A makeshift cemetery in Luhansk.
Image: Christopher Miller

LUHANSK, Ukraine –- Lyuba Bolgarova has come to look for her father in a dusty field lined with trees that the autumn cold has given a rust-colored kiss.

Jutting from mounds of dirt are simple, wooden crosses — more than a hundred of them by a recent count — pale blond testaments to the toll of the ongoing conflict between Moscow-backed rebels and the government in Kiev.

In August, when battles between Ukrainian government forces and separatist fighters raged in and around the city, Lyuba's father Alexander awoke in the middle of the night in a panic, thinking a shell had taken out the family home. The house was unscathed but Bolgarov, still delirious, took to his bed and refused to leave.

“He lost his mind,” his grandson Andrei says. Wrecked by stress and fear, Alexander suffered consecutive strokes and died three weeks later. At her father's shallow grave, Lyuba holds out a small porcelain mug as Andrei pours lager from a plastic bottle. The mug is placed at the base of the cross and Lyuba mutters a brief prayer. Neither mother nor son shed a tear. “We’ve already done our grieving,” Lyuba says.

Mourners, like Lubya, come to the improvised cemetery in Luhansk to grieve their relatives.

No city in eastern Ukraine has suffered like Luhansk.

Once the epicenter of the country’s metalworking industry with a pre-war population of almost half a million people, the city bore the brunt of the conflict. Though exact estimates are hard to come by, the civilian toll is believed to number between 600 and 1,000 from the city of Luhansk alone.

For two months Ukrainian troops and rebels fought pitched battles here, lobbing thousands of shells at each other, razing entire neighborhoods and villages. The area now has a desolate, apocalyptic feel.

Electricity, running water, telephone and Internet services were knocked out for more than two months. Long bread lines and people standing for hours in front of the banks to take out money isn't an uncommon sight. Most businesses and cafes have closed as a result of the fighting and, to this day, the city remains largely without basic services.

Fighting forced tens of thousands of people to flee, with some bolting east to Moscow and others going westward, headed for Kiev.

As a result of this exodus, Luhansk has become a ghost town.

Hundreds, possibly thousands, have died in Luhansk during the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

The provincial capital is of strategic importance to the separatists because of the 464-mile border it shares with Russia, across which Moscow has funneled weapons and reinforcements to separatist fighters here throughout the more than six-months-long conflict. Luhansk is also a part of what Russian President Vladimir Putin calls “Novorossiya” –- meaning New Russia. The name is a czarist-era term that describes the area from Luhansk to the port city of Odessa in Ukraine’s south and beyond to its western border with Moldova and its breakaway state of Transnistria. Novorossiya is also the name the separatists have given to their self-declared statelet that comprises the regions of Luhansk and neighboring Donetsk.

Much of Luhansk has been severely damaged during the conflict in eastern Ukraine.

A restaurateur named Igor, who spoke on condition his last name not be used, says he stayed behind with his wife to watch over their restaurant, The Brigantine. Located in a basement and decorated in a marine theme –- porthole windows along the walls show colorful fish swimming past other sea creatures in crystal clear blue waters–- the restaurant also a good place to take shelter during the heavy shelling. Igor and his family housed 49 other people inside The Brigantine for more than two months this summer. “Together we listened to bombs explode outside for two months,” Igor says.

Their time trapped in the hull of this fictitious ship in some ways resembled life at sea. There was no electricity, no water and nowhere to go. They lived in candlelight and slept on tabletops, bench seats, air mattresses and the floor. They played cards to pass the time. In the few calm minutes between rocket salvos they gathered sticks outside and burned small fires over which they cooked soups with whatever smattering of ingredients they had on hand. Four birthdays were celebrated in The Brigantine during that time, including Igor’s and his son’s. “We celebrated as best we could,” Igor says. “We sang and danced. It wasn’t all that bad. And we lived.”

A Pro-Russian rebel inspects a bus after an attack in the nearby town of Donetsk.

Anatoly Turevich, the 62-year-old director of Luhansk’s main morgue, has a darker story. Inside his modest office he reminisces of the days he spent when he was a bright-eyed 18-year-old in the Soviet coast guard stationed in the Baltic. On the walls are photographs of the Baltic and Black seas. Carefully erected model sailing ships are perched atop his desk and shelves. It’s been a while since Turevich has seen the sea. "I’ve seen more of that lately," he says, gesturing to a human skull resting on a shelf over his shoulder. It's been more than three months since Turevich slept at his home. He barely recalls what it looks and feels like there. Instead, he’s been sleeping on the quaint sofa in his office. With corpses coming in all hours of the day and night since July, he’s not been able to leave the morgue grounds. And he’s lost his sense of smell. Nearly 600 bodies have passed through since the onslaught of the conflict in mid-April, most in horrendous conditions. A majority of them were shredded and died from shrapnel wounds, Turevich explains.

Only 10 bodies can fit inside the morgue’s freezer, which didn’t work for much of July and August –- Ukraine’s hottest months –- after shells destroyed the city’s power grid. And so corpses inside the morgue and on the lawn outside rotted away. Although the power is intermittently back on, I can smell the festering corpses of five Ukrainian National Guardsmen who rest in shoddily made wooden coffins in back of the building. Up close, flies swarm around the coffins and maggots squirm over top of the bodies, which are visible through the cracks. Turevich is waiting to get word from either the separatist government here or the authorities in Kiev about what to do. “We can’t bury them here, because we have no more room in the cemeteries,” he says. The fighting in Luhansk has mostly halted since Ukrainian, Russian and separatist representatives agreed to a cease-fire during a meeting in Minsk last month. But battles are still being fought in nearby towns and in the neighboring region of Donetsk, where a fierce fight is underway for control of the regional airport.

A Ukrainian tank destroyed in recent battles with the Russian troops near the village of Dmytrivka, Luhansk region.

About 400 meters down the road from the morgue, inside the trauma unit of Luhansk’s main hospital Svetlana is anxiously stirring as she waits for word as to the condition of her son. Alexey, 29, has suffered shrapnel wounds. A volunteer fighter for the separatists’ militia, he was struck while manning a block post in the nearby town of Stanitsa Luhanska when a volley of rockets believed to have been fired from a nearby Ukrainian position exploded around him. With the town’s sole hospital destroyed by a rocket attack weeks ago, Alexey had to be transported more than three hours over precarious back roads here to the operating room of Dr. Vladimir Anatolyevich. With tears streaming down her cheeks and her voice trembling, Svetlana prays that her son will survive, “even if he must have his leg removed.” Good news comes as we speak when the doctor tells Svetlana that Alexey will live and likely keep his leg. “Oh, thank god!” she cries. “I want him to come home. I want everything to go back to normal.”

Christopher Miller

Luhansk, Ukraine: City of Ghosts