putin is desperate to take this frontline city (video commentary)

08/26/2026

I’ve watched the front move closer to Kramatorsk for three and a half years, but it is still difficult to comprehend what is happening to this place.

A few weeks ago, I got a call from energy workers in Donbas asking if I wanted to come and film how they are keeping the lights on as the fighting gets closer. I couldn’t say no. So I packed the car and headed east.

I wanted this film to be about more than the front line.

I wanted to show what Kramatorsk actually feels like right now. A city preparing for something everyone knows is coming, while thousands of ordinary people continue going to work, repairing things, opening shops, driving buses, making coffee and somehow keeping the place alive.

My friend April, a soldier with the 93rd Brigade who has lived in Kramatorsk for the past two years, takes me back into the city.

Almost immediately, it feels different.

On the road in, a petrol station we were about to stop at was hit by a drone moments before we arrived. At the power station, workers are trying to keep electricity flowing while drones circle overhead and strikes repeatedly damage the machinery they have spent their lives maintaining.

And yet life continues.

That is really what this film became about.

Not simply soldiers or weapons or maps showing another Russian advance, but the people who wake up every morning and make the decision to stay. The people keeping the lights on while everyone else sleeps. The people reopening a petrol station two days after it was hit. The people watching another summer evening over a city they love, knowing how uncertain the next one may be.

There is surprisingly little reporting from inside Kramatorsk showing what everyday life there actually looks like at this moment, even as Russian forces put increasing pressure on the area. I wanted to document it while I still could.

I’m already planning to go back.

Winter is coming, and the next few months are going to be incredibly important for the people who remain there.

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