By Alexander Ermochenko
AVDIIVKA, Ukraine (Reuters) – In the shattered Ukrainian city of Avdiivka, which Russian forces took in February this year, some of the few residents left said they were trying to rebuild their lives, though the scars of war – and the tears they provoke – remain.
Reuters footage, some of the first visuals by an international media organisation, showed destroyed buildings and vast amounts of rubble dusted with snow. Abandoned family pictures and clothes littered ruined apartments.
In a newly renovated apartment building in the city, Florida Troshina, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian, wept over the death of her daughter, killed just two days before Russian troops arrived.
Others told Reuters of the deprivations of living in a ruined city, which is known as Avdeyevka by Russian speakers.
“I just wanted to get out of the basement,” Tatiana Golovina said in Russian, adding that she was pleased to be moving back above ground.
“It is hard there. There is no light, the lighting is bad, we have battery-powered lamps there – at least it is warm here,” Golovina said.
Avdiivka, once a city of more than 37,000, was largely abandoned during the fighting though some residents endured the war and stayed.
A Reuters journalist based in nearby Russian-controlled Donetsk travelled to the city without an escort in response to an invitation to local media to see initial renovations by the local authorities.
“I think, starting from next year we will have the opportunity to approach in detail how and at what pace, what Avdiivka will look like in a post-military period, how it will be linked to the development of Donetsk,” said Denis Pushilin, the Russian-installed head of the surrounding Donetsk region.
Behind the intense fighting on the front lines, Russia says it has been pouring billions of dollars into the areas of Ukraine it controls to rebuild infrastructure, and President Vladimir Putin has said that housing is a priority.
Russia controls 18% of Ukraine, including just over 80% of the industrialised eastern Donbas region made up of Luhansk and Donetsk, according to open source maps.
Russia says that the region and others it partly controls are now part of Russia, though most of the world recognises them as part of Ukraine which says it will not rest until every last Russian soldier is ejected.
The capture of Avdiivka in early 2024 held particular symbolism for Russia. Located 15 km (9 miles) north of the Russian-controlled Ukrainian city of Donetsk, its Soviet-era coke plant was one of Europe’s biggest before the war.
After a pro-Russian president was toppled in Ukraine’s 2014 Maidan Revolution, Russia annexed Crimea and began giving military support to pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine.
Those forces in 2014 captured several towns in the Donetsk region including Avdiivka but it was then taken back by Ukraine’s forces who built extensive fortifications.
(Reporting by Reuters in Avdiivka; writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Philippa Fletcher)
