Berliner Boersenzeitung - 'Wiped off the face of the Earth': How Russia erased a Ukrainian city

EUR -
AED 4.293297
AFN 80.91457
ALL 97.787182
AMD 448.803483
ANG 2.093049
AOA 1072.008381
ARS 1467.658759
AUD 1.776114
AWG 2.107191
AZN 1.992006
BAM 1.954944
BBD 2.359867
BDT 142.117771
BGN 1.954944
BHD 0.440607
BIF 3482.375178
BMD 1.169038
BND 1.495545
BOB 8.093456
BRL 6.502078
BSD 1.168788
BTN 100.194128
BWP 15.604167
BYN 3.824825
BYR 22913.14706
BZD 2.347672
CAD 1.60129
CDF 3373.844424
CHF 0.929041
CLF 0.028934
CLP 1110.323824
CNY 8.380309
CNH 8.386416
COP 4691.84559
CRC 589.441902
CUC 1.169038
CUP 30.97951
CVE 110.21674
CZK 24.665189
DJF 208.128867
DKK 7.461795
DOP 70.379183
DZD 151.705573
EGP 57.855667
ERN 17.535572
ETB 161.021794
FJD 2.621276
FKP 0.865592
GBP 0.864385
GEL 3.16855
GGP 0.865592
GHS 12.154678
GIP 0.865592
GMD 83.590727
GNF 10140.559771
GTQ 8.978069
GYD 244.522931
HKD 9.175551
HNL 30.573613
HRK 7.533988
HTG 153.40283
HUF 399.5543
IDR 18972.787189
ILS 3.894218
IMP 0.865592
INR 100.333285
IQD 1531.029611
IRR 49231.122092
ISK 142.400984
JEP 0.865592
JMD 186.898163
JOD 0.828894
JPY 171.328427
KES 151.00388
KGS 102.232832
KHR 4685.948172
KMF 492.340851
KPW 1052.134304
KRW 1612.291055
KWD 0.357481
KYD 0.973974
KZT 610.66261
LAK 25187.970987
LBP 104720.046415
LKR 351.4761
LRD 234.337391
LSL 20.841074
LTL 3.451866
LVL 0.70714
LYD 6.314235
MAD 10.527091
MDL 19.787336
MGA 5177.732835
MKD 61.508068
MMK 2454.436143
MNT 4192.33892
MOP 9.450262
MRU 46.492642
MUR 53.144915
MVR 18.007558
MWK 2026.612611
MXN 21.771042
MYR 4.971339
MZN 74.772119
NAD 20.841074
NGN 1786.89858
NIO 43.011167
NOK 11.839321
NPR 160.310805
NZD 1.940152
OMR 0.449493
PAB 1.168788
PEN 4.144385
PGK 4.831884
PHP 66.037214
PKR 332.363469
PLN 4.253138
PYG 9058.033774
QAR 4.260834
RON 5.081579
RSD 117.098726
RUB 91.210062
RWF 1688.860502
SAR 4.384482
SBD 9.733981
SCR 16.480784
SDG 702.011685
SEK 11.176827
SGD 1.494854
SHP 0.91868
SLE 26.307644
SLL 24514.149043
SOS 667.907544
SRD 43.49699
STD 24196.728708
SVC 10.226522
SYP 15199.664267
SZL 20.847871
THB 37.929486
TJS 11.295954
TMT 4.103324
TND 3.419503
TOP 2.738009
TRY 46.93731
TTD 7.940523
TWD 34.1849
TZS 3029.973271
UAH 48.831018
UGX 4189.165697
USD 1.169038
UYU 47.259307
UZS 14766.534203
VES 133.584256
VND 30528.845862
VUV 139.872984
WST 3.045943
XAF 655.669903
XAG 0.030452
XAU 0.000348
XCD 3.159384
XDR 0.815443
XOF 655.669903
XPF 119.331742
YER 282.732293
ZAR 20.949587
ZMK 10522.750076
ZMW 27.056153
ZWL 376.429796
  • CMSC

