‘It’s terrifying to live like this’: Ukrainians under relentness bombardment in one of the world’s most dangerous places
A middle-aged woman with a bright yellow hat stepped out of a white van close to the frontline Ukrainian town of Bakhmut, one of the most dangerous places on the planet.
Smiling cheerfully, Liudmyla Bila handed out a jumble of supplies – from woollen socks and metal pans to dried noodles and cans of beans – to a small group of grateful soldiers.
She even gave them periscopes – useful to peer over the top of a trench – and heart-shaped biscuits.
“The guys are helping us [the troops gave her fuel] – and we are helping them”, Liudmyla, 45, said, before jumping back into her van, with two other companions, and heading into Bakhmut.
Liudmyla Bila hands out supplies to grateful Ukrainian soldiers
The trio is among a band of volunteers that braves the treacherous journey to distribute aid to the few thousand residents who are still living in the town despite months of relentless bombardments by Russian forces that have prompted most people to flee.
As well as providing supplies, the volunteers try to convince remaining residents to be evacuated, offering to drive them out to safety themselves.
There is no electricity or running water in Bakhmut and the threat of death from incoming rounds is constant.
Russia is desperate to take the town, in Donetsk region, eastern Ukraine, after suffering humiliating defeats elsewhere.
Ukrainian troops are defending hard but the bloody battle – one of the fiercest of the war – has been dubbed a “meat grinder” because of the huge and growing number of casualties.
A resident leaves his home after Russian shelling destroyed an apartment building in Bakhmut. Pic: AP
For local people caught in the middle, there is an added danger as winter falls and temperatures drop below freezing.
The active combat means even entering the town is high risk.
But Liudmyla said her only son, 22, is a soldier fighting around Bakhmut. She said she wanted to be nearby, adding: “I am not afraid.”
Her voluntary group of some 20 people is called Wings of Liberty, based in the city of Dnipro, about a five hour drive from Bakhmut.
Ukrainian soldiers in a shelter in the frontline near Bakhmut. Pic: AP/LIBKOS
She makes the round trip to the town every week.
Sky News followed her and her team – 35-year-old Olha Ekzarkhova, whose brother was killed on the frontline two months ago, and Ian Boiko, 39, who drives the van – into Bakhmut on Wednesday morning.
They stopped in a residential area, surrounded by large, concrete apartment blocks.
Glass was shattered across the ground – evidence of past blasts having blown out windows.
The volunteers had to work quickly – wanting to minimise their time on the ground. The sound of distant explosions and gunfire could be heard.
“People!” shouted Liudmyla as she and Olha darted from the van to one of the blocks, carrying bottles of water, candles, blankets and food.
No one immediately appeared.
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‘Ferocious’ battle for Bakhmut
They left the aid at the top of a short flight of steps leading down to a shelter in the basement. Liudmyla said people are living in there.
We knocked on the door to the shelter but there was no reply. It turned out they had gone to another spot in town where it is still possible to pick up mobile phone signal.
A tired-looking man was shuffling around the entrance of the apartment block next door.
Sky News approached him, but he did not want to speak and said no one else was around.
Aid delivered, Liudmyla and her team headed further into town.
We peeled off to speak with people in a small crowd on the side of a main road.
Desperate and weary, they queued at a window to try to receive stoves to heat their homes.
One woman moved away from the window empty handed.
Asked how life is in Bakhmut, Oksana, 75, said: “Very difficult. Very difficult.”
Then her face crumpled and her voice broke.
It is “impossible, cold – without blankets”, she said.
“This is bad. We are freezing. The temperature is only 3 to 5 degrees inside our home.
“We are waiting here for a stove. They told us to put your names on a list and wait. When will it end? When will it end? Oh God.
“Why are they [Russians] so stubborn when it comes to our Bakhmut? And here: war, war, war. They have been hitting us all the time for more than half a year already.”
Ukrainian service members fight and stay warm close to Bakhmut
She explained that she lived with her husband who is 82 and too frail to be evacuated.
“How can I leave him? There are no doctors here. No nurses. Nothing is here.”
Oksana said she was worried about having to live through the winter. As she spoke booms from incoming rounds could be heard, again in the distance.
