1
At the intersection of Artem and Pushkin streets in the village, there are many rescue vehicles, thick smoke is coming from many yards. There is a strong smell of smoke or even burnt porridge in the air. A woman in a headscarf looks despairingly at one of the houses destroyed by fire. Her name is Lidiia Oleksandrivna. A woman tightly holds her dog named Bouquet on a chain. He barks and growls at anyone who approaches the woman and the house.
“Why donʼt you go eat?”, a World Central Kitchen volunteer says to the woman.
“I donʼt want to. I canʼt. To be left without a house for years in old age...”, replies Lidiia Oleksandrivna and adds: “Today is my birthday”.
The house that Lidiia lost on September 2 was built by her grandfather back in 1928, when her father was born. In 96 years, a middle-aged fireman will be next to it, he will will flood the remains of the house with a strong stream of water. In 10 minutes, he finishes, thick smoke and heat continue to come from the bricks.
Burnt house and basement in Studenok.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
Lidiia Oleksandrivna is a native. She studied at the Slovyansk Pedagogical Institute, returned to the village, became a teacher of junior classes. Three teenagers she taught approach her even now.
“Boys, is the school intact? Thank God. Because there will be no school — the village will disappear”, says the teacher.
It is difficult for a woman to gather her thoughts when talking about a fire. When the fire in the village was just beginning to rage, Lidia Oleksandrivna and her husband canned the tomatoes and cucumbers for the winter. Suddenly she heard an explosion, and the fire was already close to the house. On the same day, she received a message on her phone that a bus was waiting in the center of Studenok to evacuate them to Oskil. She left with her husband and mother, taking almost nothing.
Already on the morning of September 3, the woman returned. The house burned to the ground. Two of her dogs, seven kittens and more than 50 chickens died in the fire. The ducklings that appeared only two days ago also burned. She explains that some of the chickens suffocated from the smoke, and some were burned alive. Only the dog Bouquet and the cats Vasylyna and Mishanya survived the fire.
Lidiia Oleksandrivna and her dog Bouquet.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
"My mom is 88, Iʼm afraid to send her photos," Lidiia says. From behind the house, she takes out the black and heavily charred body of a chicken. A woman puts the bodies of animals in one pile. The poems she wrote were also burned in the house. Some of them were about the war.
Lidiia shows what is left of her yard. On the ground near her house are burnt potatoes and black tubs of burnt corn. There are several unexploded gas cylinders and a pile of bricks near them. Further in the yard — burnt eggplants and pears, dried dogwood fruits. Only tomatoes and cucumbers survived. The woman offers to taste them and take them with me.
Now Lidiia Oleksandrivna and her husband will live with neighbors who have a free house. Previously, she survived here both the Russian occupation and shelling that happened just down her street. She recalls how in June 2022, her cat Mishanya was born. Then the Russians came to her house, pointed a gun at her dog, and she hid the cat in her pocket.
“Then the correspondents took a picture of me and it, and everyone saw that I was alive. Because there was a flight to the neighboring house, and they said that we had died.”
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
2
In the summer of 2024, large forest fires were regularly recorded in the Kharkiv region, and the forests of Izyum area also burned more than once. Russian shelling was often the cause, and dense mining of forests added to the problem, said Yevhen Vasylenko, the spokesman of the regional emergency department.
A new big fire came to the village from the Donetsk region. On September 1, the National Nature Park "Holy Mountains", 31 kilometers from Studenko, caught fire. Due to the drought and strong wind, the fire quickly flared up and spread to the forest bordering Studenko. Already around five in the evening on September 2, the fire was in the village and covered 150 houses in an hour. Firefighters quickly arrived and started extinguishing the fire, says one of them.
Earlier, Studenok was a large village. In the 2000s, almost one and a half thousand people lived here, and in 2024, half as many remained. The village was first affected in the spring of 2022, when it was damaged and occupied by the Russians. 150 houses burned down in less than a day. This is half of all the houses in the village, said the head of the Oskil community Hennadiy Zahoruyko. Sometimes entire streets in Studenok burned down, and only old stoves remained from houses.
A rescuer in the middle of the ruins in Studenok. A villager disassembles the ruins of a burnt house.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
“We barely got our feet outta here. Here it was: no one was visible at all, smoke, fire”, says one of the local residents in sports pants and rubber slippers. Together with her family, she left on the evening of September 2 when she saw the fire in the village. She returned in the morning — there was already a fire at the place of her house. Her parentsʼ house also burned down, and now she will live with her sister.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
Near the woman, a long and painful moan is constantly heard — this is a survived cow that cannot calm down in any way. The woman is devastated by how quickly the fire destroyed the home. She holds a shovel in her hands and searches for the remains of the fire near the house. As soon as he sees bright coals, he throws them with gray earth mixed with ash and curses quietly. Having put out the coals, the woman leans on the shovel and calls someone.
A cow that survived the fire. A student puts out the remains of a fire near the house.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
“Yurchyk, take a bag or some big rag, we need to take the dog from mommy. He already stinks, the skin has already burst... Yurchik, please take it away”.
3
Sometimes loud explosions are heard from outside the village. This is a consequence of large-scale chaotic mining in 2022. The first to tell about it are the red signs standing in the woods at the entrance to the village. In many places in the forest, cleared corridors are "lined" with ribbons and these signs — one can only walk along them. Although the village did not burn due to shelling, groups of sappers with probes are carefully examining the fires, going from yard to yard.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
Empty hoses lie on many burnt houses and in yards. The houses continue to smoke, but there is no fire there anymore. They are tiredly watched by two firemen resting on a bench. Later, they come up and load the hoses into the fire truck.
By the evening of September 3, the fire in Studenok was brought under control, and all fires were extinguished. Only smoldering embers remained. In total darkness, they were the only spots of light between the walls. In some places, they burst into flames again.
Heorhiy Ivanchenko / «Babel»
Translated from Ukrainian by Anton Semyzhenko.
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