    0.0900

    22.314

    +0.4%

  • CMSD

    0.0250

    22.285

    +0.11%

  • RBGPF

    0.0000

    69.04

    0%

  • SCS

    0.0400

    10.74

    +0.37%

  • RELX

    0.0300

    53

    +0.06%

  • RIO

    -0.1400

    59.33

    -0.24%

  • GSK

    0.1300

    41.45

    +0.31%

  • NGG

    0.2700

    71.48

    +0.38%

  • BP

    0.1750

    30.4

    +0.58%

  • BTI

    0.7150

    48.215

    +1.48%

  • BCC

    0.7900

    91.02

    +0.87%

  • JRI

    0.0200

    13.13

    +0.15%

  • VOD

    0.0100

    9.85

    +0.1%

  • BCE

    -0.0600

    22.445

    -0.27%

  • RYCEF

    0.1000

    12

    +0.83%

  • AZN

    -0.1200

    73.71

    -0.16%

'Wiped off the face of the Earth': How Russia erased a Ukrainian city
'Wiped off the face of the Earth': How Russia erased a Ukrainian city / Photo: Handout - Armed Forces of Ukraine/AFP

'Wiped off the face of the Earth': How Russia erased a Ukrainian city

"It barely exists anymore," said the mayor of Vovchansk, an industrial town razed by a Russian onslaught shocking even for the killing fields of eastern Ukraine.

Text size:

Vovchansk has no great history but its geography could not be more tragic. Just five kilometres (three miles) from the Russian border, drone footage from the Ukrainian military this summer shows a lunar landscape of ruins stretching for miles.

And it has got worse since.

"Ninety percent of the centre is flattened," said mayor Tamaz Gambarashvili, a towering man in uniform, who runs what is left of Vovchansk from the regional capital of Kharkiv, an hour and a half's drive away.

"The enemy continues its massive shelling," he added.

Six out of 10 of Vovchansk's buildings have been totally destroyed, with 18 percent partially ruined, according to analysis of satellite images by the independent open-source intelligence collective Bellingcat. But the destruction is much worse in the city centre, which has been levelled north of the Vovcha River.

AFP and Bellingcat joined forces to tell how, building by building, an entire city was wiped off the map in just a few weeks -- and to show the human toll it has taken.

The sheer pace of the destruction dwarfed that of even Bakhmut, the "meatgrinder" Donbas region city where some of the most brutal killing of the war has been done, a Ukrainian officer who fought in both cities told AFP.

"I was in Bakhmut, so I know how the battles unfolded there," Lieutenant Denys Yaroslavsky insisted.

"What took two or three months in Bakhmut happened in just two or three weeks in Vovchansk."

- Invaded, then freed -

Vovchansk had a population of about 20,000 before the war. It now lives only in the memories of the survivors who managed to flee.

Beyond its factories, the city had a "medical school, a technical college, seven schools and numerous kindergartens," Nelia Stryzhakova, the head of its library, told AFP in Kharkiv.

It even had a workshop that made "carriages for period films. We were even interesting, in our own way," insisted Stryzhakova, 61.

Add to that a regional hospital, rebuilt in 2017 with nearly 10 million euros ($10.8 million) of German aid, a church packed for religious feasts, and a vast hydraulic machinery plant. Once the town's economic lifeblood, its ruins are now being fought over by both armies.

Vovchansk was quickly occupied by the Russian army after it invaded Ukraine in February 2022, but was then retaken by Kyiv in a lightning counter attack that autumn.

Despite enduring regular Russian bombardment, it was relatively calm. Then something very different happened on May 10.

- Badly defended -

Exhausted after weeks of hard fighting 100 kilometres to the south, the Ukrainian 57th Brigade was regrouping near Vovchansk when one of its reconnaissance units noticed something strange.

"We spotted two Russian armoured troop carriers that had just crossed the border," recalled Lieutenant Yaroslavsky, who was leading the unit.

They were the advance guard of one of the most intense Russian offensives since the beginning of the war, with Moscow throwing several thousand soldiers at the city.

"There were no fortifications, no mines" to slow down their advance, Yaroslavsky said, still furious at the "negligence or corruption" that allowed this to happen.

Some "17,000 people lost their homes. Why? Because someone didn't build fortifications," fumed the 42-year-old officer.

"We control the city today, but what we control is a pile of rubble," he added bitterly.

President Volodymyr Zelensky cancelled an overseas trip to rush to Kharkiv, admitting that the Russian army had pushed between five and 10 kilometres into Ukraine.

The people of Vovchansk, meanwhile, were living a nightmare.

