Tetyana Podesenova is angry. She strongly expresses her dissatisfaction with the American-Russian ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine. “Trump protects neither the weak nor those who were attacked, but the one who attacked. Russia wants and gets everything. It claims the entire Donbas. What kind of peace plan is this that does not involve Ukraine?”
Without waiting for a response, she continues in one breath. “Are they giving away our city completely? Have they asked anything from the people who live here? Or who want to live under that peace plan?” she says on a bench at the ‘Aquarium of Amazing Fish’ in the eastern Ukrainian city of Kramatorsk. This is a center where visitors can look at about three hundred fish in different aquariums. Like a soothing oasis in wartime. Soft music plays in the background. Podesenova is an employee here.
Kramatorsk is one of the last major cities in the eastern Ukrainian region of Donbas that has not yet fallen into the hands of Russia after more than three and a half years of heavy fighting. That can still happen, without a fight. One of the 28 points of the peace plan involves Ukraine ceding the Donbas, formed by the Luhansk and Donetsk provinces, to Russia. The Ukrainian armed forces must withdraw from the part of Donetsk province they still control, including Kramatorsk and the city of Slovyansk fifteen kilometers further north.
Tatyana Podesenova, employee of an aquarium in Kramatorsk.
Photo Kostyantyn Chernichkin
For Ukrainians like Podesenova (56) this is unacceptable. “It feels like a betrayal of the boys who died at the front.”
She criticizes the ultimatum given by the United States. President Donald Trump wants Ukraine to sign the peace proposal by November 27. “They put pressure on Zelensky. Others decide about us.”
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Kyiv said on Saturday that it will hold talks with the US in Switzerland in the coming days to end the war. Ukrainian parliamentarian Oleksi Honcharko wrote on X: “We have to change some points that are unacceptable for Ukraine. But peace is necessary for Ukraine.” In his speech Friday, President Volodymyr Zelensky said he will defend Ukrainian independence and sovereignty and uphold the rights and freedoms of Ukrainians.
As a result of the peace plan, Ukrainians in the Donbas who do not want to live under Russian rule will be forced to leave. An estimated forty to fifty thousand people live in Slovyansk and about 53,000 in Kramatorsk.
Terrorist
“God forbid, but if Russia comes here, I will never stay here in my life. Russia is a terrorist,” says Roman Dubinin, emerging from behind an aquarium. Six months ago, an employee died in a rocket attack in Kramatorsk.
It will not stop at the Donbas, thinks Dubinin (48). If Russia owns the entire region, it will feed its hunger for more, he thinks. “Russia has imperial ambitions. They will move on. To Dnipro, and then to Kyiv. They lie constantly and believe they are all-powerful. So how can you trust Russia to stop at the Donbas?”
Roman Dubinin, owner of the Kramatorsk aquarium.
Photo Kostyantyn Chernichkin
But even without a peace plan, the question is whether the Ukrainian armed forces will be able to keep Kramatorsk out of Russian hands in the long run. The war is getting closer. A year ago there was no sign of the front. But now the residents go to bed to the sound of artillery twenty kilometers away. Due to the threat of war, trains have not run to and from Kramatorsk since the beginning of November. The hustle and bustle of the station has been exchanged for complete silence.
Due to the threat of war, trains have not run to and from Kramatorsk since the beginning of November
The city is within range of Russian FPV drones, short-range drones with small explosives that Russian soldiers control using video glasses. Almost every night there are such drone attacks on Kramatorsk and Slovyansk.
That causes tension for Podesenova. It’s almost closing time, dark on the street and she’s already at the door. Podesenova is eager to go home. She suffers from what is called the ‘Kramatorsk Syndrome’: the residents do not feel safe on the streets in the dark because they cannot see the Russian drones. Fear grows when the internet goes out and there are no warnings via social media about whether drones are on their way to the city.
Family archives
The approaching front forces the 54-year-old painter Olena Melnikova to leave. This weekend she will move with her husband, her 88-year-old mother and cat Kirilo to the safer province of Poltava. In her attractive apartment she is busy packing her paintings. A thick roll of bubble wrap sits next to wrapped boxes filled with family archives, photos and some of her favorite books.
