TROSTYANETS, Ukraine - The last three Russian soldiers of this Ukrainian city are in the morgue, with their uniforms bloody and broken. The face of the former is frozen with pain. The second one has his wooden pipe in his lap. The third one is stuffed in his sleeping bag.
These dead are not all that remained in Trostyanets, a strategically located city in the northeast of the country, where Russian forces fled several days ago in the face of an orchestrated Ukrainian assault. The month-long Russian occupation reduced much of the city to rubble, a landscape decimated by shattered tank hulls, broken trees and agitated but resilient survivors.
There are also stories, impossible to verify, that highlight the kind of hatred left by the occupation and that share the common thread of brutality: children held at knife point; an elderly woman forced to drink alcohol while its occupants watch and laugh; whispers of rape and enforced disappearance; and an elderly man found toothless, beaten in a ditch and defecated.
“God, I wanted to spit on them or hit them,” Yevdokiya Koneva, 57, said in a steely voice as she pushed her aging bicycle into the city center on Friday.
Ukrainian forces are gaining ground, as, after more than a month of war, Russian forces are withdrawing from their positions north of Kiev, while Ukrainian soldiers advance here in the northeast. This area was supposed to be little more than an obstacle to a large-scale military campaign that would quickly take over the country's capital and leave the east in Russian hands.
Instead, a combination of logistical problems, low morale and poor planning among Russian forces allowed an emboldened Ukrainian army to go on the offensive along multiple axes, reducing the occupying forces and dividing its front lines.
The Ukrainian victory in Trostyanets occurred on March 26 - what residents call “Liberation Day” - and is an example of how disadvantaged and smaller Ukrainian units have launched successful counterattacks.
It also shows how the inability of the Russian military to achieve a quick victory - in which they would “liberate” a friendly population - left their soldiers in a position they were not prepared for: to maintain an occupied city with an unwelcoming local population.
We didn't want this terrible “liberation,” said 64-year-old Nina Ivanivna Panchenko, who was walking in the rain after picking up a humanitarian aid package. “Let them never come back here.”
Interviews with more than a dozen residents of Trostyanets, a modest city of some 19,000 inhabitants located in a bowl of rolling hills about 32 kilometers from the Russian border, paint a stark picture of struggle and fear during the Russian occupation. The relentless violence of Ukrainian and Russian forces struggling to retake and maintain the city raged for weeks and forced people to take refuge in basements or anywhere they could find.
On Friday, residents, stunned, were walking through the destroyed city, searching through the rubble as some electricity was restored for the first time in weeks. Viktor Panov, a railway worker, was helping to clean the shrapnel-torn train station from unexploded shells, grenades and other scattered explosives. Other men cannibalized the destroyed Russian armored vehicles in search of working parts or machinery.
“I can't understand how this war with tanks and missiles is possible,” said Olena Volkova, 57, chief physician of the hospital and vice president of the city council. “Against whom? Peaceful civilians?” “This is a real barbarism,” he said.
The war began in Trostyanets on February 24, the day the Russians launched their invasion of Ukraine. The city quickly became an access road for Russian tank columns advancing westward, as part of their northeastern offensive towards Kiev, the capital. Thousands of armored vehicles passed by, breaking the railings of the roads and destroying the roads.
“When the Russians came in, for the first two days, our men defended themselves well, as long as they had heavy weapons,” Panov, 37, said. “When they ran out, they only had their guns left.”
Further west, the offensive bombing of Kiev soon encountered fierce Ukrainian resistance, which stopped the Russians a short distance from the capital, which meant that soldiers would have to occupy Trostyanets instead of crossing it. About 800 soldiers were deployed, building a dozen checkpoints that divided the city into a grid of isolated neighborhoods.
Residents say they rarely tried to break through Russian positions, although they describe the occupying soldiers as quite friendly in the early days of the occupation, and rather confusing.
The first brigade of Russian forces to arrive was more or less tolerant,” Volkova said. “They said, 'Okay, we'll help you. '”
That help, Volkova explained, only allowed them to remove the bodies of the dead from the streets. He added that some 20 people had died during the occupation and the ensuing fighting; 10 had suffered gunshot wounds.
