Kramatorsk, the “last belt of the fortress”: Russia cannot take it, but is emptying it with drones and bombs

Kramatorsk is becoming uninhabitable: the city that Russian forces are failing to take by assault is being emptied by FPV drones shooting civilians in the streets and glide bombs destroying homes — as The Times reports in a reportage published today.

Kramatorsk, in eastern Ukraine less than 10 kilometers from the Russian front, is the heart of the “fortress belt” — Ukraine’s last major defensive obstacle in the Donbas, the prize without which Vladimir Putin has refused to stop the invasion. The Russian advance in the Donbas has slowed so much that, at the current pace, the Russians cannot take the city in less than a year — and the entire region in less than six.

But what is not being won by war is being attempted through terror: FPV (first-person-view) drones shoot civilians, while glide bombs level apartment blocks. The fiber-optic cables of the drones have covered the city’s streets; one graffiti reads “I will never forgive the Russian scum for what they did to Kramatorsk,” while the roof and tower of the Church of St. John the Baptist were heavily damaged by a Russian strike this week, The Times writes.

Galina, 70, was evacuated on Wednesday after the oncology unit at the hospital where she was being treated for breast cancer was hit and closed. “Kramatorsk is dying,” she says. “To survive, I had to leave.” In the same van, Valentina, 85, is also leaving, carried on a stretcher toward the ambulance for Lozova: “I don’t want to go anywhere anymore. I would have preferred to die at home.”

The Petrone family was evacuated on Wednesday after a glide bomb hit their home this week: “We were lucky it only took our windows,” says Alona. Her husband went ahead to Lozova to find them shelter. “Of course we would like to return, but we don’t know what will happen to Kramatorsk. I don’t think there is hope. I think it will be completely destroyed like Druzhkivka and Kostyantynivka.” Meanwhile Yuri, 60, descends eight flights of stairs with a cane: “In my building I am the last one left. People started leaving in crowds when the Russians started hitting high-rises like that one,” he says, pointing to a neighboring block with a massive hole. “I was afraid I would burn alive.” He remembers when Russian-backed separatists seized Kramatorsk in 2014 for three months — after that, Ukraine began building the fortress belt.

The city is being cut off from normal life: Ukraine’s railways stopped services to Kramatorsk at the end of last year, the blood transfusion center stopped accepting donors on August 10, four post offices suspended work and the “Zdravitsa” pharmacy closed its branches. The population fell to about 42,300 in early August — from 200,000 before the invasion — and to 25,000 by mid-September, as the city was reclassified from a zone of “possible hostilities” to an active combat zone. On September 20, a Russian strike hit a former kindergarten being used as an evacuation center by the aid organization Proliska. It was Sunday — the only day no evacuations were carried out: “Otherwise it would have been a bloodbath,” says Serhii Garanov, the driver of the armored evacuation van. “They are shooting the rescuers.”