Mykhailo Poperechnyuk was driving to the southern Ukrainian city of Nikopol earlier this month when he saw a barrage of Russian rockets streaking across the night sky.
The missiles were fired from what may be the most impregnable Russian positions along the entire front line: those surrounding the Zaporizhia nuclear power plant, just 5km away across the Dnipro River.
The Russian military seized the massive facility, Europe’s largest with six 950MW reactors, in the first weeks of its invasion, destroying a training office during the assault despite the risks obvious damage to the plant and radiation leaks.
Since then, Ukrainian officials say, the Russians have stationed 500 soldiers and heavy weapons inside the perimeter, in violation of international energy conventions, and are using the reactor blocks to shield themselves from retaliatory fire.
“Imagine how cynical and immoral the Russians are,” said Poperechnyuk, a businessman and activist who is a member of Ukraine’s territorial defense forces. “They are putting their artillery right behind the reactors so that the Ukrainian armed forces cannot respond.”
A resident of Nikopol clears the rubble of a house damaged by a Russian military strike © Dmytro Smolienko/Reuters
The people of Nikopol, a Russian-speaking steel town of Soviet-era factories and apartment blocks, now live in the shadow of a power station that has become a Russian fortress. And there is little the country’s military can do to attack or defend.
Since the salvo that Poperechnyuk witnessed on July 14, almost nightly Russian shelling has occurred, terrifying and exhausting residents, just as other towns and cities in the eastern Donbas region and southern Ukraine are being pulverized by the Moscow assault.
Over two nights this week, the Russians fired 100 rockets at Nikopol and at one point air raid warnings sounded for 19 hours straight.
The fear was palpable among the dozens of people waiting for food parcels at a charity center in the city funded by Poperechnyuk. Five Russian missiles had hit several residential blocks and a factory the night before, killing two people.
“It was scary,” said Lisa, a refugee from the southern city of Mariupol, where she spent seven weeks living in a basement amid fierce Russian shelling. “We gave anti-depressants to our son who was crying at 4 in the morning. The boy was panicking, so we hugged him really tight.”
“I am shocked by what happened last night,” Zina Sidorenko, a pensioner, said of the latest attack, with tears in her eyes. She insisted she wouldn’t leave, but thousands already have.
Businessman Mykhailo Poperechnyuk has organized food parcels for locals in the city © Ben Hall/FT
Poperechnyuk estimated that Nikopol’s population had halved from about 100,000 in the eight years since Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula and broke out the separatist war in Donbas.
Tens of thousands have fled in the months since Moscow’s troops swept into southern Ukraine in the spring and took up positions just miles away.
“Before the rockets, business was picking up,” said Andriy Vezetelnik, who owns a restaurant, gym and a group of convenience stores in the city. Now “everybody’s gone.”
Right in front of his restaurant, dozens of locals, mostly elderly, had put up a few meager possessions for sale: a few cups, a cracked saucepan, a skipping rope. But there were few customers.
Mariya Poloz, chief operating officer of Poperechnyuk’s foundation, expressed a mixture of trepidation and defiance at the prospect of a Russian attack.
“I am a lawyer, a volunteer and a woman, I understand what they do [Russian soldiers] they can do if they come here,” he said. “But a lot of people look at me. If they see me leaving, it’s a bad sign that there is no hope here.”
In the nearby town of Oleksiyivka, Oksana Glushko was handing out food parcels to locals from outside the town hall. The city councilor praised the extraordinary effort of ordinary Ukrainians to help not only their neighbors but also to support the war effort.
She and other activists have been delivering clothes, boots, car parts and 10,000 home-cooked meals to army units about 250km away. They raised enough money to buy two vehicles and were now raising funds for a third.
Glushko pulled out a ledger that recorded each delivery. “Our people are generous,” he said. “Our people are our wealth.”
Oksana Glushko praised the extraordinary efforts of ordinary Ukrainians to help their neighbors and support the war effort © Ben Hall/FT
Ukraine’s armed forces have come to rely on crowdfunding and charity for vehicles, basic supplies and non-lethal equipment such as drones and computers. But it is the country’s military high command that distributes the heavy weaponry. And the defenders of Nikopol have none.
“Now the people at the top have to help us,” said Volodymyr, a squadron commander of the territorial defense forces and a veteran of the Donbas war.
Standing by the sea, the fortified nuclear power plant visible in the distance, he said the Russians might try to launch an assault on Nikopol using helicopters and ships.
“But for now their strategy is to threaten civilians,” he said, pointing to a residential block on the crest of a hill. “These people feel particularly exposed.”
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Nikopol Beach, a short strip of sand backed by a children’s playground, was cordoned off and bombed to thwart a possible Russian amphibious assault. Across the road at SOK Beach Club, manager Svetlana was trying to make the most of a business she bought just last fall.
A few guests lounged in the sweltering heat while others jumped from a pontoon into the green waters of the Dnipro.
“There’s good energy here,” he said. “It is a kind of sacred place. those people [the Russians] he will have to fight a lot with us”.