Letter to a married couple from Pokrovsk

It's common for journalists who go to war zones to develop a special bond with one of the cities in the conflict. It's usually an irrational, instinctive choice, often linked to a remarkable experience they had there.

"You don't notice the vibra"Pokrovsk is special... bombs are falling here, the front line is 40 kilometers away, but people drive around listening to music at full volume." That was Olha, a journalist from Kyiv, during those days. fixer from the ARA, who warned me. The first time I visited this Ukrainian city in DonbasFrom the start of the Russian invasion, Pokrovsk, a strategic center for Zelensky's army, had acquired a peculiar aura: the streets were filled with soldiers coming and going from the front; some bridges were already prepared to be detonated should the enemy arrive; everyone knew perfectly well the sound a bomb makes when it explodes nearby; but people pretended to forget that the war was relentlessly advancing toward the city. One night during the bombing raids, some soldiers opened bottles of whiskey and drank them together in an apartment because that way the Russian bombs seemed less intimidating and it was easier for them to fall asleep afterward. They said it was a common practice in many homes during the early hours of the morning. in which Putin's army punished them with imperial rage.

It's also common for journalists to see how cities at war disappear.

The second time I was in Pokrovsk, the hotel and restaurant where I had slept and dined every night the previous year were gone: a Russian missile had blown them up. The third time, what was gone was a shopping center frequented by military personnel and journalists: also destroyed by a Kremlin missile. On the last trip to Ukraine, last SeptemberUkrainian soldiers themselves advised journalists against approaching Pokrovsk: the enemy was at the gates and the sky was full of killer drones. The city had become a front line.

Images coming in today from Pokrovsk show an unrecognizable landscape: bombed to exhaustion, full of skeletal buildings, devoid of life, without music. This week a video went viral Russian soldiers entering the ghost town on motorcycles. It is expected that, in the coming days, Moscow's troops will declare victory over Pokrovsk. It will be the largest Ukrainian city captured since 2023, a symbolically important year for Kyiv. It will be yet another Ukrainian city ravaged by war. Pokrovsk had already witnessed World War I, the Russian Civil War, and World War II, during which it was occupied by Nazi troops.

Pokrovsk, in fact, hasn't always been called Pokrovsk. Until 1934, it was called Grishino. Then it was called Krasnoarmeisk. In May 2016, with the Donbas War already underway, Ukraine renamed it as part of the country's express decommunization processThe name Pokrovsk evokes the Virgin's protection. Putin is already referring to it again as Krasnoarmeisk, which evokes an even more divine figure for him: the Red Army.

Can what's left of Pokrovsk even be called a city? Before the invasion, some 60,000 people lived there. Now, little more than a thousand civilians remain.

The imminent fall of Pokrovsk makes me think, above all, of a couple I met there. in a basement on Three Kings' Night 2024. Outside, bombs were falling so close that the walls, windows, and ground trembled. The couple, around sixty years old, invited frightened people into their home when the Russian attack ended. They offered coffee, nuts, and cookies. I remember the apartment: humble, but tidy, polished, lovingly cared for. I remember the couple's tenderness: they explained that their daughters had fled the city when the invasion began, that they wanted them to flee too, but that they wouldn't because their whole life was in Pokrovsk. I also remember a phrase the man said to try to calm the people frightened by the war: "Come on, let's tell each other some funny stories." Then, He turned on the television, put on a music program, and turned up the volume.

The next day I lost the note with their phone number. It's impossible not to wonder where they are now. At best, they've probably left home. Wars are full of Pokrovsks..

I write to Commander Baloo via WhatsApp. We met at the now-gone shopping center in Pokrovsk. He's been mobilized to another point on the Donbas front now.

—Do you follow the news from Pokrovsk?

—Yes... the Russians have us almost surrounded and the city is badly destroyed. It's very sad.

—How are you?

—So-so... Currently studying and working on the use of ground drones.

—This is new, isn't it?

—More or less. We want to start using them more on the battlefield.

The war doesn't stop.