She also takes her drawings from the center of Kramatorsk with her as a souvenir. Melnikova knows what awaits the city when the Russians arrive. Total destruction, as happened before in Bachmut and currently in Pokrovsk.
Olena Melnikova packs her paintings before leaving Kramatorsk.
Photo Kostyantyn Chernichkin
At the kitchen table she emphasizes several times that she is for peace. “So many people have died for nothing,” she sighs. So if the fighting stops by giving away the Donbas to Russia, she can live with that. It saves Ukrainian lives.
On the other hand, she also fears that Russia will not stop. That it’s just a break. “Russia has great ambitions.”
A pause in fighting, Ukrainians believe, would give Russia the opportunity to strengthen its armed forces, then resume the war and focus on other areas, in the face of a potentially weakened Ukrainian armed forces. The peace plan states that the Ukrainian armed forces will be limited to six hundred thousand soldiers.
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‘Peace plan’ is not acceptable to Kyiv on many points, but Ukrainians are longing for peace
Dmytro Torets rejects the weakening of the armed forces and the abandonment of the Donbas. “This is in fact a capitulation. A guarantee of security is a strong army.”
He fought at the front in recent years, until he developed problems with his eyes, he says in a coffee bar in Slovyansk. Fifty-year-old Torets was born and raised there and saw before his eyes that armed separatists led by Russian Igor Girkin occupied the police station and the building of the Ukrainian secret service in April 2014. Friends of his joined the invaders. They took control of the city. In July of that year they were expelled by the Ukrainian armed forces. “The war started here,” says Torets in the afternoon at the police station.
More than ten years later, the war shows its face again in Slovyansk. Threatening from the air this time: just the buzzing of Russian drones in the air has a terrifying effect. Ears and eyes are alertly turned towards the sky. Torets is not impressed by it. “I spent three years in the trenches,” he says drily.
Dmytro Torets at the police station in Slovyansk.
Photo Kostyantyn Chernichkin
Under the peace plan, the fate of his Slovyansk is uncertain. “Of course I don’t want us to give up the Donbas. Why do we need another country that imposes its culture and philosophy on us? I want Ukraine to go back to the 1991 borders [het jaar dat het land onafhankelijk werd]. But that probably won’t happen. To push back the Russian armed forces, a miracle will have to happen. In any case, we have to hold on to what we have now.” Kyiv previously proposed freezing the front line. The Kremlin did not respond to this.
Tempting desserts
Just like the aquarium center, the pastry shop Coffee House Sweet Bakery in Kramatorsk is a different world, far away from the air raid sirens and military vehicles and the countless pick-up trucks on their way to the front. Inside, music sounds like in a hotel lobby. All the walls are pink. One of them reads in neon light ‘All you need is love‘. In the display case, homemade desserts such as cheesecake, merengue, eclairs, tiramisu, waffles filled with cream and cupcakes entice everyone. The Christmas tree is decorated in bright pink. The cheerfulness radiates from it.
“Halloween is over, so we put up the Christmas tree,” says the energetic owner Kateryna Seledtsova (34) at the only remaining table. “It creates a positive atmosphere. And who cares? Today or tomorrow could easily be the last day.”
A Russian slide bomb attack destroyed the flat where Kateryna Seledtsova slept with her eight-year-old son
Fate already came frighteningly close once. In September, a Russian slide bomb attack destroyed her apartment building as she slept, along with her eight-year-old son Tychon. The attack left her with brain damage, which sometimes caused her to stutter, her hands to shake and her to not sleep well. Two months later, almost everything is back to normal. She only stutters when she is nervous.
Her son is doing well, let her follow up. Together – Seledtsova is divorced – they now have another house.
Kateryna Seledtnikova and her pastry shop in Kramatorsk.
Photos Kostyantyn Chernichkin
She would be happy if the existing front line were frozen. Then she doesn’t have to leave. But she has no illusions. “We are negotiating material. That is strange, yes. But we are not the only ones. Just look at the Middle East and Africa.”
Seledtsova wants the war to stop. Not because she’s afraid of herself. She wants it for Tychon. “I am so sad that he has to spend his childhood in this mess.”
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