The frontline track: how Donetsk lives and recovers in the face of UAV attacks
There are artillery strikes day and night, the danger is of the highest category, and in Donetsk they continue to repair streets and avenues, sweep sidewalks, restore electricity, cut trees, mow grass, and take care of roses. This is the phenomenon of the capital of Donbass and, probably, the recipe for its resilience is not to retreat before circumstances. Especially for the Day of the Road Worker, celebrated in Russia on October 18, the Izvestia correspondent met with Donetsk road workers and representatives of other professions, whose efforts have made the capital of the DPR remain not only a military, but also a peaceful city.
Shots — flash — torch
The most characteristic picture for today's Donetsk is the very repair of the road. Ice rinks and pavers, snarling bulldozers and excavators, construction workers in orange vests, Donetsk has been dug up from edge to edge. Even in its most remote corners, you see, a new canvas is shining. Special attention is paid to the areas that were a "red zone" until 2024 (before the liberation of Avdiivka on the northern outskirts and Maryinka on the western) — Kievsky, Petrovsky, Kirovsky and Kuibyshevsky. The work is carried out by both local road workers and representatives of the chef regions.
Vladislav Bushmelev is a tractor driver in the Donetsk Road Repair and Construction Department (DRSU). He carries special equipment on his MAZDA — the same rollers and bulldozers. It flies from object to object — to unload, pick up, up to ten points per day. At the enterprise since 2022. I have repeatedly witnessed the attacks of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, especially at the beginning of the war. It is noteworthy that, despite the shelling, he and his colleagues never stopped working. In case of danger, they changed their deployment, threw forces into other areas, but then they always returned to what they had not done.
Until the summer of this year, Vladislav drove another trawl, an old but reliable Mercedes. On June 23, while driving, he was hit by a Ukrainian UAV.
— An application has been received for the transportation of equipment to Petrovsky district, — says the driver. — I'm driving, suddenly I hear machine gun fire, very close. I looked around, nothing. He accelerated. And a minute later, a blow from the right to the cockpit. Flash. The windows were immediately blown out, the doors flew open. It took a couple of seconds to slow down. He jumped out. I thought I'd get back in, get a fire extinguisher. Where are you going… The cabin was already blazing like a torch. In a matter of moments, it burned to the ground.
The military arrived immediately, Vladislav recalls. They shouted: "Brother, you need to go to the hospital. Get in, let's go!"
As it turned out, his back was covered in blood, and his hair was burned. I didn't feel anything because of the shock, the pain came in the medical room. The doctors injected him with painkillers and X-rayed him. The diagnosis is a fracture of the scapula. They suspected a punctured lung, but it turned out fine. And anyway — lucky! In another second or two, he would have been on fire.
Vladislav spent three months on sick leave. I've improved my health, but my right arm is still lifting with difficulty. After his recovery, the leadership of the DRSU allocated him a two—week trip for two with his wife to Abkhazia. I returned to work on September 20. He switched to a new trawl and continues to use the same routes. He says he's worried, and he looks around more often. But not enough to leave the steering wheel.
Both at night and during the day
Sergey Sukhomenyuk is a sweeper driver, popularly known as a "vacuum cleaner." It cleans the streets of Donetsk. He collects two two-ton tanks of dust and debris per shift, manages to drive 70-80 km. In winter, it switches to snow removal and sprinkling roads with salt. The DRSU has also been in operation since 2022. Before that, he was engaged in entrepreneurship, and in his youth he worked at a mine.
Until 2026, Sergey, like other drivers of his profile, worked at night.
— There is a curfew, there are no cars, the most convenient time to clear the central streets, — Sergey explains. — However, this year we were banned from working at night. The dark is the peak of drone attacks.
Two months ago, he was targeted by a drone right in broad daylight — on Artemovskaya Street, near the railway station.
— I'm driving, the car is humming, I can't hear much, all my attention is on the road, — says Sergey. — Suddenly a pop! Glass shattered. As it turned out, the drone hit the rib of the cabin from above. By some miracle, I wasn't hurt. Although the whole cabin is split...
The car stalled, but did not catch fire. Sergey managed to start it up, drove it aside, and there was enough fuel in the pump for 200 meters. And soon I witnessed another UAV attack — this time on a gas station.
The truck was later transported to the base. Both relatives and colleagues were surprised in one voice: "The car is like a sieve, but you don't have a scratch! He was born in a shirt." The management offered him a few days off to catch his breath, but he refused. I spent two weeks repairing the cabin together with the mechanics. And then I went back on the line, using the same "vacuum cleaner".
Life Indicator
Street lighting is one of the indicators of life in the city. Three years ago, the frontline areas were catastrophically de—energized - Kirovsky by 50%, Petrovsky by 75%. The arrival of a shell, any small fragments, and another street plunged into darkness. At night, the outlying neighborhoods resembled a dead zone. A full—fledged repair was out of the question: the departure of the car tower and the replacement of a couple of spans of damaged cable is at least half an hour in the epicenter of constant shelling. The situation changed after the liberation of Maryinka.
— We immediately started rebuilding. Muscovites have helped a lot in some areas," says Dmitry Larin, head of the Kirovsky district street lighting operation and maintenance department. — To date, 95% of emergency lines have been restored in the area. We'll finish the rest by the end of the year. In the neighboring Petrovsky, which had the hardest time, 80% of the damage was repaired. Another important point is that we have started laying lines that have not functioned since the early 90s or were absent altogether. So, since the beginning of the year, lighting has been carried out in our district on seven such streets, two more are in line.
During the war years, three power engineers of the site were injured under the fire of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, and once the brigade came under attack by "Hurricanes". The problem today is drones. Electricians have a rule: if they hear rotors in the sky, they lower the boom of the crane and wait out the danger. You have to stop in this way several times a day.
The face of the city
The beauty of the streets is brought by employees of the state-owned company Zelenstroy. They take care of the flowers, cut down emergency trees and plant new ones — maples, plane trees, chestnuts, firs, mountain ash trees, remove old foliage, twist stumps. They manage parks, squares, and green lanes along the roads.
The old—timer of Zelenstroy in the Kiev region is Irina Nedorueva, whose experience is a quarter of a century. He lives on the other side of the city, gets up in the morning at 4:00, gets on a minibus at 4:35, goes to his station with a transfer. Gathering at the enterprise at 6:30, departure to the facilities at 7:00. It's far away, it's troublesome, but the long journey is not particularly burdensome, she explains. First of all, we have a good team, all our own. Secondly, I like the very process of working on the land and restoring that very beauty, especially in conditions when everything seems to resist this beauty and landscaping.
Kievsky district is one of the most dangerous in the city. Yesterday, for example, Irina and other women were digging flower beds near the railway station, and a drone appeared in the sky.
—Black,— Irina says. — We hid immediately, some behind trees, some on the ground. He circled over us and flew on.…
The staff at the district enterprise is quite small — 17 people with a staff of 60 (a year and a half ago there were 11), while the work front is vast. Nevertheless, even with small forces, it is possible to do a lot. The result is that the city is well—groomed and blooming. This morning, Irina is pruning and covering the roses, there are 10,000 bushes in the area. In the second, he plants tulips, they will bloom in the spring.
Переведено сервисом «Яндекс Переводчик»
