Druzhkivka: The Last Piece of Halva

A Month

On December 20, 2025, fleeing at high speed from Kostiantynivka while being chased by a kamikaze drone, we drove into Druzhkivka. There was a burger joint where soldiers and civilians were sitting, and there was a deceptive sense of being in the rear.

A month later, already in 2026, we arrive an hour and a half after a missile strike on the city center: one dead, two wounded. An elderly woman who had been passing by describes in detail what the mutilated bodies looked like. Electricians are repairing wires. The memorial to those killed in the Russian-Ukrainian war has been damaged, as well as a monument stating that the city was founded by a Cossack named Druzhko.

Our burger place is damaged too — darkness shows through the shattered windows. But when we look more closely inside, it turns out that despite the destruction, they haven’t stopped preparing orders and have already partially cleaned up. Soon, once they recover from the shock of the strike, taxi drivers gather in the square. Since no one is ready to enter the establishment yet, the burger joint takes orders that are delivered to certain districts of the city.

Taxi drivers take an interest in our drone detector, which starts beeping and lights up if drones are nearby. And then it beeps:

— “Fuck, it’s flying right by my house, the fucker!” one of the taxi drivers shouts.

Curfew in Druzhkivka lasts from 3 p.m. to 11 a.m. A month ago, there were queues everywhere: for phone repairs, at the pharmacy, and for bread. I remember an older man arriving on a moped from the outskirts. He said he had bought his Delta in 2008 and had already ridden sixteen thousand kilometers. But he cut our conversation short and ran to the phone repair shop door because a woman who had just arrived began claiming the spot ahead of him.

Now, a month later, civilians are almost nowhere to be seen.

Two soldiers walk across the central square, followed by a puppy. We ask what his name is. They say they asked ChatGPT what to name the dog. It asked them to attach a photo. They did. ChatGPT replied:

Music

Maryna sets her broom aside and goes to join the queue at the pharmacy.

— “This is all my territory,” she says, gesturing around. “I cleaned it all up this morning — cigarette butts, packs, the pigeons that die…”

She is 56. She lives with her 86-year-old mother and her husband, who has a disability. Recently, while she was working here, a Russian Gerbera drone struck her. Fortunately, her backpack caught the shrapnel. She suffered a concussion and soft tissue injuries.

— “It flew out from that house,” she says, pointing at a building ahead. “I didn’t have time to do anything. I just turned… and didn’t understand anything.”

Maryna used to work as a junior nurse in a boarding school for children with developmental delays. Before that, she was a crane operator at NKMZ, the largest enterprise of custom heavy engineering in Europe.

— “Those were fifty-meter cranes! Pigeons were always warming themselves there. They rode up with us. I’ll tell you about pigeons. They’re stupid; they eat whatever they find. And then they drop dead. I just don’t like it when they bring death on themselves.”

She used to get to work by bus and tram.

— “We’ve had trams all our lives. I remember them from childhood. Well… we won’t have trams anymore. I feel sorry for the city. I was crying just now.”

She wipes her dark eyes. Despite the destruction: windows boarded up, kiosks reinforced with sandbags – the city center still looks tidy.

Maryna also loves music:

— “I love deep house. I don’t understand jazz. Blues — maybe. But jazz… I don’t get it. I love choral singing — I sang for many years,” she laughs. “I love Sektor Gaza. I was young — that was our music. You can’t remove words from a song. I loved Ronnie Dio. I’m a music lover; I listen to everything. I even love country. I really love Ukrainian songs. My family is very musical. I believe there’s nothing more beautiful than Ukrainian folk songs. But only folk songs, I repeat.”
— “What’s your favorite?”
— “Oi tam na hori (“Oh, there on the mountain” — ed.).”

She says that, since her injury, she listens to music with her headphones less often. She used to put something on while walking to work. Now she’s afraid she won’t hear an approaching drone.

— “I was born here, and I’ll die here,” she jokes, heading to the pharmacy as people begin gathering.

Kostian and Joseph

In the park further down the street, smoke rises from a crater left by a strike. Two municipal workers — a man and a woman — are burning broken branches. Clay that was sent flying by the blast has stuck to the surrounding trees.

The man’s name is Viktor. He’s 66. He works here because, as he says, his pension is 3,300 hryvnias. The woman doesn’t give her name. She explains why she hasn’t left the city, much like others do: “We’re not needed anywhere.”

Nearby stands a cinema with graffiti: “Let There Be Cinema!” and “Where’s the Movie?” Further down the street is a classical-style building whose columns lie overturned, half-shattered. Not far from Druzhkivka, there is a remarkable geological natural monument — 250-million-year-old petrified trees. These fallen columns resemble them in shape and in feeling. They could lie here for a very long time. What lies ahead is so hazy, as if time itself no longer exists.

