The clock on his wall stopped almost as soon as the day began, its hands frozen by the Russian bomb that fell on the dormitory that serves as a home for Ukrainians displaced by the war.
It was 1:45 a.m. in an upper-floor room in the eastern city of Zaporizhia, Natalia Panasenko’s home for just under a year, after the city she considers her true home came under Russian occupation. . The explosion blew out a door above hersmashed her refrigerator and television, and destroyed the flowers she had just received for her 63rd birthday.
“The house was full of people and flowers. People congratulated me… and then there was nothing. “Everything was mixed in the rubble,” he said. “I come from a place where war continues every day. We just left there and it seemed quieter here. AND the war caught up with us again”.
November 11 was a typical day of violence and resistance in Ukraine. The Associated Press fanned out across the country to record 24 hours of life just as the country prepared to mark a grim milestone Tuesday: 1,000 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion on Feb. 24, 2022.
The day began with two Russian bombing raids: one that hit Panasenko’s apartment and another that killed six people in Mykolaiv, including a woman and her three children. Before the day was halfway over, a Russian ballistic missile destroyed another apartment building, this time in the town of Kryvyi Rih.
Swimmers dared to brave the waters of the Black Sea off Odessa, steel workers kept the economy going, a baby was born, soldiers died and were buried. The luckiest found a way to heal their amputated limbs and broken faces.
About a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory is currently under the control of Russia.. These invisible geographical lines are constantly changing and the closer a person is to them, the more dangerous life is.
In the no man’s land that stretches between Russian and Ukrainian forces, there is practically no life. It is called the Gray Zone for good reason. Houses in ashes, charred trees and blackened ditches left by the shells that exploded during more than a thousand days of war extend as far as the eye can see.
In late autumn, the waters of the Black Sea are around 13 degrees Celsius. The coast is mined and the city of Dmytro is a regular target of drones and missiles.
But Dmytro, who insisted on being identified only by his first name because he was concerned for his family’s safety, was undeterred as he took to the waves with a handful of friends for his usual swim.
Before the war, the group consisted of about two dozen people. Many fled the country. The men were mobilized to fight. Some returned with disabilities that prevent them from getting into the water. His stepson, 33, is missing in action after a battle in the Donetsk region.
For Dmytro and his fellow swimmers, the ritual connects them to the land and makes the harshness of war more bearable. He says the risks of his hobby are worth it: “If you’re afraid of wolves, don’t go into the woods.”
For Serhiy Saphonov, managing the Zaporizhzhya steel plant in times of war means spending days full of calculations.
The staff of 420 is less than half of what it was before the war. The power outages caused by Russian attacks on electrical infrastructure require an “algorithm of actions” to maintain operations. Russian forces are approaching the Pokrovsk coke mine that supplies coal to the plant. And the city is increasingly being attacked by unstoppable Russian gliding bombs.
Right outside his office door, a bulletin board displays the names of 92 former steel workers who have joined the military. Below are photographs of the dead. Staff organize fundraisers for supplies for colleagues on the front lines, including two bulletproof vests that sit in the corner near their desk.
“Senior workers carry everything on their shoulders. They are tough. They know their job,” Saphonov said. “Everyone knows that we have to hold on, resist, hoping that things will get better in the future.”
Dr. Vladyslava Friz has done more reconstructive surgeries in the last 1,000 days than in the previous decade of his career. And the injuries he’s suffered are unlike anything I’ve ever seen before.
Their days start early and end late. In the first months of the war, he said, the hospital admitted 60 people an hour and eight surgeons worked around the clock. They are still catching up, because many of the injured need multiple surgeries.
On November 11, he was reconstructing the cheek and jaw of a patient injured in a mine explosion.
“Appearance is the visual identity of a person”he stated. “There is work to do and we are doing it. We have no other options. There are medicines, equipment and personnel, but there are no metal structures for reconstruction. “There is no state funding for implants.”
He said he will not abandon his patients, but he worries that the world will abandon Ukraine as the war approaches its fourth year.
“The international community continues losing interest in what is happening in Ukraine, while we lose people every day,” he said. “The world seems to have forgotten about us.”
Yulia Ponomarenko brought two babies into the world in the last 1,000 days, including Mariana, on November 11. Her husband, Denys, is fighting on the front lines.
Her hometown of Oleshky was submerged by floods after the explosion of the Kakhovka dam, but by then she had long since fled from the Russian occupation forces, who are attacking the families of Ukrainian soldiers.
Mariana, who was born healthy at 3.8 kilograms and 55 centimeters (8 pounds, 6 ounces and 21 inches), will grow up with an older brother and sister and a menagerie of two cats and two dogs.
“This child is highly anticipated, highly desired. “Now we have another princess.”says Ponomarenko.
The actors cannot act in their cinema in Kharkiv: there are too many bombs and too few people willing to gather in one place. That’s why they moved to the Ukrainian capital, where they performed to an almost full theater on November 11 as guests of the Franko Theater.
“Due to the war, the Kharkiv theater cannot perform on its stage. We act clandestinely. It is literally a clandestine art. In Kharkiv there are only two or three places where we can perform, and that’s it,” said Mykhailo Tereshchenko, one of the lead actors at the Taras Shevchenko Ukrainian Academic Drama Theatre, named after Ukraine’s most famous writer.
Yevhen Nyshchuk, director of the Franko, said the theater suspended productions for a few months after the war began. Now, it’s packed almost every night when there’s a play, and the long applause when the curtain comes down is deafening.
The reason goes beyond the quality of a performance at this moment, he believes, and expresses “that inner realization that despite everything, we will create, we will live, we will come, we will meet, we will applaud each other.”
(with information from AP)
