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Air raid sirens have gone off 4,000 times in Zaporizhzhia in the last couple of years. The Russian-occupied city also faces the risk of catastrophic flooding and a nuclear disaster. Alex Craiu describes what an “ordinary” day in the life of Zaporizhzhia dwellers is like.
Russia marked Victory Day against Nazi Germany by bombing Ukrainian civilians
On the night of May 8, I woke up all of a sudden to the unmistakable sound of explosions. The sky turned bright orange for a few seconds and, moments later, I heard the sound of a second explosion that shook the city. Roads were deserted, as per a curfew in place between midnight and 5 AM, although Zaporizhzhia, the city where I am now, was not asleep. From their homes, people again helplessly watched as their city was targeted by Russian drones and missiles. This time around the attack was predictable, as Russia celebrated the Soviet Union's victory against Nazi Germany on May 9, and Moscow often marks important events with attacks it sees as small victories in the war against Ukraine.
Windows broken by the shockwave produced by a blast in the city center.
According to next morning’s report, 76 air assault devices had targeted Ukrainian territories: Shahed drones from the Russian Federation, ballistic missiles launched from Crimea, cruise missiles launched from the Black Sea and two missiles launched from the occupied Zaporizhzhia region. The Russian military uses the territories it occupied in the wake of the large-scale invasion of Ukraine to launch missiles and drones and direct them as efficiently as possible to their designated targets. In Zaporizhzhia, missile and drone attacks are doubled by artillery fire, which often hits villages close to the region’s capital.
Zaporizhzhia, threatened by bombs, devastating floods and a nuclear disaster
Zaporizhzhia is a heavily industrialized city, located in the southeast of Ukraine, 550 kilometers from Kiev. Over half of the Zaporizhzhia Oblast is under Russian occupation, including all the towns and villages on the Azov seacoast. The town is about 40 kilometers away from the frontline. Beyond the constant Russian shelling, the Dnieper River dam, north of the city, also poses a genuine threat. It is home to Ukraine's largest hydroelectric plant, hit by missiles on March 22. I often cross the Dnieper dam, and every time I do so, I am reminded of the March 22 attack: the road was damaged on one side of the bridge, and traffic is restricted to a single lane, whereas on the other side, the dam wall was completely destroyed within a radius of several meters. The goal of the attacks is to disrupt Ukraine’s energy supply system, while the consequences of a possible collapse of the dam could be devastating, similar to those of June 6, 2023, when the Nova Kakhovka dam in Kherson was destroyed. Tens of thousands of people were affected by the ensuing flash flood at the time.
March 22: smoke rises from the dam just north of Zaporizhzhia, which had just been bombed.
Another large-scale disaster waiting to happen could be caused by possible attacks on the largest nuclear power plant in Europe: the plant in Energodar, some 50 km in a straight line from the city of Zaporizhzhia, right on the frontline of the war, on the southern bank of the Dnieper River. Ukraine's military intelligence recently claimed that Russian troops are using the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant as a military base to launch “suicide” drone attacks. These drones fly at low altitudes and are remotely operated to attack their designated targets. The launch site is strategically chosen, as Ukraine cannot hit targets less than 1.5 km away from the NPP.
People have come to ignore the sirens and no longer take shelter underground, because it would be impossible for everyone to stay there for so many hours, given that sometimes air raid sirens keep blaring for hours on end. On May 9, for instance, the air raids lasted over 9 hours in total.
There is only one hypermarket still open in the city, while a second one located at the mall had to close due to disruptions. Restaurants such as McDonalds have not reopened since February 2022 in Zaporizhzhia, but other restaurants, stores, parks and riverside beaches stay open, although unlike other regions in western Ukraine, for instance, the attacks and damages sustained in Zaporizhzhia are not just echoes of the past winter. Just as I was writing this article, I heard a loud explosion in broad daylight. Children playing nearby started screaming, but the adults out in the street did not seem particularly startled. Such explosions have paradoxically become the new “normal”.
Orange lights lighting the sky and buildings shaking
I was among those who managed to catch one of the explosions in the early morning hours of May 8 on tape. The sound of explosions is unmistakable; I have been living in Ukraine for 7 months, and I can now tell it apart from any other noise. The sound of an explosion is muffled, loud, often accompanied by a vibration that you can feel physically. When people say that the walls are shaking, they refer to the shockwave that causes everything around to vibrate, thus propagating the sound of the explosion. Depending on their distance, the explosions are like electrical discharges during a thunderstorm: the sky turns orange, as if the streetlights turn on all at the same time to produce a blinding light reflected in the sky. Only later can you actually hear the blast.
This is the description Yevgenia gave me, as I spoke to her in one of the parks in Zaporizhzhia on May 8.
“We woke up at half past five in the morning to an explosion. Some 15-20 minutes later, there was a new blast, it was very, very loud, I actually flinched. It's hard to describe the shockwave, you have to experience it. We realized the explosion had been somewhere close, and when we saw the footage later, we realized it was near our park. My friends live here, and all the windows had been broken, it was really scary. When there’s usually an explosion, we take refuge in a safe place in the apartment, a corridor or a bathroom because the walls provide us with some sort of protection. There is no bomb shelter nearby, we all live on the same floor, so it is simply impossible. We try to live between these walls and hope that something will change”.
People install strand boards to replace the broken windows following a number of explosions in the city center.
In the park near Yevgenia’s building, excavators are clearing the huge crater left in the wake of the attack, while children are playing in areas that eluded the attack. A heavy feeling of dread hangs in the air. Workers have started rebuilding the damaged roadway segments and volunteers quickly mobilized to help tenants replace the broken windows with OSB boards.
Wartime life in a fortress coveted by Russia
For the people of Zaporizhzhia, May 8 was just another day in their lives, a routine which for over two years has become the new “normal”.
Since the start of the war, the raid sirens have gone off over 4,000 times in Zaporizhzhia, totaling 160 days. In the early days of the invasion, the sirens in the city blared for hours on end, non-stop. At present, regardless of the duration of the threat, sirens only go off for a few minutes to warn people to take shelter, something that no one does anymore, because unlike other large cities, Zaporizhzhia does not have an underground subway network and not enough shelters.
Navigating the city isn't easy either. The GPS gets jammed during air raid alarms and the location detected by applications like Google Maps is random and at odds with reality. Road signs were erased early in the war to confuse the Russians in the event of a land invasion. Under layers of black paint, you can still decipher the names of towns and villages, which are now out of reach.
Road sign on the outskirts of Zaporizhzhia, erased to confuse Russians. The ППНХ acronym (standing for Putin, poshol na khuy - which roughly translates as “Fuck off, Putin”) can be spotted in the lower-right corner.
Zaporizhzhia is surrounded by dangerous rural areas to which civilian traffic is almost non-existent. At the junction of Zaporizhzhia and Dnipropetrovsk regions in southern Ukraine, the Dnieper River is a natural border separating Ukraine from the Russian-occupied territories. The riverbanks in villages bordering the Dnieper, once ideal places for a relaxing outing, are now deserted. All villages in southern Zaporizhzhia, even those where people have chosen to stay, are dangerous areas, subject to frequent attacks that destroy infrastructure, homes and lives.
The city is a fortress, access being restricted by countless military checkpoints on the main roadways. Most of the rural, secondary roads have been closed down to control the mobility of the civilian population.
Zaporizhzhia remains a hard-to-get “trophy” for Russia, which, however, is continuing its slow advance on the southern front. “Ми пробежемо” (which is Ukrainian for “We will win”) can be read on the walls of many buildings in the city center. People look to the skies, aware that’s not where hope comes from, only birds, clouds and drones.
