“Today, during an evacuation, you can’t afford to ‘think’. You have to be 100% present, keep your eyes and ears on the stopwatch. You are constantly watching the sky. It may seem to you that everything is ok, but the situation can change in an instant,” he said.
A tragic death in the passenger seat
As it happened during the Catholic Christmas evacuation, December 25, 2025.
Together with volunteers Vyačeslav Iľčenko and Eduard Meľnykov, Bohdan went to the nearby Kosťantynivka to find civilians. They set off at dawn, but did not arrive in the city – shortly after 8:30 in the morning, the car was hit by a Russian drone controlled by an optical fiber. Bohdan managed to jump up. Vjačeslav from Kharkiv, who was sitting in the passenger seat, was killed by the explosion. Eduardo’s vertebra was broken. Bohdan himself was also injured – he still has fragments on his back and legs.
Although several months had passed, he did not hide that the day when a person died next to him was extremely difficult for him. The car with the hole in the roof was still parked in his parents’ yard.
“I can’t even go near it. It’s a very painful memory. I think that car will stay in the yard until I move my parents out of the house. I’ll leave it there,” he sighed.
Bohdan has already come to terms with the fact that he and his family will probably have to leave Kramatorsk one day. He insisted that he would not make the same mistake that many of the people he brought out of combat zones had made – staying until the last minute.
“I still want to continue the evacuations, but I realize more and more that one day I will be evacuating people from my hometown. I don’t even want to think about it. But, unfortunately, the reality is that drones can reach us. When I sleep, I don’t want to hear their buzzing. At least once I want to feel that I am safe. Two years ago, I also felt safe in Kramatorsk. Every time we returned from evacuation, as if a stone had fallen from my heart – I could walk around the city, breathe freely. Today, you can’t park your car anywhere in Kramatorsk, otherwise the Russians risk destroying it,” he described the realities of life in the city, which is currently 14 kilometers away.
Search for food in the ruins
His greatest fear is for his loved ones. It was enough for the wife to go to the store, and he was already sitting on a thorn. He was constantly checking his cell phone to make sure there wasn’t an attack drone flying over the city.
“I think that Kramatorsk should be evacuated. There shouldn’t be any more children here at all. It’s not just a feeling, I’m trying to evaluate the situation soberly and follow the facts. I saw it in Avdijivka, Pokrovsk and Kosťantynivka. People may live here for a year or two. But what will be the conditions of their existence? It won’t be life, just a kind of empty experience,” he pointed out.
The reality of war was relentless towards civilians, Bohdan regularly saw it with his own eyes. He described that people who stayed in shelled cities until the last moment almost always had serious health problems. They lived in poor sanitary conditions, without electricity and water, shaken by constant explosions. They wandered among the ruins and looked for food in bombed-out houses.
“When they finally leave, it’s like they’ve come out of hell. When you ask them why they stayed so long, they say: We had nowhere to go, we don’t have the money to start over. But they eventually evacuate anyway, because the front line can’t stand it anymore. Those who stay can stay there forever. When they die, the family doesn’t have the opportunity to take the body away and give it a decent burial. You can’t even officially to confirm that a person has died. The police will not get to the body. You will only receive a brief message from a neighbor who will inform you: The other day, we evacuated a 75-year-old woman who buried her son with her own hands. Why didn’t they just leave earlier?” described Bohdan.
Such places gave him goosebumps more and more often, and he readily admitted that, for example, no one would get him to Kosťantynivka today.
“The last time I was there was on February 13. We evacuated a family, an immobile woman. It was a difficult journey, after which we said to ourselves that it was the last time we went there. You not only have to survive the journey there, you also have to survive the minutes that you are in the city and loading people, and then also the journey back,” he stressed.
He waved at the drone – he was left without legs
He did not understand the civilians who remained. He felt as if people completely lost their sanity in extreme conditions. Trust that a drone will not attack you in the death zone? Absurd!
“Maybe here and there there will be a case where the Russians spare you, but that is such a low percentage that it is close to zero. We never rely on the drone to see us and ignore us. We know that we are a target. Every car, every person, whether a soldier or a civilian, is a target. Don’t look for humanity in such places,” he said, adding one of the drastic incidents.
Kostantynivka, December. The unnamed guy went to the center of steadfastness to get water. After a while, he noticed a drone above him that had a grenade attached to it. According to Bohdan, the man started waving at him to draw attention to himself – that he is a civilian. The drone pilot dropped the grenade right at his feet.
“The explosion tore off both limbs of the person in question. It was a miracle that he survived. He was lucky that there were people nearby who immediately ran to help him. They tied his legs so he didn’t bleed. We subsequently evacuated him. He waved at the drone – he was left without legs,” sighed Bohdan.
At first glance, it was obvious that he was genuinely troubled by the fact that although he regularly persuaded the residents of Kostântynivka to evacuate, people remained in the shelled town even at the cost of risking their own lives. After some time, he met many of them again – but already as invalids. He heard of others that they had perished. He realized that living in the immediate vicinity of the front meant only one thing: sooner or later falling into a cycle of death and injury.
“If nothing changes, the same scenario awaits Druzhkivka, Kramatorsk and Sloviansk. I still want to believe that they won’t occupy us. But as long as the war lasts for another three or four years, there will be nothing to occupy. There will be nothing to defend. Only ruins will remain,” he said.
He knew what the cities through which the front would pass looked like – they would be reduced to ashes. Unable to identify the streets he repeatedly passed, he had to zigzag between the wreckage of vehicles on the roads, tripping over the scattered fragments of FPV drones at every step.
“Some cities will never come back to life. Why are the Russians burnt to the ground?” he wondered aloud. “They pour hundreds of thousands of soldiers into a meat grinder just to conquer the ruins. They probably believe in some truth of their own. And we believe in the fact that the war will end one day. Although we no longer have the strength. We are like robots. We struggle, but the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel is not visible. Don’t expect optimism from me,” he added tiredly at the end of our meeting.
