Kramatorsk, eastern Ukraine
How far can a lie go? At what point does the truth hit somebody so hard that the lies drop away?
These are not the questions I thought I’d be asking as I stumbled from the car, legs unsteady after two days of driving across Ukraine. Ahead, hundreds of people were queuing for aid boxes filled with canned food in the biting February chill.
The howl of the air-raid siren came as such a shock I almost fell face first on to the black ice. “Ah, shit,” we all seemed to exclaim in unison. “Really? We just fucking arrived.”
Ahead of us, the people didn’t seem to move. No panic. No dive for cover. Some glanced up at the sky. But the expressions on their faces stayed the same. The nonchalance many Ukrainians show to sirens can be confusing for fresh-faced outsiders. Many don’t bother running to a shelter.
This was understandable in Kyiv, where the skies are well defended and far from the frontline. “You have more chance of being killed in a car accident here than a Russian bomb” was the glib mantra of other correspondents propping up bars in the capital.
But here, some 500km east of Kyiv, those sirens meant something else. The old industrial city of Kramatorsk is a key logistics hub for the largest battle in Europe since Berlin fell to the Red Army in 1945. The puckered shell of Bakhmut, President Zelensky’s “fortress city”, is only 25km away as the crow flies – about 12 seconds for a cruise missile.
Suppressing an urge to cower in the nearest hole, I pushed towards the crowd with my translator, looking for anyone willing to speak to us.
What I found were some of the most puzzling interviews I’ve ever conducted. The city was under fire, but almost no one in the crowd seemed angry at the Russians for bombing them. The war was not just happening on their doorstep; it had been fought and won in their minds.
When asked how she felt about what was going on, one pensioner we spoke to called Alla could not contain her anger. “People in Kyiv are always saying we need to fight to reclaim every bit of land. But they don’t feel this war. We are going to sleep and don’t know whether we will wake up or not. We are waiting for the negotiations.”
A former plumber nearby refused to give his name but lambasted officials in Kyiv for carrying on fighting. “Why do we need this war? This is a stupid war. This war has no sense. It’s better for officials to sit on the negotiating table and make an agreement.”
When asked whether Ukraine should cede territories to Russia – including the one they were in – both dodged the question.
“Translate this for the Englishman,” one 63-year-old former truck driver called Anatoly said. “This is a stupid war. It’s a brothers’ war.”
Anatoly said his son is fighting on the frontline. But strangely, he refused to say where, or who with, raising suspicions that he could be fighting on the side of pro-Russian separatist groups.
When I asked if the city was divided along pro-Russia and pro-Ukraine lines, he was cryptic. “Everyone in the city thinks so. But they will not tell you that,” before walking away.
“Fucking waiters! They are waiting for Russia,” my translator exclaimed as we walked away. This burly man from western Ukraine was normally calm and collected. But he was suddenly seething.
“I can hear it in what they say. They are crazy. Their minds are fucked by propaganda on TV. They are being blown up by Russia, but they still think Ukraine is bad – that we are Nazis. They are mad. What is this ‘Brothers’ War’? We are being murdered.”
Before the war, Kramatorsk was a primarily Russian-speaking city. Stalin had sent tens of thousands of Russian proletariat there to industrialise the coal-rich region. Generations on, many still thought fondly of the old USSR.
About half of the city’s 150,000 population fled when the full-scale invasion started. Those who remained did so out of stubbornness, a lack of options elsewhere or warmth towards the invaders.
We are used to reading how disinformation and fake news have been weaponised by organisations and hostile states to exploit fissures in our societies – Trump, Brexit, QAnon, Covid-19 deniers, the so-called culture war… the list goes on.
I have reported on several lesser-known parts of this new age of information warfare: how armies of trolls pushed genocidal rhetoric during Ethiopia’s civil war; how Russia spread lies about secret mass graves left by French soldiers in Mali. But this was something else.
“This is a stupid war. It’s a brother’s war.”
