"I said to my 90-year-old neighbour, 'Your teeth burned up in the fire'": Zaporizhzhia four years on from the full-scale invasion
I remember very clearly how the war began in 2014: where I was, who I was with – but most of all, the feeling of existential dread inside.
I was in Lviv, at the School of Journalism at the Ukrainian Catholic University. Ihor Balynskyi, then head of the School, told the students from Crimea that it would be better not to go back home for the time being, and that the university was ready to provide them with accommodation in the college. No one really knew where things were heading, so I – being from Zaporizhzhia – was also offered the option to stay.
I chose to go home. Zaporizhzhia seemed a long way away, and after all, I thought, "What could possibly happen?" Well, what happened was that Crimea was occupied and fighting began in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. Many of my friends lost their homes.
On 24 February 2022, I knew that anything was possible. But that didn't make it any less painful when, in early March, my grandma's village in Zaporizhzhia Oblast was occupied.
According to DeepState, a Ukrainian group of military analysts, as of early 2026, nearly 75% of Zaporizhzhia Oblast remains under occupation. My hometown of Zaporizhzhia has become a "potential combat zone", but my mother and friends of mine still live there, so there's always a reason to come back.
Officially, Zaporizhzhia does not have the status of a frontline city, even though the line of contact is about 30 km away and FPV drones are already reaching its outskirts. The power cuts follow the schedule: four hours on, five hours off. Usually, though, the electricity comes back a little earlier and goes off a little later, so it almost balances out.
Public transport here is more expensive than in Kyiv. A tram ride in Zaporizhzhia costs UAH 10 (about US$0.23) instead of UAH 8 (US$0.18) like in Kyiv, although in the first few years of the full-scale invasion it was actually free. A bus ride costs UAH 17 (US$0.39), compared with UAH 15 (US$0.35) in Kyiv until recently. Ordering a taxi via GPS is almost impossible – electronic warfare systems are always active, and people constantly joke about where the GPS has sent them this time: Oslo, Reykjavik, Libya or Chile.
There are fewer people, but not markedly. Those who left in search of a safer life were swiftly replaced by people fleeing occupation or heavier attacks elsewhere. What has increased noticeably is the number of memorials. And most of the ribbons in the flower shops are now either black or blue and yellow – for mourning or commemoration.
On the whole, blue and yellow have brightened up the grey industrial landscape of Zaporizhzhia. Flags fly from almost every pole or post, as if shouting "This is Ukraine." And cafés named "HIMARS" or "4.5.0" [a code signal for "Everything is all right" – ed.] remind everyone that this is a city at war.
In other ways, Zaporizhzhia isn't that different from Kyiv – both cities live with constant attacks. The only difference is the range of the weapons: in Kyiv it's Shahed attack drones and Kalibr cruise missiles, in Zaporizhzhia it's Molniya drones and guided aerial bombs.
With my last few visits, I've had more and more people say: "Why are you going there? Be careful!" On the one hand, this feels strange, because here I experience a sense of calm that I don't feel in Kyiv, even though an air-raid warning can last for more than 24 hours. On the other hand, I can understand why people react like this, especially if they only know the city from the news.
Now I want to preserve Zaporizhzhia in my memory – to show it to friends, to photograph every corner. This article is part of that memory, seen through the stories of three women for whom, like me, this city is home.
The way home
My "way home" used to be train No. 72. Then it was Intercity 732. Since 19 February 2026, there has only been one train that can take me home – No. 38, Kyiv-Zaporizhzhia.
And that's actually good news, because in early February rail connections with Zaporizhzhia were suspended altogether due to Russian drone attacks and the destruction of the Synelnykove railway hub. Trains only went as far as Dnipro, and you had to take a replacement bus from there. And we know that when the trains stop running, it rarely means anything good for a city.
I was lucky enough to return home on the first train that ran directly to Zaporizhzhia. The familiar routine awaited me at the station: document checks, phone IMEI verification, and a photo for the police records.
Iryna, who shared my compartment on the train, hadn't been quite so fortunate. She'd had to change at Dnipro on her way to Kyiv. But, she said, volunteers had helped her find the bus in Zaporizhzhia, and showed her where to board the train in Dnipro, and even offered her some hot tea.
