20 October, 2022. We got up at 6 in the morning for a supply delivery from Kharkiv to Kupyansk. Clara, from Frente BrazUcra, had contacts from a group of Ukrainian soldiers stationed there who requested a rare type of oil for one of their vehicles. We teamed up with the Brotherhood of Ukraine on this mission as well, for help with navigation, as they had just recently been to Kupyansk and the roads leading there involve the use of detours as a result of destroyed infrastructure, such as bridges. After searching and searching in an outdoor auto parts market in Kharkiv, we finally hit the road and got on our way to Kupyansk.
We lost a considerable amount of time when crossing a field with an extremely muddy unpaved road. It’s highly risky to go off of the road into the grass, due to how much of Ukraine’s terrain has been mined, so our only option was to carefully navigate our way through the least muddiest sections. We still had to get out of the car several times to push when it got stuck. One of those moments, when we casually walked to catch up to the car, we started to here prolonged gunfire just a few kilometers away in the forest nearby; Russian hideouts were exchanging fire with the Ukrainian military in the same field, and we quickly bolted to our car to drive out of that area.
We passed several military checkpoints on the way, and were required to put on our body armor and helmets to pass one of them. After driving past some rural villages, and noticing a few villagers walking by, we finally reached Kupyansk, and immediately noticed that the city center was a ghost town. It wasn’t difficult to understand why; even if there was anyone left, every building in this part of the city was blown up or scorched. It was the most decimated city I’ve seen during my time in Ukraine. I had to frequently put my camera equipment down as tanks and armored vehicles were constantly rolling through the city towards the frontlines, only 12 kilometers away from our current location.
Everything of value has already been looted in this entire area, with doors on each building reading “Пусто” (Empty), or “Пусто, Все уже украли” (Empty, everything already stolen). We walked around the corner, and spotted a few locals coming out of a mobile phone store. Inside, it was trashed with hundreds of broken phones, TVs, and other electronics littering the entire floor. We had to be extremely careful with which buildings we entered though, as Russians always leave behind booby traps and live explosive devices when they evacuate cities. One of our teammates discovered a grenade that had been rigged to explode with a trap that had been set up behind a wall in one of the buildings we entered.
Next to the police station in the city center, we finally met with the group of Ukrainian soldiers who requested oil delivery from us, and also gave them snacks, drinks and other supplies. Each of them shook our hands one by one to thank us. As we were talking to them, a local resident came down from her apartment to ask them when electricity would be restored; it was nearly winter, already freezing temperatures at night, and the few people remaining in this town not only had difficulty getting the food and supplies they need, they also didn’t have basic amenities such as heating.
We started to hear artillery strikes in the distance when we walked towards a bridge that had been painted in the colors of the Russian flag. Some residents walked or rode by on their bikes, totally unnerved by the explosions, which we heard every few minutes. I tried to imagine what it would be like to live under these circumstances; I became accustomed to missile strikes during my sleep while in Kharkiv, but the frequency of missile strikes were a only a few times per day, not several times per hour, like here.
On our way driving out of Kupyansk, we spotted a humanitarian aid distribution under way for the local residents. Immediately upon walking up to the crowd, I observed women fighting over the supply boxes; they would try to grab the boxes out of the hands of old ladies as they were exiting the crowd. It was the most chaotic aid distribution I witnessed, and also the most desperate. I watched tanks continue to roll by us on this street, a constant reminder how close we were to the fighting on the frontlines, and how close the Russians who had recently been in this city were still eager to charge back in if they had the opportunity.
There are too many towns like Kupyansk in Ukraine, and ones that look much, much worse. The biggest tragedy in this war is the countless human lives being affected. People who’ve previously lived in peace, then had to endure Russian occupation, and now after liberation struggle for basic resources. Kupyansk was a place where I saw light had recently emerged from the darkness, and I understood how important it is for that to continue.