Through a window, bookshelves are visible. We find ourselves inside a library after circling the blocked entrance. Library cards are scattered everywhere. Books lie in piles on the floor, though even more remain on the shelves. Filing cabinets and dried flowerpots. Portraits of Bulgakov, Tolstoy, Hemingway, and Kafka hang on a wall.

Through a broken window, I see two men in the yard gathering wood chips into a cart.

“Kostian and Joseph,” they introduce themselves.

— “How is life here?”
— “So-so,” says Joseph.
— “People are leaving,”— Kostian doesn’t quite agree.

— “Krasia (“Beauty” — ed.)!” Joseph calls a large dog that is trying to bite us. I ask why he named her Krasia. — “Because she’s beautiful.” — He sits on the curb, stroking his thick white beard.

— “You look like Hemingway. Have you read him?”
— “‘The Old Man and the Sea.’ Very moving.”

Joseph loves books and women. He says he knows many “old Frenchmen” — Maupassant, Zola, Balzac.

— “Do you like the kinds of women Balzac had?”

He doesn’t answer.

— “Do you have a wife? Children?”
— “I have two wives.”
— “How is that?”
— “Unofficial.”
— “Did you live together?”
— “Me, a woman, and a child.”
— “But you said two wives.”
— “From time to time.”
— “Did you ever live with both of them at the same time?”
— “Are you kidding?”
— “Well, I don’t know.
— “I had sex with two at once.”
— “With those two?”
— “No.”

Krasia tries to bite us again. Joseph and Kostian chase her away and leave, pulling their cart.

Glass

Nearby are buildings that were shelled the day before. Seventy-five-year-old Olha shows her first-floor apartment. When the strike happened, she was lying on the couch. The blast wave lifted a blanket into the air; it fell over her and protected her from glass shards. She approaches a frozen flowerpot on the windowsill. The glass is hanging by the curtain — if she pulls it, it will collapse onto her chest.

All her neighbors are cleaning. Glass clinks everywhere. Ninety-year-old Larysa from the third floor says her window was blown out, too, and she has to clean it herself. She has grandchildren in Moscow.

— “Do they call you?”
— “No. They don’t call, and I don’t call.”
— “How long has it been?”
— “They were on WhatsApp, then moved to Telegram. I didn’t understand how to use Telegram.”

We’re told to go to building number 40, entrance six. A man lives there who can barely hear or see and was badly affected. We walk several dozen meters and a few floors.

— “What happened here?” — we ask 60-year-old Vitalii, who pushes back an unattached door so we can enter.
— “In what sense?”
— “Well, what happened? Was there a strike?”
— “Oh my!” — he peers through the doorway. — “I don’t understand what you’re saying. I’m deaf!”

He looks past us. We repeat.

— “Come in,” he says, “look.”

Vitalii asks us to repeat every phrase several times. A box of wrenches lies on the floor. One room is already cleaned; the others are wrecked.

— “My eyesight’s bad, and my hearing’s bad. And when it exploded,” he laughs, “I probably became even more deaf.”

He lives alone. A friend recently helped him, but left. Vitalii will sleep somewhere else tonight; it’s impossible here. The only help he needs is with cleaning. He plans to clean one room a day:

— “We manage on our own,” Vitalii smiles.

While we walk through the rooms, he is dismantling a boiler that fell into the bathtub. He says from the hallway:

— “I’ll block it, there’s a draft.”

He takes the door, which is knocked off its hinges, and covers the opening.

In one room, wallpaper with swans survived. The balcony is shattered; below, people are sawing boards to cover windows.

Wind. Neighbors shouting. Tools buzzing.

— “Sania, is that you?” Vitalii says, hearing our rustling. He obviously thought we had already left.
— “No, it’s us.”
— “Sania?”

We shout louder.

— “Ah!” he laughs.

Red Cars

Four days ago, rescue workers were targeted. State Emergency Service worker Stas Ruban shows us a fire engine hit by an FPV drone. Black streaks mark the red surface.

The fire truck is reinforced with metal mesh. Nearby is a vehicle labeled “Kostiantynivka,” evacuated from the destroyed city. Four of Stas’s colleagues, who were injured, went to the call on the outskirts of Druzhkivka. An FPV drone hit the roof of their car.

— “The boys were lucky,” Stas believes.

His colleague Volodymyr Abramov calls everyone by name. Two have concussions — Oleksandr and Vitalii, and two more have much more serious injuries — Serhii and another Oleksandr are currently in a hospital in Dnipro.

Volodymyr Abramov has endured tragedy before. His cousin Vitalii served in the 81st Brigade as a volunteer. After leaving Lysychansk, they were given a few days off.

— “He told me, ‘Come over and sit with me. These are the kind of times where we might not see each other again.’ I said, ‘Of course we will.’ And we had a tight schedule at work. But he insisted. I went. Sat with him and his wife for about an hour. Then I drove him back to the unit. I was the last in our family to see him alive.”

