Trucks carrying Russian humanitarian aid cross the Ukrainian border at the Izvarino custom control checkpoint on August 22.
More
accounts from people living in occupied Eastern Ukraine. Part 2 with
some more comments and thoughts, check part 1 as well in the previous
post.FerFALPyotr Ivanov, psychologist, LuhanskIn
no way do I intend to portray myself as a great visionary. There are
more than enough candidates for the role of "civil war prophets" as it
is. What I want to say is that, as early as June, I intuitively felt
that all this would not end quickly, that the conflict would inexorably
cause the destruction of infrastructure and the loss of livelihood.
FerFAL
Comment: Its interesting to notice how often people will tell you they
“felt” this of that yet didn’t act. While you can’t always run scared
every time you think something may go wrong (and many preppers do this,
bordering paranoid behaviour) a survivalist haw to know when to act on
those gut feelings.War is most disastrous for city
dwellers. Their survival depends not on whether cherries ripen on time
in their garden but on whether they receive their salaries or pensions.
I
lost my job in June when my company shut down. Despite the shelling, I
decided to look for another job in Luhansk. I turned to friends who were
in a position to help. In other words, I acted according to my own
stereotypes.
Other people who are, like me, hostage to the situation
have other stereotypes -- for example, a World War II veteran who lives
close to my home. Until September, he survived on his savings and
counted on his relatives for help. His relatives, however, left in June.
In early September, he pinned his medals to his chest and went to the
"Luhansk People's Republic (LNR) authorities" to demand the immediate
payment of his pension (although no pensions have been paid to anyone
since July). The LNR leaders simply shrugged their shoulders and said
they couldn't do anything for him.
In August, rumors began swirling
that a humanitarian convoy was on its way from Russia. Everyone in the
city began thinking about this convoy. People forgot about the war,
about the bombs. All thoughts and conversations focused on the impending
humanitarian aid.
Finally, the white trucks arrived.
Residents were told that receiving the aid was very simple. All we had
to do was show up at distribution points with our passports.
People
almost murdered each other queuing up for these parcels. Rebels with
machine guns restored order; there would probably have been casualties
otherwise.
FerFAL Comment: Also common is that the grass is
greener on the other side of the hill. The city dweller think he has it
tough because of unemployment while other people in Eastern Ukraine
living outside city limits complain that they never get to the food
distribution trucks in time. The economic mess also affects farmers,
just like everyone else.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kr38Sh1NKFEWhat
does a humanitarian parcel look like? It consists of two kilos of
buckwheat, three cans of corned beef, half a kilo of sugar, and a pack
of tea. I received humanitarian aid twice, and only because my neighbor
queued up for me. Honestly, I could not have withstood a line of 300
people. This was the first time.
FerFAL Comment: Take note: Flour, canned meat, sugar, tea. Also dry pasta, sauce and rice. The stuff that will keep you alive.The second time, the line had grown to 700 people. I know this because people wrote their queue number on their hands.
My neighbor had a seizure because of the heat and I took him home. We eventually got the humanitarian parcels, three days later.
I don't know how many people received these parcels, and how many times. I've heard that some people had permanent coupons.
At
some point I realized that this humanitarian aid wasn't worth the
calories spent on receiving it and I stopped thinking about it.
I
held two jobs in the course of the siege. Then autumn came. Refugees
started returning. Hospitals and schools reopened; many businesses
resumed their activities.
Entrepreneurs, whose livelihoods relied
solely on cash inflow from customers, enjoyed the most advantageous
situation. I won't go into the problems tied to running a business
nowadays in Luhansk; they do exist.
The situation for
public-sector employees was, and is, much worse. The most fortunate
receive their salaries in the shape of food rations similar in content
to the humanitarian parcels.
The question of public-sector salaries
is still up in the air, since the legal status of schools and hospitals
is unclear. The Ukrainian government's decision to relieve itself of
financial responsibility toward employees of state-run institutions in
Luhansk and Donetsk put an end to any hope of help from Kyiv. On the
other hand, there is obviously no local source of funding for
public-sector agencies in Luhansk.
