LYSYCHANSK, Ukraine – The woman’s task is simple: she goes shopping and she will not be discouraged. Svitlana Zhyvaga just needs to cross a bridge.
But this is not just a bridge. Residents living nearby said it was mined. Ukrainian soldiers warned others that the bridge had been shelled and was likely to be fired again. But last Friday morning, Ms. Zhyvaga, 54, woke up just before sunrise, climbed a ladder and crossed what is now one of the most dangerous river crossings in the world.
“I am really a thrill seeker,” Ms. Zhyvaga said.
The bridge spans about 250 feet wide of the Siversky Donets River, separating the cities of Lysychansk and Sievierodonetsk in eastern Ukraine. It would have been completely impassable without a few ladders connecting the collapsed section to the road above.
Ukrainian officials say that in recent days, three bridges connecting the two cities have been destroyed, including Ms. Zhyvaga’s, leaving Ukrainian forces stranded as they battle to hold their own piece of territory. shrunk in Sievierodonetsk before the advance of Russian troops.
The area is an important battleground and the scene of some of the fiercest fighting in the east. Russian forces have recently pushed through Ukraine’s front lines south of Sievierodonetsk, prompting Ukraine to rush reinforcements to the site to avert the risk of encirclement. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said earlier this month that the fate of much of eastern Ukraine was being decided in the battle for the two cities.
Fighting in Sievierodonetsk raged from street to street, while intense artillery barrages – with black smoke rising from the explosions – were a daily basis on both sides of the river. The Russians controlled almost all of Sievierodonetsk.
The number of casualties between soldiers and civilians is unknown. Local authorities estimate it in the thousands.
But that didn’t seem to matter to Ms. Zhyvaga, for whom it was normal for the death squads from battle raging around her to be normal for those still living in the surrounding neighbourhoods. Ms. Zhyvaga’s outing to Sievierodonetsk centered on her desire to buy some odds and end. She didn’t know that there was a small morning market in her city.
She also seems confused about the risks, not understanding that some of the war’s most brutal urban battles have happened to parallel her shopping trip.
“What happened, what happened in Sievierodonetsk?” asked Miss Zhyvaga, wearing a flower-dotted leggings and a red shirt decorated with flowers.
A reporter for The New York Times informed her that much of Sievierodonetsk is under Russian control.
Better understanding of the Russo-Ukrainian War
“‘Really, partially occupied?” she replied, clearly unfazed and still enjoying her triumphant crossing.
With Russian forces in most parts of Sievierodonetsk, the bridges connecting the two cities are strategically important. Without them, Ukrainian forces have limited ability to retreat to Lysychansk, which is located on higher ground. There, soldiers have begun to dig defensive structures and build barricades with vehicles destroyed in recent days in preparation for the coming Russian offensive.
It is clear: the Ukrainians will try to keep the city.
Although the military is said to have placed a pontoon bridge somewhere along the river that could be used for evacuation, Ukrainian units in both cities are inching closer to have similar position for those stranded south of the city of Mariupol.
Regional officials estimate that around 500 civilians, along with an unidentified number of soldiers, are currently buried at the Azot chemical plant in the industrial area of Sievierodonetsk. On Friday, officials said a follow-up evacuation was unlikely.
“The exit from the factory is possible only on the condition of a complete ceasefire,” the regional governor, Serhiy Haidai, said Friday on Telegram.
Residents refer to the bridge that Ms. Zhyvaga crossed on Friday as the Sodovyi Bridge, after the defunct baking soda factory nearby. Built around 1970, the bridge is the southernmost connection in Lysychansk to Sievierodonetsk.
“This is the last remaining bridge between the two cities,” said Oleksandr Voronenko, 46, a military police officer stationed in Lysychansk. “If someone can evacuate on their own, they can cross this bridge. But there was no mass evacuation.”
Ravaged by Russian shells, the bridge, or what remained of it, was a barricade of destruction, as if some invisible hand had tried to push it out of the ground and halfway done. The surrounding riverbank was frozen. Trees were cut down and burned to cinders. Shards of bombs and bullets strewn across the road and a destroyed US-supplied Humvee, cut in half, is the only recognizable object on the bridge.
Ms. Zhyvaga, a self-described businessman, strolled through the ruins around noon unhindered, a shopping bag and purse by her side and her blue sandals creating a contrast. striking contrast with the debris around her. Returning from a shopping trip, she climbed down the ladder to the collapsed area and stepped onto a metal plate to cross a gap caused by the collapse.
“No one stopped me,” she said, standing on the side of the Lysychansk Bridge. “The soldiers stopped me to say hello, that was it. They asked me how to drive over and if the bridge was operational.”
Ms. Zhyvaga did not know if she had spoken to the Ukrainian or Russian military, only that they spoke Russian. Her shopping destination, the central market of Sievierodonetsk, is also under Russian control.
Ms. Zhyvaga’s air around the men in uniform that blocked her during the seven-mile trip into Sievierodonetsk and back echoed in the neighborhood around Sodovyi Bridge, in the Chervona district of Lysychansk.
There, residents came under near-constant shelling as Russian forces – unable to see the bridge because of the hills on its east bank – launched artillery shells not only to destroy cancel the intersection but also to make sure no one tries to cross no. This concentrated effort destroyed or damaged most of the buildings within a half-mile radius of the bridge.
But no one there seems to know who is doing this or why.
Svitlana, another woman who lives near the bridge, said: “It is not clear who is shelling this place. Like other residents, she declined to give her last name for security reasons. She didn’t evacuate, she said, because she had nowhere to go. That mentality was common among the remaining residents of Lysychansk, who were forced to retreat to their basements as their city burned around and Russian forces drew closer.
“Who knows if they’re Russian or Ukrainian?” Oleksandr, an elderly man repairing window frames at 18 Trudova Street, a brick house just a few hundred yards from the bridge.
However, Valentyna, another resident, added, “there is a little break between 12 and 2.”
Even so, whether these people are unconcerned or have been inundated with Russian propaganda aimed at sowing suspicion within the Ukrainian government remains unclear. Russian disinformation spoiled the inhabitants of other neighborhoods in Lysychansk.
In the brief moments between battles, the inhabitants near Sodovyi Bridge seem to be much more focused on commuting their day and performing mundane tasks centered on survival rather than on who is. who won the war or who was trying to kill them.
“You know, I just want a good life,” said Ms. Zhyvaga, the bridge now safe behind her and a shopping bag of apples and potatoes in hand. “I don’t know what they’ll give us – the Ukrainians, if they stay, or the Russians, if they come.”
“So everything is a question for me.”
