[While this story was getting ready to publish, the hero of this photo story reported he was forced to leave Novohrodivka due to the fighting shifting into the city. The villages mentioned, where his farming enterprise operated, are now under heavy shellings.]
“Alright, I’m heading out.”
Now, every time he goes to the field, he always calls home. He calls to say he’s on his way. This is the last field before the front line. Artillery echoes around, making the safest place the cab of his old combine—it drowns out the explosions. They haven’t had any newer machinery for a long time—neither combines, nor other equipment.
That call feels casual, but any of them could be his last. He looks over the fields in Orlivka or Serhiivka [Donetsk Oblast — Ed.] and thinks once again that this might be his last season: “Alright, I’ll harvest this, and that’s it, no more.”
Then he notices how well the crops came in this year… and can’t help but think about planting again.
Documentary photographer Serhii Korovainyi created a series of images featuring the life of the farmer Dmytro Kobasa, who tends fields around Novohrodivka in Donetsk Oblast. Together with Dmytro and his colleagues—the “Niva” combine operator Mykola and Roman, the driver of an old ZIL truck—Serhii joined them in harvesting under the sound of explosions in a field where half the crop was already scorched by shelling. Among the wheat they passed a fragment of a Russian aerial bomb.
Dmytro is among Ukraine’s most extreme farmers. He’s a local, running the “Halytsynivka Agro” enterprise with his father, Fedir. He’s essential here because he’s the last one left in the area, and he’s harvesting the crops on fields of farmers who had to leave. The Russians destroyed all his modern equipment, leaving him only the old combine, which he uses to harvest his fields and those of his friends. He helps the few remaining residents who still tend their gardens. Since the fall of Ocheretyne six months ago, the front line has drawn close to these fields. The Serhiivka field lies just a few kilometers from the frontlines.
Once a week, on Wednesday, Dmytro always gets together with friends. They joke that it’s “as if it were the last time”. Dark jokes, dark fields—they don’t know if they’ll all meet again tomorrow. As the farmers head to the field, they pass freshly dug trenches, fortified positions, and cross paths with Ukrainian soldiers.
“How’s the artillery?” Ukrainian artillery fires from under cover among the wheat, with Russian forces responding in kind.
“Quiet, just FPVs.”
“Alright, let’s go.”
Four months ago, Dmytro’s wife gave birth to a daughter. He planned to take her to the hospital in nearby Selydove, the closest facility to Novohrodivka. But on the night they were to go, a Russian missile destroyed that hospital. Now his wife is staying further away, in Pavlohrad, and Dmytro visits them whenever he’s not in the field.
The biggest threat to those working these fields are FPV drones, which fly over Novohrodivka as if they own the place. Dmytro Kobasa often works while drones hover above him and his equipment. He carries an electronic warfare (EW) device on his combine, though he’s not sure it will protect him. So Dmytro constantly watches from the tree line, and, when he’s not in the can, observes his crew as they work—always worried for them.
While the photographer was taking these shots, twelve Russian shells struck the nearest tree line to the field.
“The atmosphere is extremely tense. But there’s combine operator Kolia, who drives his ancient machine across the Donetsk steppe, through this hell,” the photographer recounts, admiring the courage of the farmers. “And there’s the man driving the old ZIL—Roma, with ZIL’s window shattered from a strike. He was once injured by a fragment from a Russian FPV drone that hit a nearby store. Roma hauls the grain to the base. And on the base, there’s a truck driver, and others, and more. Dmytro arranged to use this base somehow, since his own is too close to the front. And there’s also his father Fedir, who manages various issues.”
And there is bread in Donbas. And there will be.
Translation — Iryna Chalapchii
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[The translation of this publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework “European Renaissance of Ukraine” project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation]