Right after telling the story about her bus and train journey, Iryna switched to another one about how a drone hit her apartment block a couple of months ago. This is a typical Zaporizhzhia story: almost everyone knows someone whose building has been hit – one handshake away at most. In this city, everyone is only one handshake away from everyone else.
Iryna's apartment was hardly damaged at all – except that the first responders broke the door down thinking she might be inside. Her neighbours weren't so lucky.
"In the second section of the building, all the one-bedroom apartments were completely burned out," she says as our train begins to move off. "In our section, an apartment on the second floor was partially destroyed. And on my floor, the third floor, one flat burned out entirely. There's nothing left – just the walls."
Iryna was at work when the drone hit. When she came home, she saw only that the balcony was intact and a curtain was fluttering from the open window like a white flag.
"I saw my neighbour sitting there – the one whose apartment burned out. A 90-year-old woman. In slippers, a nightdress and a coat. The State Emergency Service came to take her away somewhere, but she said: 'I'm not going anywhere. I need to get into my flat.' I explained that no one would be allowed inside until 05:00, and she said: 'Irochka, I left my teeth on the shelf.' And I told her: 'Your teeth have already burned up.'"
Iryna says assessors have been visiting the building for several months now, evaluating the damage and planning repairs.
"They'll replace the doors and windows, plaster the walls, put new tiles in – they'll do all that. But what about the furniture? It's not cheap. Where is my neighbour supposed to get the money from? She's 68 and can hardly walk. Where will she find the money to buy a sofa or a wardrobe?" Iryna frets.
She works at a factory, like many people in Zaporizhzhia. There's a severe staff shortage, she says. Some people have gone abroad, others to Ukraine's west or to Kyiv.
Iryna's daughter and grandson live in Kyiv too – she had just been visiting them. But she has no plans to move, even though her building has already been hit. "Lightning doesn't strike the same place twice," she says. "But a Molniya [Lightning] drone might," I thought to myself.
The last straw
I don't have that many friends left in Zaporizhzhia: some moved away before the full-scale invasion, others when it started. The ones who are still here are unlikely to leave until things get really tough. My friend Alona is one of those who have stayed. I ask her what she thinks about the situation in the city.
"First we got used to the S-300 [missiles]. Then the slow Shaheds, now the Molniya drones. Soon we'll get used to the FPV drones – the Pivdenny district already has."
I ask gently if she's thought about leaving.
"We will endure, and endure, and endure... We have a stock of groats, and we still have the same salt from Soledar because we bought it in bulk back in 2022. We have a sack of flour, sugar, and plenty of pickles, so why should we leave?
I've already planted onions. And garlic. I don't know whether to plant potatoes, there's no point, because I don't think we'll be able to harvest anything in Zaporizhzhia by the end of the summer," she muses, a little more pessimistically.
Alona works at a school. It's a state-run institution, so unless an evacuation is announced and the city is officially declared a frontline area, she would have to resign before she could leave. So she's had to adapt, and as we have learned over these years of war, people can adapt to anything.
"But when will that point come when you can't take it anymore, when you just have to grab your things and leave? Everyone has their own breaking point, but I personally don't know when mine will be – I can't imagine that scenario," she says.
Alona lives near a critical infrastructure facility which periodically gets hit. The latest ballistic missile slightly missed its target and landed in the courtyard of her apartment block. Now there is a huge crater there. One building is beyond repair; the other, which has almost all its windows blown out, is hers.
"Before, I used to think that if one landed in the courtyard, it would be the last straw. Then one landed in the courtyard. But it didn't break the windows. The door locks broke... Well, we got the locks fixed. The first and second sections of the building have no windows. No one lives there. But even that wasn't my breaking point. What if one hits my apartment? Let's imagine I'm at work, but I also have a dacha [a small house in the country]. Should I leave the city or go to my dacha?" she asks, although I already know the answer.
I get the feeling Alona's been thinking about this a lot. She says she's even been looking at houses in villages, but so far she's just been checking them out.