There are reminders of the war all around. Hundreds of graves in the city’s cemeteries were marked only with numbers, bombed-out buildings and bits of everyday life – a sports T-shirt, a kitsch night robe – blown into the surrounding trees like plastic bags snagged in the branches after a sudden gust of wind.
One strike last year hit a group of more than a thousand refugees outside Kramatorsk railway station, leaving a trail of human debris and bloodied suitcases across the square.
But somehow, many of the locals who remained clearly thought Russia was coming to save them – that the real enemies were the Ukrainians manning the air-defence systems protecting them or handing out aid. How could this be?
Part of the answer was obvious. Every night since the conflict started in 2014, Russian state news has beamed right into their living rooms, giving them the narrative Putin wanted them to hear. The story probably repeated itself when the people of Kramatorsk logged in to Facebook.
A few minutes after my translator’s outburst, an old man walked over and talked softly. He was hard to hear over the sirens. “You’re Western journalists?” He gave his name as Yuri and explained that he was a retired train driver who had just returned from being evacuated in western Ukraine.
“My son is 37. He is fighting in the airborne forces,” he says, eyes watering from emotion or cold. “Many people here, they are pro-Russia. Most people here, they support Russia. Their sons are fighting for the Donetsk People’s Republic [a separatist movement],” Yuri said.
“Even my neighbours, I know people who still support Russia. I hate them. I hate them all. Ask Zelensky to evacuate this place and lock it down. Ask him to bomb everything. Kill all of them. Give the order.”
Not knowing what to make of any of this, we headed to a small shopping centre to buy supplies. Dozens of men and women in combat fatigues were milling around, stocking up – from what I could see – mainly on the delights of cigarettes and Coca-Cola.
Most of the store owners refused to speak to us. But one woman called Leena did. She had a jewellery stand in the shopping centre’s foyer. Even though half the city had fled, she said business was booming. Soldiers kept coming to her for wedding rings for their girlfriends back home or cheap silver crosses to hang around their own necks.
“Maybe, they believe it might save them,” she said.
“Even my neighbours, I know people who still support Russia. I hate them… Ask Zelensky to evacuate this place and lock it down. Ask him to bomb everything. Kill all of them. Give the order.”
A large Ukrainian soldier saw us standing next to the jewellery stall and ambled over, grinning. He introduced himself as Alexander. He explained that he had the unenviable task of driving fuel trucks into Bakhmut at random times at night under fire to keep the Ukrainian war machine ticking along.
He was about to set off again that evening and insisted on buying us a coffee. AC/DC’s ‘Highway to Hell’ started playing on the shopping centre’s sound system as he spoke, making everyone laugh. But when we asked Alexander about what we had heard earlier from the old man, his tone became more serious and hushed.
“We try not to interact with the people who stay. There are lots of waiters. People who want Russia to win. Last month, me and some other soldiers found men trying to send the location of air-defence systems to the RF [Russian Federation],” Alexander said.
I could understand how Russian propaganda could screw with someone’s loyalties to Kyiv. But can a lie go that far – that you would willingly help an invading force blow up the very air-defence system protecting you and your family?
That evening we decided to go to the only decent restaurant still open in town, Ria Lounge Bar. Almost everything else in Kramatorsk closed when the war started. But the pizza joint’s owners decided to hell with it.
They boarded up the windows to protect customers from flying glass. From the outside, it looked like any other closed-up business. But on the inside, it was a hive of activity. An institution on the eastern front – a hub for aid workers, journalists and soldiers perched on the edge of the invasion.
I took a photo for my partner to show we were safe and finally eating a decent plate of food. As I did, a stern waiter told me to delete the image immediately. He didn’t want an image of the place getting out. He didn’t want the Russian bomb crews to know where to shoot.
On the evening of 27 June, a Russian missile crashed into Ria Lounge Bar, killing 11 people, including 14-year-old twins, Yuliya and Anna Aksenchenko, and the famed Ukrainian writer, Victoria Amelina.
The authorities say they have arrested a Ukrainian man accused of helping Russia direct the missile.
Will Brown’s reporting in Ukraine was supported by the Cecil King Memorial Foundation.