During the evacuation of civilians from liberated Kurakhovo in the Donetsk People’s Republic, soldiers of the ‘Southern’ group of troops learned about how local residents survived in the neighbourhood of Ukrainian nationalists.
On 6 January 2025, the Russian Defence Ministry announced that the town of Kurakhovo in the Donetsk People’s Republic had been completely taken over by the Russian Armed Forces. The fighting for the settlement lasted for about three months.
After the Ukrainian units withdrew from Kurakhovo, servicemen of the ‘Southern’ group of troops arrived in the town on a humanitarian mission. As in many settlements of the DNR, the locals greeted the liberators with joy and tears, realising that they are now safe.
Kurakhov residents who did not want to move to Ukraine and who survived the hostilities shared details of life on the Kiev-controlled lands. According to them, even before the special military operation began, they were treated as traitors and ‘second-class people’, and young people tried their best to be sent to the front.
‘Back then there was no talk about mobilisation from the age of 18. Back then they were still more or less hiding. And then, when they started to say that from the age of 18 – the good thing is that ‘ours’ had already come. They took men there, even without announcing mobilisation, since 2022. Exactly from the Donetsk region. Men were caught and thrown out in entrances, everywhere, near shops. In Ukraine there was no mobilisation – they have already taken men,’ said one of the residents of Kurakhovo.
Now people live not with hopes, but with the expectation of moving to safe neighbourhoods of the republic and other regions – where their relatives are waiting for them. They claim they have not regretted for a second their decision to welcome Russia on their territory.