Many nonetheless continue to act
in line with their stereotypes. They go to work in the morning, although
they haven't been paid for almost six months.
FerFAL Comment: Expect denial to be very strong. People just keep doing their thing desperately trying to gasp normality.
Viktor Alanov, social worker, DonetskIt
has unfortunately become fashionable to consider that all those who
stayed back in the rebel-controlled territories are pro-Russian morons
and accomplices of terrorists, that all decent people fled a long time
ago.
It has become fashionable to state that this "cut-off slice"
must be left alone, that there's no point fighting for it. Let them die
out there in their "Russian world" they wanted so badly.
Unfortunately,
this stance is not only misguided, it is also harmful -- both for those
living in the occupied territories and for Ukraine as a whole.
A
nurse cooks on an outdoor fireplace due to the lack of gas inside the
Mental Hospital N1/4 2 on the outskirts of Donetsk in December.
Firstly,
as long as these armed pro-Russians continue to run the show here,
there is a real threat of war for the rest of Ukraine. This cannot be
denied. Freeing all the territories is the only hope for solid and
lasting peace in Ukraine.
Secondly, there are, indeed, many of these
morons here. Many more than some would like. But there are also
numerous pro-Ukraine residents here who didn't participate in the
referendum and the pseudo-elections.
Yes, we in Donbas have our
"own way" of loving Ukraine. Not all of us approve of monuments being
knocked down in our cities. Far from all of us regard the [World War
II-era anti-Soviet] Ukrainian Insurgent Army and [Stepan] Bandera as
heroes. Many of us believe Russian should enjoy the status of second
national language in Ukraine. And no, let's be honest, not all of us
supported the Maidan protests.
We are, however, united by the desire
to live in Ukraine, and we have not backed the separatists in any way.
Today, in occupied Donetsk, former "anti-Banderas" supporting Ukraine's
territorial integrity shake hands with "Banderas"; advocates of
dual-language status shake hands with supporters of Ukrainian as the
sole official language.
Do you understand what is going on here?
Here
in Donetsk, we are uniting, which is almost unprecedented, while in
"mainland Ukraine" we often hear that we don't exist and that we must be
"let go"!
On December 26, the rebels released about 150 Ukrainian
fighters. Many of them were local men. Just look at pro-Ukrainian local
groups on Facebook and Twitter! You will find very few (if any at all)
real names and surnames, but behind every pseudonym stands a real Donbas
resident, a Ukrainian citizen who wants to live in his country! Read
what they write! Feel the mood that radiates from their conversations,
which offer them a psychological escape from what is unfolding in our
cities.
Please answer this question: What do these people, who are
not guilty in any way toward Ukraine and its people, who live in areas
where their country cannot protect them, who wake up and go to sleep
every day with the knowledge they can be "picked up" and killed any
minute, who are robbed and humiliated by pro-Russian militants, who have
no means of publicly voicing their opinions, who are still clinging to
the hope that their land will be reunited with Ukraine, what do these
people feel when they hear that "all of them out there" must be barred
from either entering or leaving, that they must be contained by moats
and barbed wire, and deprived of electricity and gas?
You must answer this question not to me but to yourself.
An elderly woman pulls a cart with firewood near the Donetsk airport in November.
An elderly woman pulls a cart with firewood near the Donetsk airport in November.
And
why then, when some claim that "only accomplices of terrorists remain
out there, all the decent people have left," are these "decent people"
unable to find rented accommodation and employment? Where are they
supposed to go when citizens of this united Ukraine treat them like
lepers and don't want to have anything to do with them?
Thankfully, such behavior is not the rule, although it's far from rare.
Sooner
or later, the occupied parts of Donbas will return into Ukraine's fold.
We have absolutely no doubt about that. Our country will be united
again. But every one of you, brothers, must understand that, while we
wage a ruthless war against terrorism, efforts must already be made to
win the minds of residents in occupied territories instead of thrusting
them aside -- even of those who are now hostile to Kyiv.
With those
who have illegally taken up arms, the talk can be short -- they must,
and they will, bear responsibility for participating in a terrorist
organization. But sooner or later, a peaceful coexistence will have to
be established with the others, those who did not hold weapons in their
hands, however "strange" these people may appear today.
