23/12/2022
During this trip to Ukraine, Bakhmut became the place where I spent most of my time. The first time I was here was in 2014, the city was called Artyomovsk then, and the war had just begun. I was there to make a story about the Donbass volunteer battalion. Now there is no longer a battalion, nor the place where it was based in 2014 - the building is in ruins.
A huge part of the city is damaged by shelling and fires, but many people stay in the town. The hardest day for me was the day I met Tamara. The woman lived with her sister in the house. One night it caught fire from shelling. She was able to get out, but her sister was not. Firefighters got her remains out of the burnt house, and Tamara kept them in the yard under a sheet of slate, because there was no one to take the body, and she did not know how to bury her in the city, which is constantly under shelling. There was no connection, and she asked a colleague and I to call her friends to help her. I hope they persuaded her to leave.
