Sun-scorched and war-scarred roads stretch from Arkhangelske into the depths of the Kherson steppe. A few kilometers from here, beyond a huge limestone quarry, is Blakytne. In spring 2022 it found itself on the frontline. The village was almost wiped off the face of the earth. Where dozens of families once lived, today fewer than two dozen people remain.
“Before the war the village was small – 28 houses, home to 58 residents. But during the occupation people gradually left, scattering here and there. On the day of de-occupation only two people lived in the village. They were two elderly men. Unfortunately one of them died. The other is alive, but the occupation very negatively affected his health,” – says the starosta of the Arkhangelske starostynskyi district, Olena Kompanets.
Blakytne lives like an island cut off from the rest of the world. There are no shops, no pharmacies, no work, and the local railway station and grain-receiving enterprise are destroyed. Yet despite these living conditions, local residents are gradually returning to their homes. It seems as if the village is slowly taking back its former inhabitants and even welcoming new ones. Olena Kompanets says:
“People have returned to our village. Of the 28 houses only seven are inhabited, 19 people. And a family of seven displaced persons has arrived; they have five children. People literally had nowhere to live.”
We walk the empty streets and look at the ruins overgrown with rampant weeds; by one of the tended houses we meet Svitlana. The woman has lived in Blakytne her whole life. She says they had to leave their home during the occupation, but as soon as the village was de-occupied and her husband was offered work as a railway worker, they returned. They plan to stay.
“We have a car, so we drive to other villages to buy groceries. That’s how we live. My daughter finished 11th grade and is enrolling in the Beryslav Medical College, so of course she’s bored. But we’re not going to leave, this is our home. I’m 42, we’ve practically lived here our whole lives. It’s hard, very hard. But it’s our village,” the woman says.
And while Svitlana consciously chooses to stay in Blakytne, the woman we were waiting for at the completely destroyed house, Ivannivna, does not have such a choice. According to the starosta, Ivannivna should be at home. While we wait, we look over her yard: a burned house, an old grape arbor of a type unusual for Kherson region with transverse beams holding the whole structure, and a goat lazily eating a fallen wild apricot.
Suddenly we see a car driving along the broken road at the edge of the village. It’s relatives taking Ivannivna to her son in a neighboring settlement. He was seriously wounded near Bakhmut and has health problems, so she visits him periodically.
“Where would I go? Where? I’m almost 80, I can’t go anywhere. There’s really nothing to show, just overgrowth all around. Last year I still pulled weeds and mowed the grass, but this year I haven’t done anything,” – the pensioner apologizes, kindly inviting us into the yard.
Ivannivna walks slowly but steadily. Her hands speak faster than words:
“This is the house, it hit here. A shell casing lay here, huge,” Ivannivna spreads her hands. “The sappers took it away. And here I repaired the kitchen with my own funds, and covered the roof, and put in the windows and door. And here I mowed all the flowerbeds myself with a scythe. As long as I can myself, I…”
The sentence hangs unfinished in the air.
This woman’s world has narrowed to her own yard, a goat, two hens that survived dog attacks, and a three-cubic-meter tank of drinking water. Relatives sometimes help with buying groceries, and occasionally she herself goes to the neighboring village to see her sick son.
“After a severe concussion he developed epilepsy and tuberculosis. He was in Bakhmut for two years, and now he is ill…”
Ivannivna herself survived the shelling. Looking at the street bathhouse, she remembers how she and her sister, who has been disabled since childhood, were forced to hide there from enemy shells:
“We were in that bathhouse day and night, and they flew like this over the house and there. And then it flies, and when it bursts – immediately such a flame, and then smoke. And it covered everything here, you couldn’t see anything. My sister cried so much, screamed so much…”
After the de-occupation of the village she returned home, but the Russians still harass her. Not long ago a Russian “Shahed” fell into Ivannivna’s yard. Fortunately the explosive part did not detonate, but the barn walls still show traces of the melted casing of the Russian drone.
Ivannivna in a floral headscarf sees us off from the yard to the car and waves goodbye:
“Wishing you all good health and, above all, that this horror ends soon”.
Blakytne recedes and slowly disappears beyond the horizon. Burned-out houses will no longer await their owners. Those who were able to obtain housing certificates have started new lives in other cities: new addresses, new neighbors, new routes. Gradually life here fades. The steppe will continue to rustle with grass, the wind will still run between empty yards. Somewhere repaired gates will creak. Someone will still mow the grass, fix a roof, plant gardens and hope that the next night will be quiet.
As long as at least one light burns in a window in Blakytne, this village is still alive. Because people remain here who call it their home.