“We are in the Stone Age. It is terrifying to live like this in the 21st century. And no one in the world can help us. How can it be?”
With the sound of explosions growing louder, we decided to leave.
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On the way out of town, an artillery round or some other form of munition exploded up ahead. We did not see the impact but could see the smoke.
Suddenly, there was a loud blast and our vehicle shook.
A second round had smashed into the ground to the right of us, sending shrapnel across the road. It narrowly missed a small car that was just ahead of ours – a reminder of the reality and the randomness of this war.
World
Defiant Netanyahu sets out plan for military escalation in Gaza – and describes photographs of starving babies as ‘fake news’
Israel’s prime minister added more detail to his deeply controversial plans for military escalation in Gaza at a news conference with foreign media yesterday – despite the condemnation of the UN Security Council, which met in an emergency session and urged him to rethink.
Benjamin Netanyahu spoke of a “fairly short timetable” to establish designated “safe zones” for the one million or so set to be displaced from Gaza City.
He also vowed to seize and dismantle Hamas’s final strongholds there – in the central refugee camps, and in al Mawasi, along Gaza’s southwestern coast.
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Rare aerial footage shows scale of destruction in Gaza
This, per Netanyahu, is the only way to destroy the terror group, which he claimed “subjugates Gazans, steals their food and shoots them when they try to move to safety”.
Al Mawasi is already home to a significant displaced population, most of whom live in tents cramped up against the Mediterranean Sea, in what is already a designated humanitarian zone.
If members of Hamas live among them, rooting them out will be hugely complicated and will involve significant civilian casualties. If the residents of Gaza City can’t evacuate south to al Mawasi, where will they go?
Netanyahu’s plan is to set up more aid distribution sites through the controversial Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) and to flood Gaza with food.
He claimed his policy was not one of forced starvation – describing particular photos of starving babies as “fake news”, and accusing the media of painting a false picture.
“The only ones who are being deliberately starved in Gaza are our hostages,” the prime minister claimed.
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‘We suffer greatly’: Life in Gaza gets harder
I asked Netanyahu how he would go about preventing the kinds of daily killings taking place at aid distribution points in the months since GHF has been operating.
Doctors Without Borders has described these incidents as deliberately orchestrated.
The prime minister said increasing the amount of aid heading into the Strip was the answer.
“And by the way, a lot of the firing was done by Hamas seeking to have a response by our forces,” he added. “And very often they didn’t, they held back. They stayed their own fire even though their own lives were on the line.”
Read more:
Israeli soldier dies by suicide
The danger of aid airdrops revealed
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Gaza: Aid drops ‘killing our children’
This was Israel’s prime minister trying to get on the front foot in a propaganda war he acknowledged he was losing. He was loath to admit the presence of famine in Gaza.
It took two questions before he acknowledged there was “deprivation”, even if he would not be drawn on whether his 11-week total blockade of the strip earlier this year had played any role.
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He recognises that the appalled response of the international community to the human cost of this war, and the accusations of war crimes and genocide which Israel so vehemently rejects, are a terrible look.
This was his attempt to reclaim the narrative.
World
Journalist killed in Israeli strike feared his own assassination – as IDF claims he was a ‘terrorist’
Five Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza – including a reporter who feared he was going to be assassinated.
Anas al Sharif died alongside four of his colleagues from the network: Mohammed Qreiqeh, Ibrahim Zaher, Mohammed Noufal and Moamen Aliwa.
The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) had recently expressed “grave” concerns about al Sharif’s safety, and claimed he was “being targeted by an Israeli military smear campaign”.
Gazan journalist Anas al Sharif with his two children
Israel Defence Forces confirmed the strike – and alleged al Sharif was a “terrorist” who “served as the head of a terrorist cell in the Hamas terrorist organisation”.
It claimed he was “responsible for advancing rocket attacks against Israeli civilians and IDF troops”.
Last month, the reporter had said he lived with “the feeling that I could be bombed and martyred at any moment” because his coverage of Israel’s operations “harms them and damages their image in the world”.
As of 5 August, at least 186 journalists and media workers have been killed in Gaza – but foreign reporters have been barred from covering the war independently since the latest conflict began in 2023.
Gazan journalists Anas al Sharif and Mohammad Qreiqe
The Hamas-run government has described Israel’s killing of these five Al Jazeera journalists as “brutal and heinous”.
