The Ukrainian soldiers stopped playing football to let another army truck pass by, rumbling over deep scars left by tank tracks on the road to Debaltseve.
“You could go a bit further but I wouldn’t advise it,” said Vitaly, a soldier from the city of Kirovohrad.
“It’s quieter than it was, but they’re still shooting down there.”
Twelve hours after a ceasefire began between government forces and Russian-backed rebels, the key road and rail junction of Debaltseve remained disputed – and dangerous – territory yesterday.
As Vitaly (31) inhaled deeply on a cigarette, an armoured car with a roof-mounted machine gun came tearing past, taking wounded Ukrainian soldiers from a village near Debaltseve to hospital in the town of Artemivsk.
“We have dozens of injured guys in Debaltseve itself, and we can’t get them out,” he said.
Massive damage
Asked about civilian evacuees’ accounts of many bodies lying abandoned in Debaltseve’s freezing streets, he said it was entirely possible: “I didn’t see that where we were stationed, on the outskirts, but the damage to the town is massive.”
Officials said Cossacks fighting for the separatists sought control of the road between Vitaly’s unit and Debaltseve, a town ravaged by weeks of shelling, where Ukrainian troops and the rebels are now thought to hold different districts.
“I spoke by phone to a friend who didn’t manage to get away,” said Viktor (52), a welder who escaped Debaltseve on one of the last buses out last week; he is one of hundreds of evacuees now living 90km away in government-controlled Slovyansk.
“He said an armoured personnel carrier flying a Russian flag came to a shop in the town centre for vodka. Fifteen minutes later another one pulled up flying a Ukrainian flag. I don’t know who controls what, but neither side needs us ordinary people.”
Shivering in the bitter cold at a volunteer-run soup kitchen, Viktor added: “And I don’t care who runs Debaltseve, as long as there is peace.”
In Artemivsk, 45km from Debaltseve, the ceasefire feels fragile. The streets are busy with military trucks and ambulances, and in the cafes parents try to distract children who gaze wide-eyed at tables of soldiers cradling Kalashnikovs.
In the town's hospital, Ilya from Lviv in western Ukraine recalled politicians' previous declarations about truces and cessations of hostilities.
“I’ve already seen a few ceasefires,” the soldier said on Saturday. “And each time I’ve had to bury more friends.”
Upstairs, Yura Gorbachev (24) from the town of Kryvyi Rig was struggling to pull on his jacket with bandaged hands wounded by bullets and shrapnel.
“We were bringing our dead from Debaltseve this morning in two armoured trucks, when we were hit from both sides,” he said.
“Some more of our unit were killed and some injured. Our radios didn’t work so we couldn’t ask for help, so we had to walk out. It took eight hours to get here.”
Gorbachev spoke very softly but in great detail about his ordeal, as if in shock or amazement that he had survived.
‘Unbearable’
“Some things in Debaltseve are just unbearable,” he said, a few hours before the ceasefire was due to start.
“One day, an artillery shell killed a woman in the street. We called her son to collect her body, and it turned out he was fighting for the so-called militants, and was too scared to come and get her. We told him it would be all right, but he refused.”
For days the insurgents have claimed to surround Debaltseve, and demanded that Ukraine’s troops in the town surrender.
Kiev refused, insisting the road to Artemivsk was still open. The area is the flashpoint, and weakest link, of the new ceasefire.
“It’s the second time I’ve been surrounded, after Ilovaisk last summer,” said Gorbachev, recalling a rout of Ukrainian troops by separatists and – according to Kiev and western allies – regular units of the Russian army.
“The Russians are at Debaltseve too,” Gorbachev said, “and they are giving the separatists huge amounts of ammunition – their artillery never stops firing.”
Gorbachev said he hoped the ceasefire would hold, so he could recover at home and start a family.
“We’re all tired,” said Vitaly on the freezing Debaltseve road. “And we all hope for peace.”
