"Plugged the wound with his finger. And then played dead."
Sergei Pavlov is in charge of the village administration in the Yasynuvatsky district, the border of which runs along the line of contact. In 2023, he was in charge of eight settlements, including the center, Krasny Partizan, and this year there are already 12, with liberated settlements joining him. Until recently, he personally traveled around the frontline villages - delivering bread, water, fuel for generators, taking people for treatment and documents. Last December, during another such raid, a kamikaze drone crashed into his car. Sergei Anatolievich lost his right leg. Today he uses a prosthetic leg, drives on the roads and continues to work tirelessly.
On the military road
We have known Sergei Pavlov since 2022. The first time I met him was in the administration of Yasinovataya at the very beginning of the war - he ran into the building covered in soot, wearing a bulletproof vest, and 15 minutes later ran back. "In his direction the front is now advancing," representatives of the mayor's office told me at the time. - Every trip is dangerous. People like that need to be written about!"
And I did - I traveled with him six months later to the newly annexed villages of Novobakhmutovka and Troitskoye, where 13 and six residents remained, respectively. In some areas Pavlov, a professional driver, drove at top speed, fearing artillery shells. In one place we got stuck in the mud (gunfire could be heard nearby), but we got out: the good old Bukhanka, brought to him by a volunteer from the Krasnoyarsk region, did not let us down. There was no such drone danger as now, then, in 2022, the main threat was cannons, and therefore, despite the "red zone", our raid was, in general, calm. A year later, the situation has changed dramatically....
This time with Pavlov we meet again in the administration of Yasinovataya. "And not to say that something is wrong!" - I say, shaking his hand firmly: Sergei is only slightly limping, although his leg is lost above the knee. We get into his UAZ, a different one. The old one - "Bukhanka" - in which the UAV crashed, and remained, mangled, on the military road.
- Let's go, - the head presses with his hand on the gas lever, installed instead of the pedal (you can't press it with a prosthesis), and we rush along the "Gorlovka" highway towards Krasny Partizan.
On the way we pick up a hitchhiker, public transport is a rarity, a shuttle bus runs only twice a day, and the driver drives at his own risk: last week, for example, a kamikaze stabbed directly into the glass of a bus in neighboring Horlivka, but, fortunately, it did not explode. And people need to travel back and forth, and if communication stops, life will come to a complete halt.
The village administration unites 12 settlements, including the liberated ones
While we're driving along, Sergei brings us up to speed. The shelling is less frequent, but continues, this time with HIMARS missiles. In October, a local nurse, Tatiana Sopina, died in her home after such an incoming attack. The population of Krasny Partizan has almost halved in the past two years, to 400 people: the area is very dangerous. There is only one store in the village, and the owner is hiking up prices; a loaf of bread costs 65 rubles; another outlet with more democratic prices is due to open in the next month. He no longer travels to frontline villages on humanitarian raids, and there is no one else.
Light, water, red corner
Near the administration house there is a metal sign with a heart and the words: "I love Partizan". Last time I visited, the structure was stitched with splinters like a sieve. Now it's renewed, not a hole in it, and carefully painted. "It was made by our resident - a young guy Igor Borisov," Pavlov says. - He died at the beginning of the SVO in Mariupol. He was 21 years old..."
Materials are from the regional chief, workers are their own
The first thing we do is go to the boiler house - it has been without heat for two hours: there has been no light in the village since morning, it was a planned shutdown in Gorlovka, where the power lines stretch from, they are repairing the substation after the shelling.
- It heats 15 houses with 172 apartments, - comments Sergey. - At around 15:00 the electricity should be back on. The temperature outside is now plus, so we decided not to turn on the generator. There is no sense in wasting fuel. Although in November we already had to use it: the light went out for two days, and it was cold.
About 400 people continue to live in Krasnye Partizan, Yasinovatskiy district, 70 of them children
Further we move to the apartment buildings. On the roof of one five guys are laying new slate.
