'Bomb hit my home': Life with no water and no power in Ukraine's Druzhkivka under constant attacks
An elderly couple is evacuated from Druzhkivka, 13 km from where fighting is ongoing (photo: screenshot from RBC-Ukraine report)
Constant strikes with KABs (guided aerial bombs), no electricity, and only one pharmacy for the entire city. Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region is under enemy attack, but thousands of people still do not want to leave.
RBC-Ukraine went with a crew of White Angels (Ukrainian police evacuation unit) to see how evacuation under fire takes place and why it is so difficult to decide to leave home.
Key points:
- City under fire: About 12,000 people remain in Druzhkivka, including more than 30 children. The main threat now is destructive guided aerial bombs (KABs).
- Life in ruins: Gas supply has been restored in the city, but there is no electricity or water. Only one pharmacy is working, and ambulances often cannot respond to calls.
- Work under fire: Russians deliberately hunt evacuation vehicles. Over the past three months, Russian forces destroyed or damaged five emergency service vehicles.
- Psychology of survival: Many elderly people refuse to leave due to fear of the unknown, choosing to stay in half-destroyed homes and live on the edge of human limits.
- Point of no return: For most, the decision to leave becomes real only when home turns into ruins. Evacuation usually goes through Kramatorsk (a city in eastern Ukraine), where temporary shelters are set up.
Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region is almost empty (photo: screenshot from RBC-Ukraine report)
Russia does not stop attempts to fully capture the Donetsk region. On the diplomatic front, the Kremlin says it will end the war if Ukraine itself gives up the Donetsk and Luhansk regions to Russia. Meanwhile, on the front line, the so-called Russian creeping offensive continues.
The Russian army captures meters of land with great difficulty. Each occupied village costs thousands of losses for Russian troops. And since the Kremlin can afford to spend huge human resources without consequences, the front line slowly but still moves along settlements.
Sooner or later, Ukrainians living near the frontline face a dilemma — leave their hometown or stay and hope Russian forces are stopped.
Fighting on the outskirts of cities and villages can last for months. During this time, few residents who remain gradually lose everything. In small towns and villages, it becomes difficult to buy food and medicine. Gas, water, heating, and electricity gradually disappear.
Today, this is how, among others, the small city of Druzhkivka in the Donetsk region lives. The front line runs 13 km from the first city streets, so locals are under regular attack. Various services have come here several times to evacuate people, and each time it becomes harder to take residents out.
A man and a woman are evacuated from Druzhkivka — that day, a KAB hit their home (photo: screenshot from RBC-Ukraine report)
The closer the fighting, the fewer people remain in the city, but those who stay hold on to their homes until there is nothing left to hold on to. RBC-Ukraine reporters went with a special unit of the National Police White Angels to Druzhkivka to see how the evacuation takes place.
About 12,000 people
Druzhkivka looks gloomy and grey. In the background, familiar to locals, military equipment hums, and a bit farther, explosions can be heard. Residents have long learned to distinguish arrivals and outgoing fire (incoming and outgoing attacks).
Air raid alert here, like in other settlements near the frontline, sounds after the attack, not before it. Those who remain move quickly around the city, heads down. The route is simple — pharmacy, only one left in the city, grocery store, and back home.
About 12,000 people live in Druzhkivka today. Around 30 of them are children. Police evacuation unit, White Angels, like other evacuation teams, first of all look for families with children. Getting them out of these conditions is a priority. Recently, Russian forces have increasingly used aerial bombs to strike Druzhkivka. They are not accurate, but explosions are powerful and destructive — exactly what the Russians need.
"Recently, Druzhkivka has been under enemy air attacks. The enemy carries out airstrikes with guided aerial bombs on the city, on civilian homes, and on infrastructure. Gas supply has been restored in the city, but there is no electricity or water," says Head of the evacuation operations department of the National Police in the Donetsk region, Hennadii Yudin.
In addition to residents and their homes, Russians also target evacuation vehicles. Over three months — from October to December — Russian forces took out five vehicles. Some were restored, and today we are driving around the city in one of them, picking up people.
Hennadii Yudin (photo: screenshot from RBC-Ukraine report)
From the car window, Druzhkivka passes by quickly, but some scenes can be captured. For example, a destroyed street with the telling name Friendship Street. No intact houses remain there — only piles of bricks, glass, and wooden beams. Russians attacked Friendship with artillery and then finished it with KABs. On asphalt, where it still exists, there are scattered shrapnel marks in the shape of rays. Behind them — craters.
The first people we picked up had lost their homes the day before. They are both middle-aged couples, sitting in a distribution center surrounded by their belongings. Everything fits into a few large bags. Blankets, jackets, winter sweaters, some dishes — everything they managed to save from the house that literally collapsed before their eyes.
While the woman tries to understand who came for them and why exactly White Angels unit came, the man silently looks at the wall. Later, we were told he was in shock.
– We will take you today, why not?
– Yes?
– Yes, the car is already here. What difference does it make?
– I don't know, we already arranged with others.
– Let's go! You still don't know what will happen here.
