Unknown woman. Unknown woman. Bits of bone. Unknown woman, six more times — all hand scrawled on signs tacked to rough wooden crosses.
The line of graves is a visceral reminder of the enduring horrors of Russia’s occupation four years ago of the eastern Ukrainian city of Izium. Now, as Moscow’s forces again move closer, battering Izium with glide bombs and drones, residents fear that another battle for the city would be far worse than what came before.
After the five-month occupation in 2022, Russian troops left behind a mass grave and ruined buildings, scars that remain fresh. All 447 bodies from the grave were exhumed and reburied on a hilltop, including the still unidentified remains.
On a recent rainy afternoon, smoke from a Russian strike rose within sight of the reburied bodies. Residents are under no illusion: Given the chance, they say, Russia will not stop until Izium’s complete destruction.
Moscow has never retaken a major city that it once occupied in this war and then lost. Izium is not yet in imminent danger of being captured or destroyed. But people there are bracing for the worst, while maintaining hope that Ukrainian forces will continue to hold the line. Ukraine’s military has dug new defenses around the city and rehearsed operations to fend off a large-scale assault.
“We have to plan for every scenario,” said one local commander, who in keeping with military protocol asked to be identified by his call sign, Coach.
Bloody History
Izium, with its high elevation overlooking steppes, was a strategic stronghold for armies across centuries, from the Cossacks in the 1600s to the Nazis in World War II.
Mykola Kaliuzhny, a journalist, grew up hearing his mother’s stories about life in Izium under German occupation, a history he did not think would be repeated.
On Feb. 24, 2022, he was heading to celebrate his granddaughter’s birthday when his editor called and said not to go. Russia had invaded.
He vividly remembers the first Russian planes in the sky, the first bombs to hit Izium’s city center and the first body he saw, a disemboweled man under a monument to the poet Taras Shevchenko.
Mr. Kaliuzhny, 70, recorded every detail. “It was like Stalingrad in 1942,” he recalled, clutching an “Izium is Ukraine” pen. “Everything was on fire.”
Inside the city’s history museum is an exhibition about life under Russian occupation. Glass cases display Russian cigarette packs and propaganda newspapers. Russian helmets ripped by shrapnel hang on a stand strung with camouflage, and Russian boots sit on a shelf near a black hood recovered from what Ukrainian officials say was a torture chamber.
“Izium does not want to remain known only as a place of mass graves or torture,” said the deputy mayor, Volodymyr Matsokin, 56. It wants to live, to rebuild, he said. But the approaching front line has frozen large investments, including some plans for underground schools.
Today, Izium has about 28,000 residents, down from 45,000 before the full-scale invasion. Walking through the city, Mr. Kaliuzhny gripped the strap of a black satin tote bag with one hand while pointing out the omnipresent destruction with the other. The cinema, the City Council building, School No. 1, all ruined, he said with a sigh, ducking under anti-drone netting hung over the sidewalk.
Mr. Kaliuzhny, in his work for the local newspaper, now finds himself surveying residents about whether they think Russian forces will reach the city, much as he did before the full-scale invasion.
In his own mind, he said, he cannot allow himself to consider the prospect. “I don’t believe it — I don’t want to believe it,” he said, going quiet and looking away.
As we walked, music radiated from a celebration in the city’s main square. “How could we possibly believe the enemy would return here?” Mr. Kaliuzhny said.
Fortifications
Izium is an important staging and logistics hub for the Ukrainian military. To get there, Russian forces would have to penetrate rings of defensive measures — mines, triple layers of razor wire, ditches and concrete pyramids known as “dragon’s teeth” stretching for miles.
Freshly dug rows of trenches and anti-tank barriers bloom off the highway leading to the city. After a checkpoint, anti-drone netting creates a tunnel over the road. Izium was the first city in Ukraine to pre-emptively put up the nets, well before drones started tormenting the place.
Many of the city’s defenses were erected by the Third Army Corps’ 96th Separate Support Battalion. It is commanded by Coach, 40, who came to Izium in April 2024 after fighting in Zaporizhzhia, Bakhmut and Avdiivka.
At the time, Coach explained, Izium was seen as one of the most likely directions for a new Russian offensive.
Moscow’s forces have now been slowly advancing in the Donetsk region just to the east. As two so-called fortress cities there, Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, come under bombardment, Izium — the gateway to Donetsk — has assumed greater importance as a resupply node.
Sitting on a shaded stump in a forest on Izium’s outskirts, Coach predicted that Russia would intensify efforts to disrupt the movement of troops and equipment to Sloviansk and Kramatorsk.
But he flatly rejected the idea that Izium was under threat of renewed occupation.
The fresh trenches and other defensive measures are a matter of preparedness, Coach said, not a sign that Russian troops will inevitably reach Izium again.
“The fact that they’re coming doesn’t mean they’ll get here,” he added. “You can’t get very far with your legs blown off.”
‘It’s Scary’
Not everyone in Izium is so confident. Perched on park swings, Yehor Bratishchev, 18, and Klym Velychko, 20, said that, of course, there was a risk of another occupation.
“The probability is high,” Mr. Bratishchev said impassively, puffing on a vape. “Have you seen our front line? It moves toward us every day.”
Russia has “huge numbers” of men, glide bombs and drones, he added, far more than Ukraine.
“The defenses here are very strong,” he added, “but it’s only a matter of time.”
Natalia Rudenko, who has a stand at an outdoor market selling vegetables and flowers, said that she and her husband had taken to hiding in their cellar when Russia conducted airstrikes. During the 2022 occupation, the cellar’s food stocks from their farm helped them to survive, she said.
She recently bought a smoker to make food stores last longer and has been canning pork fat and stewed meat preserves. Yet she said she feared it might become too risky to stay.
Russian forces are “destroying entire cities now,” she said. “It’s scary.”
“We’re living with our bags packed,” she added.
Dr. Yuri Kuznetsov, a surgeon at Izium’s main hospital, said that before the 2022 occupation, residents were like “small children,” innocent to the horrors ahead.
“Now I’m more scared, we’re more scared, because we understand the danger,” he said.
Already, he said, nearly all of his patients have drone-related injuries. A full-on assault, he said, would be worse than in 2022 — “this time it would be 100 percent destruction.”
Dr. Kuznetsov said he had spent the years since occupation slowly rebuilding his home and his life, “hoping for a better outcome.”
“None of us wants to lose everything again,” he said.
The deputy mayor, Mr. Matsokin, acknowledged that people were worried but said they “talk more about hope.” He wondered where they found the strength. Maybe it’s a defense mechanism, he said. Or maybe they had gotten used to war.
He pointed to his purchase that morning of periwinkle and a hanging bush at the outdoor market. “People wouldn’t plant flowers,” he said, “if they didn’t want or think they’d see them grow.”
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