One hears the Russians bombing Kramatorsk, 15km away, through much of the night. Slovyansk is also a scene of recent bomb damage. Gutted buildings and boarded windows are commonplace. Broken glass glints in the hot dusty streets.
Welcome to free Donetsk, the 25 per cent of the eastern oblast (region) Vladimir Putin has not conquered and thought he could wheedle out of Donald Trump at their Alaska summit.
The Russians bombed the Italian-owned Zeus Ceramica clay tile factory, Slovyansk’s main industry, three years ago. Locals ask the army for drone videos of their destroyed properties, for government and private insurance claims. War insurance is a costly but necessary precaution here.
Shovkovychni (Mulberry Park is a lush oasis. Recorded birdsong calls from loudspeakers. There is a rusting, immobile ferris wheel and a zoo with pea hens, doves, goats and ponies. Children dawdle in the sandbox. Shirtless men play volleyball in the summer heat.
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A middle-aged woman sits on a bench beside the sandbox. Alla (47) is a single mother. On this morning, she has left Lyman, 30km to the northeast, and her job as a railway signals operator. Alla is with her nine-year-old son and they plan to take the night train to Kyiv.
She seems offended when I ask if she’s a refugee. She’s not going back, she says. The Russians are advancing and Alla hopes they’ll be stopped, but she’s not sure. “To be honest, I hope that Putin will die and this will end.”
Stores closed. There was no money in the ATMs. No water. At the end, the power was cut
— Olha Lyashenko
I leave apologetically because Alla starts crying.
The family I meet next are more cheerful. Serhii Lyashenko (39) was quality control manager at Zeus Ceramica. He’s still part of a 400-strong clean-up crew. Serhii’s wife Olha (38) is a civil servant. Their athletic 13-year-old daughter, Nastia, is competing in pentathlon championships and doesn’t want to leave her coach and friends.
The family enjoy swimming in nearby saltwater lakes. The national park at Sviatohirsk, with its forest filled with wild boar, pheasants and hares, is just a half-hour away. “Besides, this is home,” says Olha. “Our parents still live here.”
There were 100,000 people in Slovyansk before the war started in 2014. The population has ebbed and flowed with mass arrivals of Ukrainians displaced by the fighting. Sometimes, residents who couldn’t adapt elsewhere return.
The Lyashenkos left briefly during a three-month-long Russian occupation, when Nastia was a baby. “It was as if life stopped here, was put on hold,” says Olha. “Stores closed. There was no money in the ATMs. No water. At the end, the power was cut.”
The family struggle to remember when familiar buildings were destroyed. The house on the corner and the hospital were bombed in 2022 or 2023. The hotel, the kindergarten and at least two schools were targeted this year. “Everyone is afraid,” says Olha.
“The Russians are 40km away,” says Serhii. “Their artillery range is 22km. When they get to within 22km, we’ll get in the car and drive to Kyiv or Kropyvnytskyi.”
The couple say president Volodymyr Zelenskiy would not violate Ukraine’s constitution by ceding territory the Russians have not conquered, as demanded by Putin. As for the other 20 per cent of Ukraine seized by Russia, Olha sighs and says: “Unfortunately, that is occupied. It’s hard to see how we’ll get it back.”
I ask about Trump and the couple shake their heads in unison. “It’s as if he has at least three different persons living inside him,” says Serhii.
Europe is an integral part of Olha’s dream. “I want justice and peace, and for Europe to be part of it. If you have a neighbour like Russia, it takes all of Europe to keep peace.”
I strike up a conversation with the woman selling hamburgers and ice cream from a nearby stand. Maria (37) and her two children left Kostyantynivka, 40km to the southeast, last year. She didn’t want to leave the house she inherited from her grandfather, but the Kyiv government ordered them to evacuate. The Russians destroyed the house in February. Her husband has stayed on “to guard the ruins” and is living in a shed in the garden.
“In the past two years we had everything all at once,” Maria says. “Missiles, rockets, drones, artillery fire, glide bombs. Now they’re doing a ‘human safari’ with FPVs (first-person views), like in Kherson.”
Maria is afraid the Russians will do to Slovyansk what they have done to Kostyantynivka. “I’m just trying to survive,” she says, close to tears.
Soldiers from occupied areas say they would willingly destroy their own houses if they could kill the Russians inside them.
“Before the war, this was a quiet, provincial town where people lived in abundance,” says Kryepkyi (Mighty), a reconnaissance platoon commander. “They ask us, ‘Is it time to go yet?’. I say, ‘Our brigade is holding the line, but I don’t know about the others’.”
