining that she had switched out French-style pastries for layered Napoleon cake or trubochki, waffle tubes filled with condensed milk. Whatever she bakes, she adds, sells out daily, such is the demand.<\/p>\n

Giving away the rest of Donetsk strikes Seledtsova \u201cas idiocy. Men have been digging trenches here. All of those fortifications for nothing? I don\u2019t believe it will happen, it is just stupid.\u201d The baker\u2019s life is here: Seledtsova is from Kramatorsk, the city also of her father and eight-year-old son, and the idea of being forced to move out is, she says, so hard to take seriously that it is best not thought about much.<\/p>\n

Could there be a price worth paying, giving up land in Ukraine, including where she lives, in return perhaps for Nato membership? She just sees practical complications: \u201cThere are already a lot of problems with evacuation. For example, it\u2019s impossible for us just to go somewhere and buy or rent an apartment elsewhere in Ukraine because we don\u2019t have the money.\u201d<\/p>\n

Relocation programmes, she says, are not attractive because the housing offered is not comparable. \u201cA lot of people who fled, as far as I know, are living in kindergartens. They don\u2019t even have money to buy things like proper medicines,\u201d and she wonders how the Ukrainian state with its limited resources would be able to make a programme work.<\/p>\n

What about staying under Russia? \u201cI would never work under those motherfuckers. Of course no, no,\u201d and giggles at the strength of her feeling.<\/p>\n

Valentyna with her grandsons in the park in Sloviansk. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

In Sloviansk, north of Kramatorsk, Valentyna and Yelena are with their grandsons aged five and six in the city\u2019s well-tended central park. The children play in small electric cars, but the babusyas (grandmothers) are frustrated. \u201cYou are a journalist, you could make some efforts for peace, we need to shout out for peace,\u201d says Valentyna. Pressed on whether they believed giving up land could be acceptable, all Valentyna will say is that \u201cwe want the war to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

If Ukraine is forced to give up Donetsk they would flee if they have to, Valentyna says, because \u201cthe children have problems with their mental health. They are shaking during the nights.\u201d In-person classes, lasting four hours a day, have been halted again as the security situation has deteriorated. \u201cWe were in a playground and we saw a Shahed drone just above our heads, flying so low, three days ago \u2013 and there were 10, 12 children who were playing there, just watching.\u201d<\/p>\n

Valentyna selling grapes from her garden at the market in Sloviansk. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

At Sloviansk market, local people sell surplus produce from their gardens, some of the best agricultural land in the world. A woman, also called Valentyna, offers grapes for 80 hryvnia (\u00a31.44) a kilo. \u201cThey are talking about trading people, like ancient times, when there was a lord and his serfs,\u201d she says as she sells 2kg from the piles of red and white grapes on her table. \u201cWe should keep going and fighting for our lands. These are Ukrainian lands; there are recognised borders.\u201d<\/p>\n

Donetsk province remains where the heaviest fighting is taking place along the long frontline, particularly around Pokrovsk, 35 miles south-west of Kramatorsk. Regional officials prove reluctant to give interviews, because of the political sensitivities of the moment, but Vadym Filashkin, the governor of Donestsk, reported on Thursday morning that three had been killed in Kostyantinivka, while on Friday settlements were attacked 26 times and 3,649 people were evacuated.<\/p>\n

The consequences of the unceasing war can be seen in nearby Pavlohrad, to the west, in a neighbouring region. A refugee centre has been operating in the city for nearly a year, to receive people with nowhere to go. But as the Russian offensive has intensified, the number of refugees arriving has increased to \u201c350 to 450 people a day for the past two weeks\u201d, according to Kateryna Makarova, the team leader on the site. It compares with 200 a day two months ago, and 100 during the winter.<\/p>\n

Kateryna Makarova, a manager at the transit refugee centre in Pavlohrad, Dnipropetrovsk region. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Conditions at the site, a former cultural centre, are cramped. In an auditorium, beds are placed next to each other on the stage for those who cannot immediately be rehoused. An emergency dormitory shelter is being built in a tent to increase the overnight capacity from 100 to more than 200, though that is not obviously a solution when the weather turns. Another reception centre is being opened in the city of Dnipro, further west, Makarova adds.<\/p>\n

News reports indicate Trump\u2019s peace efforts have gone nowhere. Few in and around Donetsk are surprised. Planning continues in Ukraine to deal with Russia\u2019s gradual advance, attacks that show no sign of halting. Netting is being erected along the safest supply route into Kramatorsk before it can be targeted by Russia\u2019s increasingly effective drone crews, though at the current rates of advance it will probably take years to conquer Donetsk, and at a cost of 30,000 Russian casualties a month.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, it is prudent to plan for the worst. \u201cWe are trying to figure out the algorithm for how we should work when there will be more evacuations,\u201d says Makarova. \u201cThere are a large amount of people living in Kramatorsk, Sloviansk and other towns, and if there will be an evacuation there, there will be a huge amount of people coming. We need to understand how to act in that situation.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nadiya and Serhii were evacuated from Mezhova, Dnipropetrovsk region, to the transit refugee centre in Pavlohrad. Photograph: Julia Kochetova\/The Guardian<\/p>\n

Serhii and Nadiya, a couple who have been married 46 years, are sitting out in the early evening sun with their lives\u2019 possessions in a dozen or so plastic bags by them. They are not even from Donetsk, but Mezhova, 10 miles into Dnipropetrovsk oblast, victims of a metastasisation of the war that, for all Russia\u2019s stated interest in Donetsk, is spreading beyond its borders. Serhii admits \u201cwe never thought the war would come to our village\u201d until drone strikes began two months ago.<\/p>\n

The couple are surprisingly calm, in the circumstances, though Serhii admits to taking some Valium to help, and are hoping to join one of their daughters, whenever a volunteer can drive them from the refugee centre. Tonight, though, they are staying at the refugee centre and Nadiya comes over to say goodbye as we leave.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey [the Russians] are saying we\u2019re brothers, but if I would have such a brother, I would change my last name and my father\u2019s name,\u201d Serhii says. \u201cI don\u2019t need this kind of brother.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a branch of the Ukrainian coffee chain Lviv Croissants in the frontline city of Kramatorsk, there is…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":87020,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[2306,86,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-87019","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mobile","tag-mobile","tag-technology","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=87019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/87019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/87020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=87019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=87019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=87019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}