FerFAL
Comment: Probably fuelled by a strong dose of “The Walking Dead” ,
common among American preppers is this WROL idea, thinking that during
this “without rule of law” period everything goes. Not true. Eventually
law is restored and eventually you will have to answer for your actions.
That’s how it always goes, sooner or later. The lesson? Always stay on
the right side of the law. If you have to defend yourself, make sure to
take pictures, names of witnesses and make sure you know who you will
call to back your side of the story when the police eventually knock on
your door. Forget the WROL nonsense, they will knock on your door
eventually.The battle for Ukraine is not only waged on the
front lines. It takes place in heads and hearts. Let's decide what is
more important for us: that Ukraine be united again or that "people out
there die from their stupidity"?
Believe me, it's much more difficult
for us here to watch this "stupidity" than for you. But it will pass.
Just remember how you traveled to Donetsk for Euro 2012. What unity with
the whole nation could be felt back then in the streets of Donetsk!
What's
taking place in the heads of some Donetsk residents today is the result
of Russian television propaganda. Why are people buying it? It's hard
to say. After all, more than 100 million people are "buying it" in
Russia. But it will pass.
When every one of us -- instead of seeking
revenge against peaceful fellow citizens whose city happened to be
occupied -- asks himself how he can help us, then we will know for sure
that peace and Ukraine's return to the occupied territories of Donbas
are within reach.
And yes, as soon as the war ends and it will be
safe again here for all citizens of Ukraine, I promise to invite all of
you, brothers, and give you a tour.
Nadia Nadezhdyna, sociologist, Snizhne, Donetsk regionIn
telephone conversations, my friends and I try to avoid answering any
questions. You can feel the constant fear that people have of the new
authorities, and life in this city is far from easy.
Even before the
new authorities came, this city was depressed and dependent on state
subsidies. The only successful businesses here were the Snezhnyansky
Machine-Building Plant, a local branch of the Zaporizhzhya firm
Motor-Sich, and the Zarya mine. Pensioners make up most of the adult
population. And as it turned out, those retirees ended up forming the
main social basis for the separatist movement.
Payments to those
dependent on the state budget were chronically in arrears. Local
authorities tried to make the payments by taking short-term bank loans.
After Russian forces entered the city in early June and Prime Minister
Arseniy Yatsenyuk personally ordered local accounts blocked, residents
seemed condemned to a hungry death. And in Snizhne, this happened more
quickly than in other towns in the region.
In September, when the
cease-fire was signed, local pensioners traveled en masse to
Ukrainian-controlled territory to reapply for their pensions. However,
in November, the government announced a complete financial and economic
blockade of the territories within the zone of the antiterrorism
operation (ATO). They stopped paying pensions and other social benefits
to all except those designated as displaced. All the bank machines were
shut down, as was Sberbank. This led many pensioners to despair. There
were sufficient groceries and other goods in the stores and at the
market, but they couldn't buy anything because they had no money.
FerFAL Comment: Again, the same problem. The problem of not having enough money.Over the last couple of weeks, anger has been mounting among the elderly and miners.
And
this anger is directed at both the authorities of the "Donetsk People's
Republic" (DNR) and Yatsenyuk's government. Some angry reactions were
provoked when several buses carrying miners were barred from traveling
to Zaporizhzhya, in the zone controlled by the Ukrainian military, to
pick up their salaries from banks there, where they had been sent months
ago. They were stopped at a Ukrainian military checkpoint.
There is a
lot of talk about the "checks" of trucks with foodstuffs at Ukrainian
checkpoints. And there is some evidence about "confiscations." A
businessman named K. spent 40,000 hryvnyas ($2,500) in Dnipropetrovsk on
supplies for his store. But he was detained and forced to hand over all
his cargo to a distribution center.
Ukrainian authorities, too, are
heavily criticized. Pensioners often complain about the huge lines to
register in the areas controlled by Ukraine and about the bribes it
takes to get service without queuing up. In Kharkiv, for instance, one
pensioner waited his turn for two weeks before "settling matters"
through people he knows.
