This week on The Inside Story: Battleground Ukraine.
In the second year of war, we’ll take you street by street and show you what’s left when Russian fighters leave town.
Top-secret documents appear online after video gamers start sharing. We’ll discuss what that means for Ukraine’s wartime operations.
Plus, a week with a Great Easter exchange sees hunders of Ukrainian POWs come home and a growing anti-war movement in Russia.
Join us for The Inside Story… Battleground Ukraine.
Welcome to Inside Story: I’m your host Katherine Gypson.
Our focus this week is on the war in Ukraine, now well into its second year.
It has been a winter of brutal fighting in the Northeastern city of Bakhmut.
Now with Spring arriving, by all accounts the Ukrainians are preparing to go on the offensive, in no small part thanks to U.S. money and weaponry.
At the same time leaked documents suggest things are going more poorly for Russia and Ukraine than has generally been acknowledged so far.
All this and more as we head to Battleground Ukraine in this week’s Inside Story.
We know the big picture. Russia invaded Ukraine last February.
Since then, both countries have been fighting for Ukrainian soil.
But we’ve already seen this movie before when Russia illegally annexed parts of Ukraine in 2014. In areas under Russian occupation for nearly a decade, what’s even left to fight for?
VOA’s Heather Murdock produced a series examining how towns under siege have become battlefields in this war.
Here are the first two installments to start us off this week.
Buried in this grave is Sergei Kotako. His neighbors say he was a good man, a retired electrician who helped care for elderly women in his building. During two months of heavy battle here last summer, cluster bombs fell, and on one occasion, he didn’t make it to a shelter in time.
Locals say nowadays everyone in town knows each other, and they all knew Kotako.
The war somehow [brought us together]. There’s not many of us left here. Before there was 11 or 12,000 people here, now it’s only around 2,000. When the humanitarian aid comes, we all go to the same place to collect it.
This town has been a warzone since 2014 and much of the population fled after Russia invaded last year. The people remaining survive on food and water brought in by aid groups.
Kotako is one of many in this town who are buried in make-shift graveyards, gardens, and fields. The town cemetery is on the front-line, only a few kilometers away.
In town, tanks and artillery are hidden behind apartment buildings but we are told not to take pictures, in case it gives away their positions.The sound of shelling, both outgoing and incoming, is continuous.
Why do we deserve this? It’s the only question I have. It’s the same question I keep asking. Why are they torturing ordinary people?
Wartime has galvanized patriots across Ukraine. Many support the idea of fighting until total victory or total defeat.
But this far east, among the pockets of people remaining, it is not unusual to find locals who identify with Russia. Most people we meet won’t declare support for either side publicly. They don’t know who will rule the area in the months and years to come.
Galyna, however, says openly she doesn’t care who wins if they stop firing.
“I only want peace”, she says. “Only calmness.”
Heather Murdock, VOA News, Siversk, Ukraine.
In the past week, at least three people have died in Chasiv Yar, Ukraine, and city workers say deaths and bombings are now regular occurrences. They say their main job now is to convince people who are still here to evacuate the city.
Many people have already left, and some humanitarian aid is still here. We want to move this humanitarian aid from here to a safer place.
Shelters here are called “invincibility points,” providing electricity to charge phones and internet access. About 20% of the population remains in Chasiv Yar, but most city services are not operating.
On every block, homes and businesses are damaged or destroyed.
It was damaged. The windows were blown out. Yes, mostly the windows blown out. We cover them with plastic tarps.
Chasiv Yar is about 10 kilometers from the city of Bakhmut, where the longest and deadliest battle in Ukraine is currently taking place.
We took this video in January, while Bakhmut was under heavy fire. Most observers, like journalists and aid workers, haven’t been inside Bakhmut for more than a month. At that time, civilians were barely surviving on donated food and water in basements and shelters.