DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — Artillery hits could be heard in the distance, but the noise from the yard of a house near the front lines last week was the screams of children playing. Even as war loomed, Natasha, a 46-year-old mother of six, said she had no intention of giving up and leaving, but focused on keeping home and home together. “We could go,” she said, adding that Ukrainian soldiers stationed nearby suggested she evacuate the family. “But how would we make money? And I have children to feed.” President Volodymyr Zelensky said he was preparing a mandatory evacuation of civilians in areas of the heaviest fighting in Donetsk province, saying hundreds of thousands of people – including tens of thousands of children – must leave immediately. Iryna Vereshchuk, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, said about 200,000 people had to leave the region because there would be no heating or gas in Donetsk this winter due to the destruction of gas pipelines by the Russians. Natasha and her husband, Oleh, 49, are the only couple with children remaining in their hilltop village just a few miles from Russian positions in eastern Ukraine. But their dilemma is similar to that of many rural families. For the children still living in the villages and towns along this stretch of Donetsk province, life is a precarious self-sufficient existence as the war threatens to sweep them away. In the countryside, children pop up out of nowhere, on their bikes carrying water or balancing a bag of produce handed out by a charity. In the cities, they accompany their parents to the store, their faces worn and tired from days spent in the basements. Natasha and Oleh have five sons and one daughter — Tolik, 14, Sasha, 12, Vova, 11, Nastya, 9, Kostya, 7, and Yarik, 6. five months ago, and have been struggling to make ends meet ever since. They asked that their last name not be published to avoid any future retaliation. Government services in the region have largely ceased. Child support in Ukraine only pays for children under 3, so the family is no longer eligible for help, Natasha said. “We had to manage it ourselves,” he said. Natasha became the main breadwinner when the neighbors fled the war and left their house and dairy cows in her care. She and her older boys are now established dairy farmers. Tolik and Vova broke away from the family’s cellphone to fetch the cows on a recent afternoon from the grassy slope next to the village. Natasha tied up the cows and Vova connected the battery operated milking machine. She gets up at 4:30 every morning to milk the cows and taught herself to make cream and cottage cheese, which she sells at the nearby town market. There is no bus service into town anymore, so he walks all the way most days, leaving at 6:30am. to reach 8. Natasha’s sons take the cows back home for milking next to a ditch built by the army. Credit…Mauricio Lima for The New York Times In town, she sits under trees on a sidewalk with a group of women selling homemade pies and fruit and vegetables from their gardens. However, customers are dwindling as Russian rockets hit the city with increasing intensity. This fall, with the youngest, Yarik, turning 6, all the children had to go to school, Natasha said. Instead, with education severely disrupted for two years during the pandemic, children had only started returning last fall for two shifts. Then war broke out and school was suspended again. Outside of school, children seem little affected by the war, he said. “Little ones are not afraid of anything,” he said. They have cellars in both houses to use as bomb shelters, but keeping the children inside is not easy. “I yell at them to hide, but as soon as a helicopter flies by, they come out. It’s interesting for them.” — Carlotta Gall and Kamila Hrabchuk
title: “Latest Russia Ukraine War News Live Updates " ShowToc: true date: “2022-12-04” author: “Shirley Delacruz”
DRUZKIVKA, Ukraine — The long-standing strongholds of Ukraine’s defenses in the east have come under intense attack in recent days, according to the Ukrainian military and Western military analysts. That Ukrainian soldiers still hold the maze of trenches and fortifications in two suburban towns, Avdiivka and Pisky, on the edge of Donetsk city, is a testament to the value of their dug-in positions in the east. Ukraine’s strong defensive positions have slowed the Russian army’s advance, with only two major cities, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, and a few dozen miles of land changing hands, despite thousands of soldiers killed on both sides. It was not clear exactly why attacks on the fortifications have intensified, and the attacks are an exception to a general reduction in Russian attacks in the eastern Donbas region, which has been the focus of the war for months. Some military analysts believe the relative calm was partly a result of Russian forces being diverted south to repel a Ukrainian counterattack there. The two cities, mostly ruined and destroyed, are not great prizes to be won, but if they fall, it could facilitate Russian advances towards the three major cities in the Donetsk region that remain under Ukrainian control, Bakhmut, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The Ukrainian military and paramilitary groups built the fortifications in the two cities during eight years of low-intensity war following Russia’s 2014 military intervention in Ukraine to prop up a separatist region, the Donetsk People’s Republic. Now they are among the easternmost places of Ukraine. Navigating through abandoned factories and mines, exploiting root cellars in country houses and using swamps as natural barriers, the defense lines there have withstood countless attacks. After failing to encircle Avdiivka, Russia launched direct tank attacks this week, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. The institute noted Russian propaganda videos suggesting Russian troops had overrun a position at the Butiyka coal mine ventilation shaft, which as of 2015 was the closest Ukrainian position to the city of Donetsk, a few miles from what separatists claim is the capital their. . The Ukrainian general staff said the tank attacks did not push its troops out of Avdiivka, but noted that it was a partial