“She is like a second mother to me”: how a resident of Volnovakha saved the Hero of the DPR

“If the nationalists had caught him, they would have killed him,” Svetlana Shcherbina, 53, sits on a bench in front of her house, damaged by explosions and riddled with bullets and shrapnel, like all other buildings in Volnovakha.

In the first days of the special operation, this town was at the epicenter of the most difficult battles.

The Armed Forces of Ukraine tried with all their might to keep this important strategic settlement located on the highway between Donetsk and Mariupol.

The troops of the DPR had to bite into every quarter of the city with a fight.

The first attempt to storm Volnovakha by the allied forces was made on February 27.

It was on this day that Svetlana Shcherbina saved 29-year-old tanker Yevgeny Donchenko, who two months later was awarded the title of Hero of the DPR for the battle in Volnovakha. 

“The tank, whose crew member was Private Yevgeny Donchenko, was the first to break into Volnovakha.

But he fell into a camouflaged enemy ambush consisting of four tanks, three infantry fighting vehicles and manpower.

The crew of the tank accepted the battle.

Being under heavy fire, the tank received many hits, pierced the armor.

Nevertheless, in an unequal battle, thanks to the courageous actions of the crew, two BMP-2s, two tanks, and enemy manpower were destroyed, ”the award presentation says. 

Eugene himself says that this fight, in fact, was the first in his life.

Like most fighters of the People's Militia of the DPR, he is not a professional military man.

After school he worked at the mine, then worked for some time in Moscow.

In November 2021, when Ukraine began to gather troops to the borders of the DPR, Donchenko enlisted in the army and asked to join a tank battalion. 

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“I have an uncle serving here, I talked to the commander, and they took me.

At first he was a gunner, then he began to study as a driver.

Although before that I didn’t even drive a car,” says the young man.

- But they brought me to the training ground, put me behind the levers, explained everything.

I drove around, I liked it, and then slowly I began to memorize how it turns on, how to start the tank, how to turn it off, how to turn it, how to do a technical inspection.

So I managed to go through training and ride at the training ground before they moved to Volnovakha.

Talking about the battle in Volnovakha, Evgeny tries to restrain his emotions.

On that day, his comrades-in-arms died: the tank commander and the gunner.

“We have always been together.

We ate together, worked together, everything was always together.

I remember that last day very well.

The gunner and I spent the night in the tank,” he says. 

"The boys were dead"

According to the man, on February 27, they were given the task of entering the city. 

“We left in a column, drove around the infantry: there were four of us tanks.

We drove on the right side first, and then Grads fell down.

And then we ran into enemy tanks,” Donchenko recalls.

One of them fired at us.

We answered and hit the tower, it began to smoke.

Then they hit another, he began to hide behind a residential building. 

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As Donchenko explains, the crew commander at that moment gave the order to turn back. 

“We rolled back about ten meters.

And then we started flying.

There was smoke, I didn't see anything.

I just heard screams that some tank was on fire, and the order of the commander: “More to the right,” Evgeny continues.

- I went out to the right and saw two more enemy tanks and an infantry fighting vehicle, which immediately opened fire on the tower.

I looked back and realized that something was wrong with the crew.

Near the conveyor with ammunition, which for some reason spun very strongly, diesel fuel was burning. 

Donchenko managed to get the tank out of the shelling into the alley.

“When I stopped, I had panic, fear, adrenaline, I started screaming to call my crew.

But no one answered.

I did not manage to get out through the upper hatch: it was jammed.

He got out through the bottom, taking with him a machine gun.

I climbed on the tank, and the guys in the tower are dead.” 

According to Yevgeny, he assumed that there would be a chase for him, so he “just ran down the street.”

“I saw a woman through the window, then I found out that her name was Aunt Sveta.

I asked her: "Aunty, hide me, please."

She went out into the yard, met me, took me home.

She gave me a sedative pill, I explained to her who I was, went to sleep a bit, calmed down, ”recalls the tanker. 

"Thought I was on fire"

“I was not saving a soldier, but a child.

Zhenya ran down the street, so scared and lost.

It was written right on his face.

The entire crew died, but he himself did not know the terrain or where to run to get to his own, - says Svetlana Shcherbina.

“I saw him through the window by accident.

He noticed me - and to me: "Aunty, let me in."

He was hysterical after the shell shock, it was difficult for him to figure out, and I could not understand who he was and where he came from. 

According to the woman, she gave him a bowl of water (there is still no water or electricity in the city). 

“He washed himself, took a sedative pill that I gave him, and gradually began to come to his senses.

He explained that they were walking in tanks, they were hit and all the other lads were killed, ”recalls Svetlana. 

As the woman says, sheltering the fighter from the nationalists, who were very numerous in the city, she did not feel fear.

“Zhenya himself sat in the corner, like a mouse.

He understood that if someone sees, then there will be problems for both of us, she continues.

“And I didn’t even think about it.

Although there were several Ukrainian tanks right behind the house.

And their lads were running right through the garden and shooting.

This was where the defense was.

Here I had a lot of shells, "Flies" (grenade launchers. -

) and something else.

And then they mined the road so that the tanks couldn’t pass.” 

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Eugene himself recalls how, together with Svetlana, they covered up the veranda and walls of the house destroyed by the explosion with rags and stones so that it could not be seen from the street.

“The enemies walked along the street right next to her house, and the next day, when I woke up after the battle, ten Nazis settled in her garden and two tanks hid behind her house.

Svetlana periodically looked out the window and told me what they were doing there.

And once she even scolded them for trampling the beds.

At that moment, I hid in the very corner so that they would not notice me, ”says Donchenko. 

According to Yevgeny, he tried to somehow help his savior with the housework: during the day he patched up cracks in the house and windows shattered from shelling, chopped wood in the back room to heat the stove.

He also listened to the radio, trying to understand where the allied troops were and whether he could reach them. 

“On March 11, we heard that the enemy began to retreat, and on March 12, I saw people in our uniforms.

We opened the window, and I began to shout that there were anti-tank mines in the streets, and that I myself was a tanker.

They told me to sit and wait for the authorities, but no one came, and I went to look for my unit.

When I arrived, they began to interrogate me, and then they sent me to the command.

Everyone there was in shock, they thought that I had burned out.

On the same day, I showed where my wrecked tank was.

On March 14, we got the dead boys,” Donchenko recalls.

On May 8, Yevgeny was awarded the title of Hero of the DPR.

Now he is fighting in the Avdeevsky direction, but he does not forget about his savior: “I call Aunt Sveta from time to time, and recently I came to visit, she is like a second mother to me, it turns out.

Saved me."