In the evacuation car, a woman points at the window and says that in the morning, a KAB hit the city center. We look out and see ruins — these are old ruins, a strike that happened a few weeks earlier. Such ruins are everywhere.
Streets of Druzhkivka are almost entirely in ruins (photo: screenshot from RBC-Ukraine report)
– It hit the center of Druzhkivka?
– There, opposite the factory.
– Opposite factory, they say, a KAB hit. People were killed. Just now.
Next stop is a private house made of red brick. People with bags are already standing in the yard. Seeing the car, they wave at us. While things are being loaded, a woman who lives here agrees to talk. She answers questions calmly, even somewhat phlegmatically. She seems to have already made her decision and accepted it.
– Do you know where you will go?
– Yes, to Ivano-Frankivsk (city in western Ukraine). The situation has worsened since the New Year.
– I was told there is only one pharmacy working here.
– In the square, it seems, only one is left now. And ambulances no longer work.
We drive on and notice that people continue to live in houses even after strikes. As long as there are at least a few walls, they will board them up with plywood and cover them with drywall. Some refuse to leave at all, and reasons vary. Some have sick relatives who cannot be transported. Some believe they will not notice occupation, and some are waiting for it.
A resident of Druzhkivka scoops water from a puddle (photo: screenshot from RBC-Ukraine report)
We stop for coffee and get out of the car. Around is a typical panel housing district. What is not typical is that there are almost no panel buildings left. Some are destroyed, others are full of holes, with broken windows and black marks from fires.
From one of such buildings, an old man comes out with a bucket and a scoop, walks to the puddle, and scoops water from it. And most disturbing in this picture is that he will most likely refuse evacuation. Because living like this, for him as for many here, is not as scary as going into uncertainty.
Point of no return
People taken from Druzhkivka are first brought to Kramatorsk (a city in eastern Ukraine). There is an Evacuation point — a place where people are temporarily accommodated until their further route is determined. Inside, there are spacious halls with beds, places to charge devices, tables with chairs, and a mobile kitchen.
We enter the hall, and it is almost empty — a group of people was taken away a few days earlier. In the center of the room, an elderly woman sits on a bed. She is clearly cold, although it is warm inside — she is wearing several sweaters, a green jacket, and a bright red scarf. On her head are two braids decorated with identical green and pink hair ties. There is something almost childlike and touching in her appearance.
– A bomb hit my home. I was sitting in the kitchen, and suddenly I was thrown back. Everything in the kitchen started flying. I was injured all over, blood started flowing here, I had a cut here, here too, it has already healed, see? And exactly one minute later, another strike hit from the other side, and I ended up as if trapped between two explosions.
An elderly woman tells about how her home was destroyed by Russians (photo: screenshot from RBC-Ukraine report)
While telling this, the woman touches her face, showing where there was blood and where shrapnel had injured her skin. She wants to speak out. She looks at us and at people who sometimes enter the hall, as if inviting everyone into her story. She has lost her home, and wherever she is taken now, this loss cannot be repaired.
– Now I was brought here temporarily. During this time, they want to board up broken windows in my apartment, buy a heater, and settle me in a small room of a three-room apartment. And then they will organize a departure somewhere. I am ready to leave. But the thing is, I read that my house, because load-bearing structures are damaged, cannot be restored.
There were hundreds of such people here. They held on to their walls until the very end, but when those collapsed under the weight of an aerial bomb or missile, there was nothing left to hold on to. The way the woman describes her home and gestures with her hands, it seems as if she still feels her walls, tries to touch them, and sees them in front of her. It is like phantom pain, and in this situation, the hardest thing is to realize that nothing can help her anymore. Her home was taken by the Russians, and they moved forward.
The only thing that can be done is to save lives.
– We receive requests. They are submitted to military administrations and to the regional hotline. Then they are distributed to each crew. Right now in Druzhkivka, six crews are working — two from patrol police, two White Angels, and two from State Emergency Service — Phoenix, says Hennadii Yudin.
Druzhkivka, unfortunately, is not much different from other cities where war has come very close. The behavior of people here is similar to what evacuation crews see along the entire line of settlements near the frontline. Many locals stay in half-destroyed cities until the very last moment, not even wanting to talk about evacuation. But in the end, it always leads to the same outcome.
Druzhkivka from the window of the evacuation vehicle (photo: screenshot from RBC-Ukraine report)
– I remember Avdiivka (a city in eastern Ukraine), where we evacuated about 30 people in one day. Sometimes we took them in one vehicle — standing and sitting, the wounded were placed on the floor. We evacuated them. At first, it was difficult to persuade people, but then February 2024 happened, the enemy was already pushing into Avdiivka, and some streets were occupied. We kept going anyway. And only then people started coming out into the streets and asking to be taken away from here, Yudin says.
Local authorities always urge people to leave earlier, before Russians can enter the city. They will no longer allow evacuation, because they like to use civilians as human shields. But no matter how much this is said, each person comes to this decision on their own and in their own time. The main thing is that by that moment, it is still possible to take them out.