success, in a possible acknowledgment of the loss of the strategic and politically important post. “For days in a row now, the enemy has not given up its offensive efforts,” Ukrainian military commander of Avdiivka, Vitaliy Barabash, told Radio Liberty on Wednesday. “Everywhere is hit by artillery and air force” bombs. Soldiers representing the Donetsk People’s Republic fire a weapon on the front line near Avdiivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region in June.Credit…Alessandro Guerra/EPA, via Shutterstock The Russian military has also fired on the city with rockets that spray flammable material into the air and then ignite it, creating a giant fireball. The Russian thermobaric missile system, nicknamed Heatwave, is one of the most destructive weapons in Russia’s arsenal. “People are living in horrible, inhumane conditions,” Mr Barabash said. He said about 2,000 civilians remained in Avdiivka from a pre-invasion population of about 20,000. “Every day, the city is bombed about 20 times,” he said. Overall, Russia’s campaign in the Donbass has scaled back in recent weeks after the appearance on the battlefield of the US HIMARS, the long-range missile launch system used to strike ammunition depots behind Russian lines, and the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive around from the southern city of Kherson, according to Serhiy Grabskiy, a former Ukrainian army colonel and war commentator for Ukrainian media. Russia has diverted about 10,000 troops from the Sloviansk offensive to defend the south, he said. “Ukrainian forces have established quite effective defensive positions in Donbas in recent years,” Mr. Grabsky said in a telephone interview. The Russians “are frankly stuck in Donbass now without real success,” he said. “And they have a new headache: the south, which from the perspective of the Ukrainian armed forces is a more important strategic objective.”
title: “Latest Russia Ukraine War News Live Updates " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-02” author: “David Ospina”
DRUZKIVKA, Ukraine — The long-standing strongholds of Ukraine’s defenses in the east have come under intense attack in recent days, according to the Ukrainian military and Western military analysts. That Ukrainian soldiers still hold the maze of trenches and fortifications in two suburban towns, Avdiivka and Pisky, on the edge of Donetsk city, is a testament to the value of their dug-in positions in the east. Ukraine’s strong defensive positions have slowed the Russian army’s advance, with only two major cities, Sievierodonetsk and Lysychansk, and a few dozen miles of land changing hands, despite thousands of soldiers killed on both sides. It was not clear exactly why attacks on the fortifications have intensified, and the attacks are an exception to a general decline in Russian attacks in the eastern Donbas region, which has been the focus of the war for months. Some military analysts believe the relative calm was partly a result of Russian forces being diverted south to repel a Ukrainian counterattack there. The two cities, mostly ruined and destroyed, are not great prizes to be won, but if they fall, it could facilitate Russian advances towards the three major cities in the Donetsk region that remain under Ukrainian control, Bakhmut, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. The Ukrainian military and paramilitary groups built the fortifications in the two cities during eight years of low-intensity war following Russia’s 2014 military intervention in Ukraine to prop up a separatist region, the Donetsk People’s Republic. Now they are among the easternmost places of Ukraine. Navigating through abandoned factories and mines, exploiting root cellars in country houses and using swamps as natural barriers, the defense lines there have withstood countless attacks. After failing to encircle Avdiivka, Russia launched direct tank attacks this week, according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank. The institute noted Russian propaganda videos suggesting Russian troops had overrun a position at the Butiyka coal mine ventilation shaft, which as of 2015 was the closest Ukrainian position to the city of Donetsk, a few miles from what separatists claim is the capital their. . The Ukrainian general staff said the tank attacks did not push its troops out of Avdiivka, but noted that it was a partial success, in a possible acknowledgment of the loss of the strategic and politically important post. “For days in a row now, the enemy has not given up its offensive efforts,” Ukrainian military commander of Avdiivka, Vitaliy Barabash, told Radio Liberty on Wednesday. “Everywhere is hit by artillery and air force” bombs. Soldiers representing the Donetsk People’s Republic fire a weapon on the front line near Avdiivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region in June.Credit…Alessandro Guerra/EPA, via Shutterstock The Russian military has also fired on the city with rockets that spray flammable material into the air and then ignite it, creating a giant fireball. The Russian thermobaric missile system, nicknamed Heatwave, is one of the most destructive weapons in Russia’s arsenal. “People are living in horrible, inhumane conditions,” Mr Barabash said. He said about 2,000 civilians remained in Avdiivka from a pre-invasion population of about 20,000. “Every day, the city is bombed about 20 times,” he said. Overall, Russia’s campaign in the Donbass has scaled back in recent weeks after the appearance on the battlefield of the US HIMARS, the long-range missile launch system used to strike ammunition depots behind Russian lines, and the start of Ukraine’s counteroffensive around from the southern city of Kherson, according to Serhiy Grabskiy, a former Ukrainian army colonel and war commentator for Ukrainian media. Russia has diverted about 10,000 troops from the Sloviansk offensive to defend the south, he said. “Ukrainian forces have established quite effective defensive positions in Donbas in recent years,” Mr. Grabsky said in a telephone interview. The Russians “are frankly stuck in Donbass now without real success,” he said. “And they have a new headache: the south, which from the perspective of the Ukrainian armed forces is a more important strategic objective.”
