March 14, 2022
News
Internationally acclaimed photographer Stanislav Krupař has been focusing on reportage photography, especially in Ukraine and Russia, but he worked on the conflicts in Syria, Libya and Iraq as well. At the beginning of this year, he went to Avdijivka in the Donetsk region where he got caught up in the Russian invasion. Stanislav managed to escape via the ‘last train’ to Kyiv. We talked about the current situation in Ukraine.
The invasion of Russian troops caught you in the town of Avdijivka in the Donetsk region, where you had been working since January.
That's right, I was shooting a report for a German magazine. For some reason, I couldn't sleep for almost the whole night of 24 February. At 4 am, rockets started flying over Avdijika. I looked up online and listened to Putin's speech. I was absolutely shaking with fear, Putin looked like some kind of monster. I felt like it was the beginning of World War III. I couldn't believe it.
The situation escalated dramatically within the last weeks before Putin's troops attacked, but most people believed that the war would be avoided.
I was one of them, I kind of laughed at those who warned of war. Now I’m eating humble pie. I was convinced that I knew Russia quite well, and it turned out that I was completely wrong. I thought maybe there might be a partition of Ukraine, but certainly not on the fact that Putin would try to take over the whole of Ukraine. And certainly not now. If he wanted to attack, why didn't he do it in 2014-2015 when there were so many pro-Russian people in the country? Or maybe wait for the launch of Nord Stream II, which I thought he wanted enormously and which would have significantly reduced the revenue to the Ukrainian treasury and weakened the country? The whole thing makes no sense to me at all.
What about the people in the Donbas region, did they think there might be an invasion of this scale?
Those people have been living there in armed conflict for eight years. They're used to it. And they are actually much less nervous about the war than people in Kyiv or elsewhere in western Ukraine. All little boys can tell the difference between missiles flying around by their sound. I can't even tell if it's coming from us or towards us. Ironically, the closer to the original front line, the less afraid people are. But it is true that after the attack, people in Avdijika and other villages in the Donbas started panicking. Many people tried to flee immediately after that to the western regions of the country.
And you stayed?
Everything happened so fast. I didn't even have time to get my things, which were left with a friend of mine. The taxi driver, a retired soldier himself, refused to take me there because the road had been shelled. There were various reports that the Russians would occupy and close the whole area and that it would be impossible to leave. I took the first train and got to Pokrovsk first. At the station, people were trying to get into a train that would take them further west. I bought a ticket for the first train of the morning, the fast one, to Kyiv. I returned to the hotel and got information about an overnight train to the capital. I didn't hesitate and boarded it, even though the lady at the ticket office convinced me that the morning train would run. She said it had already left Kyiv.
And did it make the journey in the end?
We were worried that our train wouldn't even make it. I don't think even the conductor believed it. He said we'd only get there if we all prayed. That didn’t sound very credible. And then I learned that the other train had left Kyiv, but never arrived in Pokrovsk. But we did, and apparently, I got out of Pokrovsk on the last train possible. The other train might get there too at some point, but I believe that I escaped on the last possible train.
You have been in downtown Kyiv for almost two weeks now. How is the situation there?
I live in the very centre of Kyiv and it's quiet here. Occasionally there are sirens or explosions, but the water, electricity, gas and internet are working, so nothing dramatic is happening when I am inside of my rented apartment. But it changes when you go outside. The streets are deserted, you only see a few dog walkers in the morning. I haven't seen kids playing outside in a long time. Getting around the city is complicated by dozens of checkpoints, getting from one side of the Dnieper to the other takes at least three hours. Everyone is terribly nervous, suspicious, it's hard to get close to anyone. And when you take out your camera, they scold you or call the police. I even had a revolver almost stuffed in my mouth. It's almost impossible to get a picture of the trenches here.
The nervousness must be enormous.
Everything has changed. I fear how all this will form Ukrainian society and the world in general. Everyone has a gun here and they are all nervous. There's nothing worse than a nervous guy with a rifle in his hand. For me, the invasion is a collapse of the world as I've known it.
The war forced millions of people to leave their homes, many of whom fled across the border. But there are still many people who stayed. From our point of view, it is hard to understand.
The situation can be better assessed from distance. People from outside have a better overview of what is happening in Ukraine than we do here. Everyone has the feeling that things will work out somehow. That it won't be so bad after all. No one stayed with the idea that they will get shot or a bomb will fall on their house. But a lot of people are leaving, and those who can, at least get their kids to safety.
There are a lot of sad stories of families being separated and survival difficulties in the media.
There are millions of these stories, not only in Ukraine but everywhere in the world. Every war brings the same sad stories. On the train from the East, there was a family who was fleeing for the fourth time due to war. Idris, 45, was born in Kurdistan, Syria, settled in Ukraine with his Ukrainian wife Tatiana, and they have two children together. He ran a pharmacy in Donetsk. In 2009, they left Damascus for Kurdistan during the dramatic events of 2011. However, even there they could not stay because of the growing aggression, so they moved back to Ukraine last summer. On the first of March, Idris wanted to open a pharmacy in Donbas. Instead, he and his family are once again on the run. This time to Germany, where they have relatives.
How long do you plan to stay in Kyiv?
I would like to stay until the end of the war if that is within Putin’s plans. If the Russian army bombs Kyiv, another million people will flee and the gas, water and electricity supply will be threatened… Everything works here at the moment, but I'm afraid that one day it will end and I won't manage to leave.
Thank you for your time.
