“NOWHERE TO GO BACK TO”
“There’s nowhere to go back to any more, but I want to go home, even if only to stones,” she sighed.
“We didn’t think our town would become a fortress.”
The grey-haired woman in a tracksuit breaks into tears as she describes how she left for Kyiv after months sleeping in the cellar, taking only a few clothes and leaving her precious family photos.
She declines to comment on Russia’s actions, adding: “What can I say? I want to go home. I’m not a politician.”
But Iryna Tkachenko, who worked as a shop assistant for 38 years, is strongly optimistic about Bakhmut’s future.
“The city is not there any more, but we believe they (the Ukrainians) will seize it back, they will chase (the Russians) out,” the 58-year-old said.
“Of course it’s a great shame that a lot of people think the opposite. It’s a great shame that they support” Russia, she added.
She said Russian forces had been removing locals from the conflict zone, including her brother and her sister-in-law, who stayed to work at a local children’s hospital.
“My younger brother and his wife have just been taken to the other side,” she said, referring to Russia.
“They went in (to work) to just safeguard the paperwork and worked as long as possible. Now they have been taken to Russia.”
“THINK WE’RE NAZIS”
Tkachenko is herself originally from Russia and still has family there.
“My relatives write to me now: ‘Everything will be fine. We are liberating you’,” she said.
“I never expected it could be like this, that 80 per cent (of Russians) now think we are enemies, that we are Nazis.”
The centre for Bakhmut dispalced is bustling and decorated with children’s drawings.
Its head, Lyudmyla Bondareva, says more than 6,500 people from the city are living in Kyiv and its surrounding region – among them 1,400 children.
Visitors say making ends meet is a struggle – mainly due to the high rents in Kyiv – but Lyudmyla also complained of a lack of food parcels from donor organisations.
Iryna said she sleeps on a mattress on the floor in a studio flat shared with three others. She has not received any food parcels since September.
“It’s hard but what can you do? That’s life.”
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