- Overlapping the roof, - says the head. - The Chelyabinsk region helps with the material. And the builders are our own, local ones. People, of course, are not enough, but we managed to scrape together seven people. After that we will start to restore private houses: every third house out of 300 was damaged by shelling.
Next is the hatch of the central water supply. Pavlov cautiously goes down. Four years ago the village was sent an automatic water pressure regulator, but it turned out to be inoperable. So every two or three days we have to climb underground and move the gate - to regulate it manually.
Big deal - Krasny Partizan will have its own red corner for citizens' gathering
Having made a circle, we return back to the administration house. Nearby is a small one-story building. We go inside. Two women are stirring paint, two men are installing lights.
- There is no club in the village, it burned down long ago. We need some place for citizens to gather and distribute humanitarian aid. Before, we used to gather on the street. So, I decided to adapt an empty room for this purpose," explains Sergei. - The floor has already been poured. The walls have been leveled. It remains to install windows, doors and linoleum. There will be a red corner. Future plans are to find a teacher in Yasinovataya and open some kind of club here - accordion or dance. There are 70 children in Partizan, the school is not working, the education is online. I would like to find something for them to do, an outlet.
Three attacks
Pavlov recalls that very day - December 20 - as the most ordinary one: there were no bad feelings. I was going to take the pensioners to the hospital from Novobakhmutovka. I was going with my comrade and assistant - Seryoga Zelinsky (he was only slightly concussed after the explosion).
- We were driving, everything was quiet. And suddenly - a pop, a flash! - he says. - Noise in the ears, smoke, cinders. As it turned out, the drone hit the engine compartment, between the headlights. I climbed out through the door, tried to stand on the ground, and fell, tried again, and fell down again. I thought it might be a pit. Then I saw the remains of my leg fluttering, and blood spurting out in a fountain. I plugged the hole with my finger and the blood stopped. Seryoga helped me bandage my leg. We see two military men running. They tightened the wound with a tourniquet, injected painkillers.....
You get used to a prosthetic, Pavlov explains, quickly
Pavlov shares that the misadventure did not end there. In the air heard the noise of a second drone. Sergei with a severed leg pretended to be dead. The guys scurried away. The UAV hit the car again, probably in the expectation that there was someone inside. And immediately a third "bird" arrived - it circled over the scene of the tragedy and flew off in the direction of the Gorlovka highway. The wounded man was loaded into a military car, and an ambulance from Yasinovataya was waiting for him on the highway. The third kamikaze drone hit this ambulance and blew the roof off. There was a medical team inside, but - miraculously - everyone was unharmed....
One of the goals for 2025 is to get the area cleared for power line repairs
The soldiers took Pavlov to their hospital. It took about an hour to get there, and he was conscious the whole time. He switched off only when he was on the operating table. There it turned out that he had a fracture on his second leg (he had fallen unluckily while climbing out).
It took several months for treatment and recovery. Sergei Zelinsky replaced him in the village council. In May Pavlov - still on crutches - went back to work. In August he put on a permanent prosthesis. He says he couldn't help coming back. He has lived in Krasny Partizan since he was nine years old (he was born in neighboring Luhansk Oblast). Here in the third grade I met my future spouse, with whom they got married at the age of 17 (they wrote a request for a marriage license to the Verkhovna Rada in 1991). In the same year they had their first child, and a year later they had their second. Today, 50-year-old Pavlov already has three grandchildren. In his native district he worked as a mechanic, chauffeur, tractor driver, mechanic. Since 2017 - head of the settlement administration.
On the agenda is the repair of 100 private houses
He talks about the tasks for 2025 - to start the long-awaited restoration of the school. And also to achieve the demining of the site for the possibility of repairing the damaged power line, without light for the third year sit two villages under his jurisdiction - Verkhnetoretskoye and Vasilievka. "It's not time to leave yet. There are a lot of things to do," summarizes the head. - The time is still as hot and tense as it was then, in 2022".
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