A statement added: “The assassination was premeditated and deliberate, following a deliberate, direct targeting of the journalists’ tent near al Shifa Hospital in Gaza City.
“The targeting of journalists and media institutions by Israeli aircraft is a full-fledged war crime aimed at silencing the truth and obliterating the traces of genocidal crimes.”
Read more:
Netanyahu vows to defeat Hamas
UK joins four countries in condemning Israel’s plan for new Gaza operation
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Inside the room with Netanyahu
Following Anas al Sharif’s death, a post described as his “last will and testament” was posted on X.
It read: “If these words of mine reach you, know that Israel has succeeded in killing me and silencing my voice.”
The 28-year-old added that he laments being able to fulfil his dream of seeing his son and daughter grow up – and alleged he had witnessed children “crushed by thousands of tonnes of Israeli bombs and missiles”.
“Do not forget Gaza … and do not forget me in your prayers for forgiveness and acceptance,” he wrote.
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The CPJ reported that his father was killed by an Israeli airstrike on their family home in December 2023 after the journalist received telephone threats from Israeli army officers instructing him to cease coverage.
Israel shut down the Al Jazeera television network in the country in May last year.
For Ukraine – its exhausted, brave soldiers, its thousands of bereaved families mourning their dead, and its beleaguered president – it is exactly what they feared it would be.
They fear the compromise they will be forced to make will be messy, costly, unfair and ultimately beneficial to the invading tyrant who brought death and destruction to their sovereign land.
Six weeks ago, I spoke to President Zelenskyy in London.
War latest: Team Trump ‘risk being out of their depth’ at Putin meeting
I put it to him in our Sky News interview that Presidents Trump and Putin were heading towards making a deal between themselves, a grand bargain, in which Ukraine was but one piece on the chessboard.
Zelenskyy smiled as if to acknowledge the reality ahead.
He paused and then he said this: “We are not going to be a card in talks between great nations, and we will never accept that… I definitely do not want to see global deals between America and Russia.
“We don’t need it. We are a separate story, a victim of Russian aggression and we will not reward it.”
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In full: Volodymyr Zelenskyy interview
It was a response that betrayed his greatest fear – that this will become essentially a Trump negotiation in which Zelenskyy and Ukraine will be told “take it or leave it”.
And, by the way, if you “leave it”, then it will be painful.
Harsh realities
It’s the prospect that now confronts Zelenskyy as Trump and Putin plough ahead on a course that has clear attractions for both of them.
Of course, Zelenskyy is right to say there can be no deal without Ukraine. But there are harsh realities at play here.
Trump wants a deal on Ukraine – any deal – that he can chalk up as a win. He wants it badly and he wants it now.
It’s the impediment to a broader strategic deal with Putin and he wants it out of the way. It’s what he does, and it’s the way he does it. And President Putin knows it.
He knows Trump, he sees an opportunity in Trump, and he can’t get across Russia to Alaska fast enough. He will be back at global diplomacy’s top table.
Always a deal to be done
Make no mistake, when Trump says he just wants to stop the killing, he means it. Such wanton loss of young lives offends him. He keeps saying it.
He sees war, by and large, as an unnecessary waste of life and of money. Deals are there to be done. There’s always a deal.
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Is Trump out of his depth with Putin summit? – Professor Michael Clarke
Sadly for Ukraine, in this case, it is unlikely to be a fair deal.
How can any deal be “fair” when you are the victim of outrageous brutality and heinous crimes.
Read more:
Putin and Trump to meet in Alaska on Friday
Trump will have a lot of ice to break with Putin – analysis
But it may well be the deal they have to take unless they want to fight an increasingly one-sided war with much less help from Trump and America.
A senior UK diplomat told me if things turn out as feared, it should not be called a land-for-peace deal. It should be called annexation “because that’s what it is”.
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But here’s the rub.
Peace, calm, the end of the nightly terror of war has much to recommend it. In short, a bad peace can often seem better than no peace. But, ultimately, rewarded dictators always come back for more.
If Ukraine has to accept a bad peace, then it will want clear security guarantees to make sure it cannot happen again.
It is the very least they deserve.
There is much at stake in Alaska.
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