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Zaporizhzhia is the only large city in south-east Ukraine under Ukrainian control but with 70% of the wider Zaporizhzhia region under Russian military control, there are fears that Moscow’s forces will attempt to take it.
Guardian reporter Isobel Koshiw went to visit the city as it prepares for a Russian advance:
Ukrainian reinforcements are moving towards the city and active fighting has begun in earnest. Ukrainian soldiers told the Guardian they had recently retreated from one town in the Zaporizhzhia region. Villages and towns about an hour’s drive from the city that were visited by journalists three weeks ago are no longer safe, according to the regional military administration.
“You can see for yourself people are out, going to work – the city is prepared but it won’t come to that,” said Ivan Ariefiev, the press secretary of the Zaporizhzhia regional military administration, at one of a series of war-related training courses being offered to the city’s teachers and journalists. Attenders, who are then expected to train the wider community, were taught how to load a gun, administer first aid and do a basic medical evaluation.
Despite the proximity of Russian troops, Ariefiev said, the regional military command was confident it could keep Russian forces at bay. “No one is being evacuated from the city itself,” said Ariefiev. “It’s only the evacuees from the south who are leaving for other places.”
In the newly dug maze of trenches outside Zaporizhzhia, the Guardian heard frequent incoming shells that soldiers said were landing 3km to 5km away. The group of soldiers who dug the trenches said they hoped these lines of defence would never be used and that Ukrainian soldiers farther south would withstand the attacks.
