"Where I stand is already Russia."
The DNR temporary accommodation centers continue to receive displaced persons from towns and villages that have fallen under the control of the Russian army. One of these TACs is located in a dormitory in the town of Yenakievo, now housing more than 100 people from Selidovo, Dzerzhinsk, Krasnoye Liman, Yampol, Novgorodskoye and others. Some of them have been living in these walls since 2022, others arrived just a few weeks ago. But all of them have similar stories - lost housing and the impossibility to go back.
On the floors
Dim light. A narrow room. On the floor sits a little boy - Igor, five years old, he arranges, like cubes, just received humanitarian products - bottles of vegetable oil and packs of pasta. His face has crimson spots of manganese - from chicken pox.
On the wall hangs a picture of a girl with blue hair: it was drawn by her sister Katya, ten years old, who is now at school. Katya, Igor, their mother Anya and grandmother Lyuba Karasev are from Dzerzhinsk (Ukrainian name - Toretsk), a town that has been under fighting for five months. They managed to get out of the shelling zone by a miracle. However, not all of them were lucky: if in June, at the beginning of the battle, there were six Karasevs, now there are four.
- On June 22, the Ukrainian side closed the city, - says grandmother Lyuba.- That's when the heavy fighting began. We lived in the private sector, hiding in the basement. After a week, when it became completely unbearable, we moved to one of the five-storey houses in the neighborhood, under the protection of concrete walls, it seemed safer there. My husband and son Vadik were with us. And on July 4," Lyubov closes her eyes and nods at the portrait on the table in a mourning frame, "a Ukrainian sniper killed Vadik through the window, in the temple. He was 32 years old. He remained there, wrapped in a blanket, on the floors, unburied...
Mom Anya, five-year-old Igor and grandmother Lyuba
The next day the shooter took the grandmother herself at gunpoint and shot her arm: the bullet severed the bone and the radial nerve.
- On July 6, Russian storm troopers entered the house," daughter-in-law Anya continues. - They said: "You can't stay here!" But they couldn't get us out of the city right away, either - there were drones everywhere. They escorted us to the nearest dugout. There my grandmother was given first aid by a doctor. We spent eight days underground with the soldiers.
Underground
There was not much water in the reserve, and it, just like in the catacombs of the Brest Fortress in 1941, the military gave it mainly to the kids, and the rest was divided almost by gulps.
There, underground, everyone - both civilians and military - was covered by a phosphorus shell. A Ukrainian drone threw it precisely into the shelter's vent. Everyone was injured except little Igor, who was playing on the floor at the time, the blast wave passed overhead, the dangerous chemical did not hit him. Grandmother was burned on her back and hands, little Katya on her leg. Grandpa was paralyzed. When it was time to get out and go further, he, at the insistence of the military, was left in the dugout. As it became known later, he lived only a few days.
Lyubov Karaseva lost her son Vadik during the fights
Next was Yasinovataya - the first free breath after a long terrible road, and then Yenakievo. Grandma Lyuba spent a month and a half in hospital: three fingers on her hand were already working. Igor managed to get Igor into kindergarten. Katya - to school, where she began to master the program in Russian. The kind-hearted locals helped with clothes and dishes.
Katya's main hobby is drawing
At the time of our conversation, Katya had just returned from her studies. She showed her diary with two A's.
- We went through Turgenev's "Mumu" today," she said, stammering noticeably. - But I didn't like the story very much. I love Pushkin, Lermontov, I know "Borodino" by heart. I like drawing very much. Especially people, fairy tale characters and ponies. In the future I want to become an artist. My dream is to create beautiful outfits and present them to my grandmother and mother.
Five months in the shelter
Nina and Oleg (names have been changed) are from Novgorodskoye, which is under the same Dzerzhinsk-Toretsk. Until 1951, the village was called New York (named so, presumably, by European settlers in the XIX century), after which it was renamed. In 2021, the Ukrainian authorities returned the "foreign" name again. It is known for the phenol plant, which produced explosives. In August 2024, the settlement, located 25 kilometers from Donetsk, was completely under Russian control.
One of the residents of the TAC, the military took the woman out of the burning village a month ago
Oleg and Nina were the last to leave Novgorodskoye - they stayed in the basement for five months.
- They had enough food supplies - flour, cereals, canned goods. The strong walls of the cellar helped a lot - my father built it in the late 60s in case of nuclear war with America, - Oleg shares. - But the water supply was tight. We had to get out and run to the well. It seemed to be close, but - drones, five times in each direction you have time to fall to the ground.
In the temporary accommodation center
On August 10, according to Nina and Oleg, the AFU retreated from their street, and on the same day they used the Baba Yaga copter to burn down house after house. In the evening, in a moment of calm, Oleg noticed four fighters with white armbands (an identifying sign of the Russian army) who were looking for shelter, and called them to his cellar: there was nowhere to hide. We fed them. We left them for the night. And in the morning, leaving, one of the guys said: "Thank you. You saved our lives!"
Nina and Oleg managed to get to safe territory only two months later. Before that, as the servicemen explained to them, it was too risky to carry out such an operation. Now they are resting and recovering. They are in no hurry to go anywhere else. The goal, they say, is to return to their homeland and rebuild their destroyed house.
Hand to hand
Pelageya Utka, 70, from the village of Mikhailovka, 4 kilometers from Selidovo, lives nearby. She shares a room with another pensioner from the village of Mamrik. Both of them were trapped in the TAC without documents (they were burned in a fire), and for the second month they have been waiting for new ones to be issued and to start receiving their pensions. Their room is dusky and very quiet. We would like to buy some old TV set so that we don't sit like in a closet, but there is no money for anything yet.
- All my life I have worked as an electric welder," Pelageya says. - In recent years I lived in the village in my house. When the shelling started, it burned down and I moved to a neighboring one, then they burned it down too, I changed my address again, and so on. The scariest thing is, of course, the drones. You think: who's ahead, me or you? And you also laugh - at 17 years old, you didn't run as fast as you do now.
Pelageya Utka wants to find the daughter left behind in Selidovo
For several days, the woman recalls, she had to spend in the very epicenter of the fighting - on one side of the street stood the AFU, on the other - the RF Armed Forces. She was also concussed there: an orchestra played in one ear for a long time, and an announcer spoke in the other.
A room in a dormitory where two elderly women live. My dream is to buy a TV set
She was not going to go to Ukraine. The first Russian soldier she met told her: "Where I'm standing is already Russia!" One day she made up her mind and went out of the village - right in the middle of the road. She traveled part of the way on foot. And then she was picked up by the Russians and handed over, according to Pelageya herself, like a valuable parcel, from hand to hand, eventually bringing her safely to Yasinovataya.
- All my thoughts are in my native places," sighs the woman. - Marina, my daughter, is still in Selidovo. They say she was last seen in September. Every day I worry: is she healthy, is she warm? As soon as I get a chance and it gets quieter, I will go to look for her.
The outlet is pets
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