title: “Latest Russia Ukraine War News Live Updates " ShowToc: true date: “2022-11-15” author: “Ann Teichmann”
MYKOLAIV, Ukraine — The city of Mykolaiv emerged Monday from a 54-hour lockdown during which officers went door-to-door looking for collaborators who officials say are responsible for helping Russian forces locate targets for the missiles that strike the city daily. city. The governor of the Mykolaiv region, Vitaly Kim, declared the dramatic operation — which sealed off the city, preventing residents from entering or leaving — a success. Five people were arrested, he said, and several weapons and communication devices were seized, although he did not give details. “Sorry for the inconvenience over the weekend, but it was worth it,” Mr Kim said in a video on Monday morning. He added, “No Russian speakers were shot.” The need to root out collaborators, according to Mr. Kim, was particularly acute in Mykolaiv. Few places in Ukraine have experienced the kind of sustained barrage of Russian fire as this city on the southern coast. Since the war began almost five and a half months ago, there have been only twenty days without violence. The attacks have destroyed about 1,200 houses and apartment buildings, according to the city’s mayor, Oleksandr Senkevych. Since the start of the war, he said, 132 residents have been killed and more than 619 injured in Russian attacks. Amid the devastation, some residents said the partner checks brought some comfort, despite the inconvenience. “It calmed us down a bit,” said Valentina Hontarenko, 74, who was at a stand selling kvas, a popular drink made from fermented bread. “They asked about our connections with Russia. We have none.” During the lockdown, officers went door-to-door and stopped people on the street, checking their documents and going through their phones for evidence that they might be coordinating with Russian forces. Video of the operation released by local authorities shows officers checking computers and text messages on phones. In a screenshot of a mobile phone message exchange – the authenticity of which could not be confirmed – someone using the pseudonym Mykolaiv People’s Republic describes an area of the city as full of military equipment and soldiers. The answer: “Send the coordinates.” A sign in Mykolaiv read “Kherson stay in touch”, rallying support for residents of the southern city of Kherson, which is currently under Russian occupation. Credit…Daniel Berehulak for The New York Times Mykolaiv is a largely Russian-speaking city with a population of nearly 500,000 before the war. It borders the Kherson region, which is largely occupied by Russian forces. That area is now the site of daily skirmishes as Ukrainian forces mount a counteroffensive aimed at pushing Russian troops eastward over the Dnipro River. Part of Ukraine’s defense lines run through the Mykolayiv region, and Ukrainian troops often come to the city on rotation or for a break from the front lines. Although most of the Russian artillery cannot reach Mykolaiv, Russian forces have hit it with long-range rockets. For weeks, Mr. Kim has warned of threats coming from collaborators, Russian-sympathetic citizens who help its military by providing information on the locations of Ukrainian troops. But he released few details, and it’s unclear how pernicious the problem is. Before this weekend’s lockdown, only a handful of people had been arrested on suspicion of aiding the enemy. Last month, the hugely popular Mr Kim posted a message to his roughly 677,000 Telegram followers, offering a $100 reward for any information leading to the arrest of an associate of his. “Help save Mykolaiv from rockets,” he wrote. The weekend lockdown was part of that effort. Mykolaiv residents described the inspections by law enforcement as non-confrontational, though they may make some political libertarians in Western countries cringe. “It wasn’t very comfortable,” said a 35-year-old woman named Yelena, who was queuing with her husband to collect water from a truck. “They came and checked everything — passports, phones. They looked at who lived where.” He added: “What to fear if all is well?”