On some occasions, Russian troops opened “green corridors” for civilians to leave the city, although that was when some people - mostly young men of military age - were abducted.
At the beginning of the occupation, the Trostyanets police took off their uniforms and mixed with the population. Those who belonged to the Territorial Defense of Ukraine, the equivalent of the National Guard, sneaked to the periphery of the city and worked as partisans, documenting the movements of Russian troops and reporting to the Ukrainian military.
Others remained in the city, quietly moving to help residents as much as they could, even as Russian soldiers pursued them. “We were here for the entire duration of the occupation, working our best,” explained police chief Volodymyr Bogachyov, 53.
As the days and weeks passed, food became scarce and the goodwill of the soldiers also faded. Residents boiled snow for water and lived on what they had stored in their small gardens. Russian soldiers, without proper logistics, began to loot people's homes, shops and even the local chocolate factory. A butcher spray-painted “ALREADY LOOTED” in his tent so that the soldiers would not enter. In another store, another deterrent: “EVERYTHING IS TAKEN, THERE IS NOTHING LEFT.”
In mid-March, Russian soldiers left the city and were replaced by separatist fighters brought from the southeast. It was then, according to the residents, that atrocities began to accumulate.
“They were impetuous and angry,” Volkova said. “We couldn't negotiate anything with them. They didn't give us any green corridors, they searched the apartments, they took the phones, they kidnapped people, mostly young men, and we still don't know where those people are.”
As of Friday, the city police had received 15 reports of missing persons.
At the morgue, next to the three dead Russian soldiers, Volkova pointed to a body bag in a corner of the room. “This person was tortured to death,” he said. “His hands and legs are tied with adhesive tape, his teeth are missing, and his face is missing almost all. It is not known what they wanted from him.”
On the outskirts of the city, the 93rd Mechanized Brigade of Ukraine, a unit of experienced veterans who had fought intermittently in the country's separatist regions over the past seven years, slowly moved into position. Then, on March 23, they attacked with an artillery fire bombardment.
The next day, they bombed the city hospital. It is not entirely clear who attacked the building, but local residents accuse the Russians of shooting at the structure. The hospital had been in operation throughout the occupation, serving everyone, including Russian soldiers. During the bombing, only one doctor and one nurse were still working there, and they moved to the basement with the patients.
“In the morning, we went on foot with the last two women left in the maternity ward, one pregnant and one who had just given birth,” said Xenia Gritsayenko, 45, a midwife who had returned to work on Friday to clean the ward. The tank shells had broken through the walls, smashing the babies' posters and setting fire to at least one room. “It was the cry from the bottom of the soul.”
Russian forces fled on the night of the 25th. His demolished artillery position in the square of the train station showed signs of an unsupplied and ad hoc force. The fortifications included sand-laden ammunition boxes and thick wrappers of candy bars rolled up and used to prop up broken windows instead of sandbags. Uniforms lay in soaked puddles. Russian supply documents were flying aimlessly in the wind.
A nearby monument commemorating the victory of World War II to retake the city, fixed with an old Soviet tank, was damaged, but not destroyed. He had survived one more battle.
On Friday afternoon, Bogachyov, chief of police, was sorting reports from villagers who had corroborated the former occupants, as well as trying to deal with the continuous looting. However, no one had problems diverting fuel from abandoned Russian tanks dotting the roads.
“The information is like, 'This person was talking or drinking vodka with the Russians, 'and 'This person told them where the house of the person they were looking for is,'” he said.
“There is no information about collaborations such as our citizens taking up arms with the occupiers or treating their own citizens with violence,” Bogachyov said, acknowledging that it was difficult to tell whether he was facing Russian spies or simply grudges among neighbors.
The morning rain had disappeared in the afternoon. Long lines around humanitarian aid distribution points dissipated. A garbage truck passed by, loaded to the brim with remnants of war and rations from the Russian army. Some people took selfies in front of the last piece of Russian self-propelled artillery that was still recognizable.
Galyna Mitsaii, 65, an employee of the local seed and garden supply store near the train station, slowly replenished her shelves, satisfied with how the day had turned out.
“We will sow, we will cultivate, we will live,” he said weeping.
(C) The New York Times
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