Embattled residents at Ukraine front desperate for water

BAKHMUT - First Ms Valentyna’s gas supply was cut when Russia’s invasion came to Bakhmut in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. Then shelling destroyed power lines. By August, she and her daughter Natalia no longer had water.

As the fighting intensified –

making the battle for the city the longest and most grinding of the nearly year-long war

– the pair replaced gas and electricity with wood and coal.

But when it became too dangerous to reach the well in their eastern neighbourhood, which has seen some of the worst fighting in the war, they finally undertook the treacherous journey across the Bakhmutovka River to flee the besieged city.

“A week ago it was possible to live there, but not any more,” said Ms Natalia, 52, as she and her 73-year-old mother waited at a humanitarian hub to be evacuated.

They are just two among some 8,000 Bakhmut residents whose precarious existence in the city has been thrown into even greater uncertainty since water supplies were fully cut in October.

The city, which had a population of 70,000 before the war, had been battling to keep water flowing since March, when shelling knocked out a canal that was one of the main sources, along with two wells.

The authorities tried to repair power lines key to pumping water into treatment plants and tanks or employ workarounds, but efforts stalled as shelling mounted.

“Drinking water is now supplied to the city entirely by volunteers,” the deputy head of the Bakhmut military administration, Mr Oleksandr Marchenko, told AFP.

At one humanitarian hub last week, a line of volunteers passed a nearly endless stream of multi-litre bottles of water into the space packed with residents huddled on benches and holding steaming cups of tea.

The fire brigade distributes water for other needs and there are scattered private wells, but residents also resort to gathering water from places where it collects in the street, Mr Marchenko added.

It is a safer option than risking going to the river, which bisects the city and is now a key dividing line in the fighting.

Before Ms Svitlana moved across the river with her husband and five-year-old son, they crossed a ruined bridge under heavy shelling several times to fetch water, once lugging back 36 litres and rationing it for a week.

“We have not had water since early in the war,” the 38-year-old said, watching her son play in the boxing ring-cum-play area in the shelter opened by the organisation Unity of People.

Sand bags are piled against the windows and the air is thick in the warm, busy former boxing gym.

“My dream is to take a shower,” Ms Svitlana said, miming the hand sanitiser and towelettes bathing routine she has relied on for months.

Separately, the RIA news agency reported on Saturday that Russia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov will hold a meeting with Ms Lynne Tracy, the new US ambassador to Moscow, this week.

Ms Tracy arrived in Moscow earlier last week. Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova said on Friday that the new US ambassador would not improve ties between the two countries because of what she called Washington’s ongoing “hybrid war” against Russia.

Relations between Washington and Moscow have been at rock bottom since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Russia casts the war as confronting what it says is an aggressive and expansionist US-led Nato alliance, while Kyiv and its allies call Moscow’s actions an unprovoked land grab.

According to Mr Ryabkov, the traditional presentation of copies of credential by Ms Tracy is already agreed upon.

“It will take place literally at the beginning of the week. It is expected that the transfer of copies of credentials by Ambassador Tracy will be made to me,” he said. AFP, REUTERS