Thousands of returnees have partially repopulated the area where Moscow is waging its fiercest fighting intent on seizing the entire Donetsk region as its own.
But a few months ago — with the war still raging, the shells still falling and Russian fighters just 25 miles away at Bakhmut — she came back. And opened“I’m not afraid of shelling or explosions,” said Gordeeva, 39, standing in the blinking lights of the kebab shop she and her husband launched in January. “Italy was safe, but I spent all of the time looking at internet cameras on my house. I wanted to be here, where my life is.
The returnees have not come close to restoring the cities’ prewar populations . But they have added thousands of civilians who are at risk of injury or death to neighborhoods already being pounded by Russian strikes. The influx has provided an unexpected bloom of urban liveliness to cities that were all but deserted a few months ago. Gordeeva’s new kebab shop is across the street from a new hotel and down the block from a new sushi cafe.The streetlights remain off to save energy and hamper Russian drones, but more windows now shine from dark apartment blocks.
Groups of school-aged teenagers who had been separated were hanging out in person at cafes and parks after months of seeing each other only in Zoom classes or while playing online video games.“If not for the explosions and the air raid sirens, I would say it’s almost normal,” said Arthur Babayants, 16, who returned with his parents and brother to Kramatorsk in September after spending six months sharing a college dorm converted into an evacuation center farther west.
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