Photo with history: Then dogs conquer the town, and each subsequent one looks at it as if it were water.

It happens: the dogs themselves remain in the town, and time in it goes down to the dogs.

The prudent fear of obvious metaphors always tries to stop the author, but how difficult it is to avoid them when it comes to a town called Chasiv Yar. How to avoid the metaphor of a city devastated by war, which now belongs to a certain extent to dogs and memories, to lone survivors with weapons (because they have to somehow fight off those dogs), and most importantly - to the military, who have to defend the town from the Russians, whatever the ravine or the abyss of the sullen time but his memory was not engulfed by the fighting.

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This picture from the fifth floor of one of the buildings of Chasovyi Yar in Donetsk region was taken by Oleg Petrasyuk, a Ukrainian documentary photographer and soldier of the 24th OMB. His brigade has been working in the area of Time Yar since June. The author of the photograph is a constant witness of the disappearance: here, he said, he saw the charred skeleton of the house, on the next arrival - bushes and grass sprout inside the house, and by the third meeting nothing remains - the ravine itself.

That day, Oleg Petrasyuk drove into the city without weapons, which he regretted, because those dogs on the path that can be seen from the fifth floor of the house are dogs that should sometimes be fought off. They hear themselves here better than humans, gather in flocks, and live as they manage to live in war. We can say that the city is trying to capture the city, but it has already been captured by dogs.

In the third week of March 2022, Chernihiv and close did not approach the ruin, except for the destructive fear of ruin. However, it gradually lost people, traffic and the hustle and bustle of the streets, on which then small flocks began to choose dogs: street dogs beaten with life, and with them now white poodles and soft fur black shepherds. They dashed between the endless morning queues of cars, which again tried in vain to escape, and between the garbage alleys with restaurants. Only in the alley there are no visitors or uneaten meals, and the garbage cans are completely empty, so the dogs bypass the alley and move on, towards the river port. Someone's abandoned shepherd still casts a blind eye either at me, or at the flock, which is slowly making its way down the street.

The eight-year-old dad tells the same stories of the dogs that trampled the trails to their dungeons and huts in the ruined villages where the military were so carefully camouflaged. So the man himself tamed the dog, he said, and now on the front the dogs are guard wars, who have no position, just look for a person for a while before moving away from him forever.

Polish reporter Ryszard Kapuszynski, witness (regular, guest?) African wars, wrote about Luanda — the capital of Angola — on the edge of the encirclement. He described how the city becomes a wasteland, as people pack their lives into wooden boxes and strive at all costs to get on the last plane or ship that will take them from a place that is not supposed to happen, perhaps tomorrow. When the policemen leave first, then the firefighters, then the garbage men, and then the bakers and postmen (who write a letter to the city that will be empty tomorrow), so the city becomes like a “dead bone sticking out of the earth to the sun”. Everything died in Luanda before Kapuszynski's eyes, and in the end, he writes, the flocks themselves remained - almost an international exhibition of dogs of all breeds in the open air.

Only, Richard observes, and the dogs eventually left. Someone in charge took responsibility to get his flock out of Luanda. At least Richard didn't see any dead dogs. It's just that they basked in the sun in the grass, but when it was either the final end or the fear of finality, even the dogs seethed, and the city fell into a complete stupor.

It happens: the dogs themselves remain in the town, and time in it runs down to the dogs. And when the town is conquered by dogs, everyone who follows can look at him, as if in a mirror. As if in the water.

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Material created with support The Free Word Foundation.

Text: Vera Kuriko

Photo: Oleg Petrasyuk