"If you take all your stuff out of your apartment, like fridges, rugs and all that, you've got to take it somewhere. And where can you put it if the only option is to live in temporary accommodation, or a rented apartment, which is more likely if you have a job and some savings? A rented apartment already has all those things.
...And what about the legacy of generations? I know that my grandma's warm gilet is hanging there. I don't wear it, but I know it's there and I can put it on if I get cold. I know that in the bottom drawer in the kitchen, there are containers for making meat jelly that are used once a year. And somewhere on the balcony there's a baking mould for making cookies with condensed milk. I haven't used it in five years, but I know it's there," she reasons.
Some friends of Alona's recently moved from a village in Zaporizhzhia Oblast where the front line is getting closer. All the things they didn't manage to take with them on the first run were looted before the second one.
"My mum really wants a cordless saw and cordless pruning shears for her birthday. I'm not buying them for her, not because they're expensive, but because that would be yet more stuff we'd have to sell or find somewhere to store if we had to leave."
Alona says the prospect of spending the rest of her life moving from one rented apartment to another scares her.
"I was born in this apartment. I've been here since I was a kid. I've never even lived in another city. I didn't even get to go to the countryside for the summer.
I've been thinking about this since I was a child. When children realise what death is, when they first realise that nothing lasts forever... About a month after I understood what death was, I had the same stressful thoughts about our apartment. What if one day these walls were gone? This carpet on the wall that I'd trace with my finger before falling asleep?"
What if things get really bad, I ask. A total blackout, for example. Last time I came, Zaporizhzhia and Dnipro were plunged into total darkness.
"I got used to the idea long ago that I'm not afraid of the lights going out," Alona says. "Being occupied is what I'm afraid of. If the power's cut off but we're still in Ukraine and we can repair it, that's not scary. But if the orcs [the Russians – ed.] come here, we won't be able to repair it. That's scary."
Faith in the future
I'm sitting in one of my favourite places, which opened before I left for Kyiv. It's impressive how many new businesses are started in Zaporizhzhia, and how many old ones keep going.
I'm meeting Liuda here. She teaches at a medical school, and also runs her own business, which she started a year ago, and has three children. During the full-scale invasion she tried to move to western Ukraine with her children, but they soon came back.
The family lives in Cosmos, a suburb which is constantly being hit. Yet living there turned out to be more peaceful for them, because in Zaporizhzhia you always have someone to turn to if you have any problems, the children have their dad, and at home there are always adults – grandmas or grandads – who can take care of the little ones.
"I was lucky. I was raised by my great-grandmother," says Liuda. "As well as my granny, and my mum and dad, I had my great-grandma too. And she was always reminiscing about the war. She was born in 1913 and lived through two wars. During World War II, she was already a mother with several children. She lived through the occupation and used to talk a lot about how she survived."
Who would have thought that this knowledge would one day come in handy, I say to her with a touch of irony.
"But that's how it's turned out," Liuda says. "We can't change that. And if we can't change it, then there's only one thing left for us to do – learn to live with it. This realisation hit me very hard. It started in 2014. When Donetsk was seized, I was pregnant with my second child. I was afraid the same thing would happen in Zaporizhzhia.
A lot of my friends, lots of people I'd known at university, and students of mine were in Donetsk. And, you know, it was very scary. I remember scrolling through: how to survive in a fourth-floor apartment during wartime, how to get water, what medicines you need. Like a hamster, I stocked up on medicines, aware of the illnesses that could strike. Even those that humanity hadn't encountered for a long time. After all, my degree is in medicine.
So I was already thinking about those things back then. It was really hard. But we were ready. Now I understand that my great-grandma was trying to pass on this knowledge. I didn't get it then. I do now."
It's still hard for me to believe that one of my visits here could be the last one – as it was, for example, with my grandma's village. Of course, I hope that this will never happen. And that I will be able to return to that village someday.
There was a time when I really wanted to move away from here. Now I really want to have this opportunity to be at home. To have a home.
Alina Poliakova, Ukrainska Pravda
Translated by Myroslava Zavadska and Anastasiia Yankina
Edited by Teresa Pearce