After three days of travel photographer Maciek Macialek and myself, video journalist Jason N. Parkinson, arrived in Kramatorsk, in the eastern Donbas region of Ukraine.
During the whole journey I have been filming one second long clips to document the whole trip which you can view in the video here called London to Ukraine in Seconds, condensing the three day journey into a 40 second rush.
From London Stansted airport where nothing works efficiently, not even the baggage scales, to Rzesow in eastern Poland, on to Przemysl to cross the border into Ukraine and on to Kyiv on the overnight train, a journey we have both travelled repeatedly since the start of the full scale invasion in February 2022.
A stop over in Kyiv to try and rest some before the last leg of the journey, to check in on an old friend and fixer and gather some information, which was rudely interrupted by Russian drones attacking the city at 2am, something the people of Kyiv have grown so accustomed to they barely even pause between breaths. The drone attack failed, all shot down by Ukrainian air defences by 6am, the only damage was several building fires caused by falling debris, but most importantly there were no casualties. Across the country Russia launched more than 70 drones early that morning, 63 were shot down.
On the morning of 26 September we joined the 6.45am train from Kyiv to Kramtorsk, whose majority passengers were in military uniform. Arriving six hours later, we were met by a local NGO volunteer, who showed us their impressive operation base supplying food, clothing and medical supplies, and then took us to the site of the Russian aerial bomb strike on a residential block of apartments on 25 September that killed two civilians and injured 19 others.
It was a truly shocking site of which I have never witnessed before, despite countless times having documented strikes on civilian areas over the last two years, from assorted artillery to missiles as large as the adapted Russian anti-aircraft S300s.
There was a 10 foot (3 metre) diameter hole punched clean through the seventh floor of the apartment block. But the truly shocking thing was the extent to the damage that was caused by the blast radius outside, whole balconies and solid exterior walls obliterated by the shock wave across the entire 10 storey building, all from one single death machine fired directly into the homes of civilians.
It is now Friday 27 September. In Kramatorsk city the air raid warnings are continuous. Phone warnings state the region is in a near constant state of critical alert. As I write this the guns of Ukrainian defence somewhere 20 miles (32km) to the east have not stopped since I woke around 7.30am, nor has the intermittent barrage of return fire from Russian forces pounding the defenders.
The sun is shining, the skies are blue and the residents of Kramtorsk, once a population of 147,000 circa 2022, attempt to carry on with their lives as normal as possible.
Jason N. Parkinson
Kramatorsk, Ukraine
9.30am 27/09/2024
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We are still hoping to raise more funds, not just to assist with some of our expenses, but also to raise money for local groups here in Kramatorsk helping the residents of Donbas.
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