- 'Drones like mosquitoes' -

"The Russians started bombing," said Galyna Zharova, who lived at 16A Stepova Street -- an apartment building now reduced to ruins, as images analysed by Bellingcat and AFP confirmed.

"We were right on the front line. No one could come and get us out," added the 50-year-old, who now lives with her family in a university dormitory in Kharkiv.

"We went down to the cellar. All the buildings were burning. We were crammed into basements (for nearly four weeks) until June 3," her husband Viktor, 65, added.

Eventually, the couple decided to flee on foot. "Drones were flying around us like wasps, like mosquitoes," Galyna remembered. They walked for several kilometres before being rescued by Ukrainian volunteers.

"The city was beautiful. The people were beautiful. We had everything," sighed librarian Stryzhakova. "No one could have imagined that in just five days, we would be wiped off the face of the Earth."

The 125,000 books in the library she had run at 8 Tokhova Street went up in smoke.

More than half of the families in eastern Ukraine have relatives in Russia. In Vovchansk, before the war in the Donbas region began in 2014, people crossed the border daily to shop, with Russians flocking to the city's markets.

"There are many mixed families," said Stryzhakova. "Parents, children, we're all connected. And now we've become enemies. There's no other way to put it."

The Russian defence ministry did not respond to AFP's questions asking for its account of what happened in the city.

Mayor Gambarashvili, who was hit in the leg by shrapnel as he oversaw the city's evacuation, shook his head when asked to estimate the number of civilian casualties.

Dozens, no doubt. Perhaps more. There were still around 4,000 people in Vovchansk on May 10, mostly older people, since most families with children had been evacuated months earlier.

- Families divided by war -

Kira Dzhafarova, 57, believes her mother, Valentina Radionova, who had lived at 40 Dukhovna Street in a small house with a charming garden, is likely dead.

Their last phone conversation was on May 17. "At 85, I'm not going anywhere," her mother insisted. Satellite images and witnesses have since confirmed that the house was completely destroyed.

"Since then I know it's over," sighed Kira, who provided DNA for identification, if and when the fighting ends.

In a particularly cruel irony, her mother, a Russian national, had moved to Vovchansk so she could be equidistant between her two children, who had fallen out.

Kira has lived in Kharkiv for 35 years and became officially Ukrainian two years ago. Her older brother, who she believes supports Russian President Vladimir Putin, remained in Belgorod, the family's hometown and the first big Russian city on the other side of the border.

Kira, a psychiatrist, now only refers to him as her "former brother".

AFP was unable to contact him directly.

Volodymyr Zymovsky, 70, is also missing. On May 16, he decided to flee the bombardment in a car with his 83-year-old mother, his wife Raisa, and a neighbour. Zymovsky and his mother were both shot dead, "most likely by a Russian sniper", Raisa said.

Amid the hail of bullets, the 59-year-old paediatric nurse had barely got out of the car when she was grabbed by Russian soldiers and held for two days. She managed to escape, hid in a neighbour's cellar for a night, and eventually fled through the forest.

She recounted her harrowing odyssey in a calm, measured voice. One thing alone seems to matter to her now: finding the bodies of her husband and mother-in-law and giving them a proper burial.

- 'They took my son' -

A rumour has circulated among the survivors that the bodies that littered the streets of Vovchansk for days were thrown into a mass grave. Where and by whom, no one knows.

A handful of civilians still remain in Vovchansk. Oleksandre Garlychev, 70, claims to have seen at least three when he returned to his former apartment on a bicycle in mid-September to retrieve belongings.

Garlychev lived at 10A Rubezhanskaya Street, in a southern part of the city that was relatively spared. He only left on August 10.

Vovchansk's survivors -- and even a few of its officials -- quietly wonder whether it will ever be rebuilt given its proximity to the border, regardless of how the war ends.

Asked whether she could ever forgive her husband's killer, Raisa Zymovska fell silent for a long time. Then, in a whisper, she replied: "I don't know, I really don't. As a Christian, yes, but as a human being... What can I say?"

As for the librarian Stryzhakova, she can no longer bring herself to open a Russian book, even the classics, since her only son Pavlo was killed in the Battle of Bakhmut.

"I know that literature is not to blame, but Russia, all of it disgusts me. They took my son, it's personal."

(O.Joost--BBZ)