For over 4 years now Stanytsia Luhanska, a town and administrative center of the same-name rayon, has been living on the line of fire. The proximity to the city of Luhansk put it right in the middle of pitched battles between Ukraine’s Armed Forces and illegal armed groups that resulted in large-scale destruction, most of which happened in the summer of 2014. Totally, 31 residents were killed over the course of hostilities in Stanytsia Luhanska and 2,500 residential buildings were damaged, with 112 beyond repair.

In order to provide a historical background of those events, the Human Rights Abuse Documentation Center of UHHRU prepared its “Story of a city. Stanytsia Luhanska” analytical paper, which is a fifth in a series of chronicles of hybrid armed conflict in Donbas. Publication also contains some eyewitness accounts, official data by the state and local government agencies and names of confirmed locals (both civilians and Ukrainian military) who died in 2014-2018.

Full report in English can be found  here.

Background information

A “Story of a city” series is released by the Ukrainian Helsinki Human Rights Union with the aim of reconstructing the course of events of ongoing armed conflict in specific localities of Donbas region for a certain period of time, preserving historical truth and minimizing political speculations in this respect as a part of transitional justice processes. In addition, such chronicles serve the purpose of attracting public attention and encouraging conflict-affected individuals to submit their own testimonies to the Documentation Center and through the Memorial Map online service to be further used in advocacy reports and in litigations.

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