Five years on from the MH17 tragedy, Ukrainians are scraping by on the frontline

Updated

Five years after Malaysia Airlines flight 17 was shot down over Ukraine, soldiers and citizens continue to scrape by on the frontlines of Europe's only current war.

Since 2014, a bitter civil war between Ukrainian nationalist forces aligned with the European Union, and pro-Russia separatists, has torn apart the east of the country.

With access to the world's largest stockpile of Cold War-era weapons and fuelled by passionate nationalism, this young conflict quickly outgrew its state-driven agenda.

The cost of war has, as always, been paid by the innocent civilians caught in the crossfire.

Since its outbreak, the war in Ukraine has been defined by the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17, Russia's annexation of Crimea and haunting images of a wave of demonstrations in the capital Kiev, known as Euromaidan.

But the lives of those trapped on the frontlines have remained in the shadows, obscured by the chaos of the conflict that surrounds them.

These are the people left scraping by in the midst of the only war raging on European soil, and the soldiers who continue the battle.

Life on the frontline

At first glance, the city of Mariinka is unremarkable: children play in parks, grandmothers sell vegetables on street corners and cats lie sprawled in the afternoon sun.

It appears peaceful — but it isn't.

Located only 1.5 kilometres from separatist entrenchments, Mariinka is frighteningly close to the frontlines.

The familiar scars of war are hidden beneath the facade of everyday life.

Buildings are pockmarked with bullet holes, playgrounds disfigured by shrapnel and the sound of machine gun fire echoes through the streets.

The balance between life and war is eerie, often separated by just a few metres.

On the outskirts of town, the sheer intensity of fighting becomes clear.

The last row of buildings absorbs nearly all incoming fire. The local orphanage and community centre are among the hardest hit.

What was once the beating heart of Mariinka is now completely uninhabitable. The library, gym and cinema remain riddled with unexploded ordnance and booby traps laid by the separatists.

'I watched as the bombs rained down'

Alina Kosse, the former director of the Art Center for Children and Youth, recalls the night it was overthrown by separatist forces.

"I was in the town square when the attack began, I told the security guard to turn off all the lights and lock herself in the farthest room," she says.

"I took my mother inside the house, sat on the stairs and watched as the bombs rained down, and Mariinka burned. It was scary.

"That was the first significant attack. When I came to work the next day the Russian flag was hanging over the building."

Despite having lost her mother, countless friends and her career to the conflict, Alina smiles as she describes the unexpected side effects of the war.

"When the shooting starts, the factories close and everyone bands together. Now we have grandmothers and mothers attending their children's classes, the dads have even joined the local choir," she says.

"This whole ordeal has made us better people, a better community."

While towns like Mariinka were caught in the crossfire, the village of Opytne was directly targeted. There is no community left to band together.

Once home to over 4,000 people, Opytne is now virtually lifeless. Only a handful of elderly residents continue to live among its destroyed remains.

The town has been a long-standing Ukranian military stronghold, located only a few hundred metres from Donetsk Airport, and has seen some of the most devastating and relentless artillery fire of the war.

Raisa Denysenko, a long-time resident of Opytne, sits in her kitchen counting down from six. The unmistakable crack of separatist mortar fire ripped through the countryside a moment before.

We wait tensely for the inevitable impact, not knowing if the incoming bomb will land a block away, or right on top of our heads.

The fear in her eyes is very real. Raisa has already almost been killed twice by stray artillery shells.

"We used to be happy, I want nothing but the war to be over," she says.

"We are surrounded by suffering, young men die on both sides, the land itself is crying — we just want peace, regardless of whose flag we live under."

For Raisa, the relentless downpour of munitions isn't the most devastating consequence of the war. Instead it is the impassable border, created by the frontline itself.

What was once a brief stroll across a field is now a mine-ridden no man's land separating her from her two children and grandchildren, who live in separatist-occupied Donetsk.

Despite living on the Ukrainian side and coming under daily fire from separatist forces, she supports the fight for a pro-Russian state.

Raisa, like many other civilian separatists, believes the pain of the war and the human cost of the fight for independence far outweigh its benefits and negate the freedom it once promised.

In spite of her dire situation, Raisa, like her neighbours, is anything but sombre. She refuses to let the harsh reality of living on the frontlines erase her enthusiasm for life.

Rather than seeing a horizon of destroyed houses, Raisa sees an endless supply of spare parts to repair and even upgrade her own home.

These days her pride and joy — and virtually only source of food — is the family of goats that peruse the overgrown streets and gardens for food.

Others lie lost amid the meaningless of war

The disease of war extends far beyond the range of artillery shells and sniper fire — the whole Eastern front is riddled by its symptoms.

While it may not be peppered with bullet holes, Druzhkovka nursing home is as much a product of the war as the minefields and decimated villages that surround it.

The final refuge for those who have nowhere else to go, this institution — which survives on donations — is filled with people who lost their homes, life savings and even their family to the war.

But the war becomes pointless here.

Residents are drawn from communities of Ukrainians and Russians alike. Patients are teachers, nurses, soldiers and Chernobyl liquidators — all condemned to the same fate.

Many lie partially paralysed, undiagnosed illnesses eating away at their bodies and minds.

And, with little-to-no medical attention, diseases such as polio are left to run their course.

Those who can still speak talk of their life before the war, about lost families and loved ones.

The atmosphere is filled with a deadening sense of hopelessness, devoid of the adrenaline-pumping fear that fills the frontline, the communal spirit that has grown in the face of adversity or the distracting fight for survival.

"The war is disgusting," local resident Victoria Anushevska says.

"It has brought nothing but countless losses to the youth and elderly, families are left to live on the streets. People have become evil — wicked.

"It is no longer clear from whom we defend ourselves, and why this war broke out in the first place."

Is there a future?

Life along the frontlines has taken on many different forms, spanning the gamut of human behaviour in the face of hardship.

Today, after more than five years, the war has lost much of the appeal it once held.

Both sides have grown tired of the ever-increasing piles of bodies, the economic impact and civilian casualties — leaving a country that is already torn apart, even more splintered.

Despite the ever-growing divide between and within pro-separatist and Ukrainian nationalist ideologies, one thing is clear — this war was lost long ago.

Now the future of both states, and those trapped in-between, rests with politicians responsible for diffusing a very complicated civil uprising.

Many have trust in new Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. They hope the days of fighting are numbered.

Until then, young men and women will continue to die fighting for an already blood-soaked Soviet history, and the elderly will spend their last years paying for their children's mistakes, on the frontlines of Europe's forgotten war.

Credits

Words and photographs by freelance correspondent Sam Eder

Edited and produced by Catherine Taylor





Topics: unrest-conflict-and-war, army, australia, ukraine, russian-federation

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