Rescue worker Kostiantyn Bykov says Druzhkivka is “the most beautiful city in Donbas” — because it’s “friendly.” Last year, he and his friends from a guard unit, five or six guys, often went fishing nearby — perch, pike, sander. The last time they went to the river was last year on Easter. And he hadn’t been home here, in the suburban area, for a long time.

— “My parents left. My mom was crying. I said, ‘Mom, you need to say goodbye to the house in your thoughts. Do you see how they’re advancing on us?”

Several guided bombs recently struck near his house, not far from the halva factory.

Halva

There was a place in Druzhkivka with good shawarma and a small shop. I wonder if it’s still open. Yes!

Katia, 46, and her 22-year-old son, Illia, still work there. A one-kilogram bar of halva remains in a box.

— “See, they hit the factory — more than once,” Katia says. “But they kept working. And kept bringing us halva.

Until recently.

Katia left Donetsk in 2014. She had a retail outlet in Kostiantynivka, but it was hit.

— “And our stall was cut clean in half,” recalls Illia.

The worker was killed. Katia attended the funeral.

— “I cried… That was the first time I came home and said I was packing and leaving.”
— “And now?” I ask.
— “I insist on leaving,” says Illia.

A month later, we’ll pass quickly by this spot. The doors will be closed. That kilogram of halva may have been the last.

Second Entry

Later that same day in late January 2026, we entered Druzhkivka in a Roshel Senator armored vehicle reinforced with mesh. A rotation is underway: some Azov fighters jump out with supplies; others climb in to leave the position.

In the house where they live: a yellow gas meter, an icon of Jesus, a kitchen tile with a deer, and many cats. Outside, there are fiber-optic cables everywhere. They patrol the sky. If something flies, they shoot.

Taras, call sign Mykyta, is in the patrol group. It’s not immediately visible that his face is scarred. Taras first came here in December 2025. He was in Kostiantynivka before, evacuating wounded soldiers. An FPV drone struck near the train station. Two soldiers lost limbs; one was killed; others suffered eye and ear injuries. Taras and his brother-in-arms pulled everyone out and provided them with first aid.

— “I didn’t realize I was covered in blood. I felt no pain. I can’t see out of one eye. And I can’t hear well — you have to speak louder.”

When a car came to pick him up, Taras insisted: “Let’s go on foot, we’ll get to the edge of Konstakha, call, and they’ll pick us up.” But they called him and insisted on getting on the next evacuation vehicle. There, he refused to go to the stabilization point, but when the medics made him look in the mirror, he was stunned. They removed many fragments, including from his eyes. Some remain. He says that at that time Druzhkivka was considered a deep rear.

We pass a house where ice covers a boiler and bathroom visible through a window. The fighters say they tried to shut off the water, but it didn’t work. It was everywhere. A destroyed globe lies in the snow near the house.
We cross a dam, where, due to peculiarities of the current, the ice forms round, constantly spinning ice floes.
— “What beauty,” I hear from behind.
— “Look at that swirl,” says one of the fighters.
— “Donbas jellyfish!” laughs another.

Immediately on the rise, you can see a damaged tank covered in snow. This is the road to Dobropillia. Last spring, while driving through here, I saw swans. I wonder where they are now.

A disgruntled shop assistant walks past.

— “Locals tell us, ‘You came here — and they started shelling,’” says Mykola from Kryvyi Rih, call sign Akhmet. “As if I wanted to come live here in Druzhkivka. I’d be happy to live with my wife and children. My youngest son is nine. When I left, he was five. Now he’s already up to my shoulder. To me, he’s still little. He says, ‘Why are you babying me? I’m practically a grown man.’ Wouldn’t I want to see my child grow up? I once told my wife, ‘I’ll come visit.’ She said, ‘Listen to yourself. Come visit your own home?’”

After touring the city, we are told that we have to wait another five hours for the Roshel that will take us out. I suggest heading toward the center and catching a taxi to Kramatorsk. At first, the fighters are skeptical. But then they agree. We quickly walk along the winter Druzhkivka — past burned-out cars, leaning under the fiber optic cable.

At an intersection stands a taxi driver. For 400 hryvnias, he takes us out of this city being pressed from three sides.

Dome

A few days after we leave, a rocket hits the market — the same type that struck near the burger place. At least seven killed. Fifteen wounded.

In December, Olha Serhiivna had been sitting nearby waiting for her granddaughter, who was studying at driving school.

— “How old is your granddaughter?”
— “Little. Twenty-four..”
— “Little?” I laugh. “How old are you?”
— “Almost seventy. I won’t say exactly.”
— “Do you have a car?”
— “I have a car, but I don’t have a license.”
— “Did someone give you a car as a gift?”
— “I did. Sold the apartment and bought a car. What if we have to leave? We get in and drive.”

She sold her apartment for four thousand dollars in 2022. Friends recently sold theirs for two. In her bag — bread and a package. “My granddaughter ordered a book.”

— “What does she like to read?”
— “Science fiction.”