There is talk that dozens of people have
died of hunger and about a dozen have committed suicide. I won't name
any names. A couple of weeks ago, medical workers were speaking about 54
people dead and five who committed suicide. (Editor's note: RFE/RL was
unable to independently confirm these figures.)
FerFAL
Comment: Don’t expect much of a fair treatment from the occupying force
that invaded your country. My advice? Get the hell out of there before
you’re surrounded!Huge lines of pensioners form in front of
the former office of Privatbank, all seeking financial help from the
DNR. It works like this: You take a coupon for assistance at the
social-security department and then you bring your coupon and get money.
There is no information about how many people are served each day.
Sometimes lines form outside the city at branches of Sberbank or
Ukrpochta as rumors spread that they are handing out money.
People
talk all the time about the shelling around the city. DNR
representatives are tight-lipped about the reasons for the shelling and
who exactly is doing the shelling, and this silence creates panic.
People speak of columns of Russian military vehicles passing through the
city. But for the most part, people are afraid to express their views
openly.
Medical workers are unhappy that teachers and artists
received money, but they didn't. Social workers still haven't seen a
kopeck. But most pensioners are still hoping for Russian pensions and
for the DNR to be admitted into the Russian Federation. And so they give
their moral support to the DNR.
Viktor Alanov, social worker, DonetskI
am a Donbas native. I am an ethnic Russian. I speak both Russian and
Ukrainian fluently, although I consider Russian my mother tongue.
I
was never anti-Ukrainian. I always took Ukraine for granted, a fact I
considered neither good nor bad. I saw to which abyss Vladimir Putin was
leading Russia all these years and I had long stopped associating
myself with this country.
To quote the famous Yevgeny Kiselyov
(not to be confused with Dmitry Kiselyov!), I will say this about
myself: "I am a political Ukrainian."
I highly valued the civil
rights that I enjoyed as a Ukrainian citizen and that Russian citizens
have long been deprived of. By the way, I always thought people did not
sufficiently appreciate these rights and understood this would
inevitably lead to attempts to take them away from us.
FerFAL
Comment: Huge point right there. If you don’t appreciate your rights,
one day you wont have them any more. A professor once told me rights are
like muscles, if you don’t exercise them often you lose them. He was
right.I was never a fervent Ukraine patriot. I never felt
any particular emotion when I saw a Ukrainian flag. I did not like the
anthem much and I definitely never liked nationalists. But I was always
interested in Ukrainian culture and against splitting the country.
Then
came spring 2014. It was a time of unabashed idiocy and surrealism.
Aggressive "defenders of Donbas" appeared in the streets and began
assaulting residents of this very Donbas.
Before they received
weapons (at least officially), they used antifascist slogans to attack
peaceful demonstrations by pro-Ukraine Donbas residents. I remember one
of their statements online. It read: "Fascists will rally on March 13.
Let's meet them. Take surgical instruments with you to rid them of their
Ukrainity."
These words were taken literally.
FerFAL Comment: Propaganda, violence instigation, social division. All powerful tools used often.What
is this, if not fascism? On that day, thousands (!) of people rallied
in Donetsk for a united Ukraine. The demonstrators were attacked by the
"defenders of Donbas." They were severely beaten up, maimed, and
activist Dmitro Chernyavskiy was stabbed to death.
It was a time
during which ideas were distorted in a horrific manner, perhaps even
more than now. Anyone who opposed Ukraine's division was automatically
branded a fascist, a "Maidanut," a "Banderovets," a subhuman. Even if
you had never been a fascist, did not support the Maidan protests, and
were not a [Stepan] Bandera follower, it was all the same to them -- you
were an enemy.
……
A man shouts during a pro-Russia rally near the regional government building in Donetsk in April 2014.
During
the hysterical euphoria that followed the takeover of the regional
administration building, it was wise to avoid this rabid crowd. You
would have had no chance of a fair trial, lawyers, presumption of
innocence. You would have had no chance to even be heard. The crowd
demanded that fascists be dealt with, and the harsher the punishment the
better.
Rules against the retroactive effect of laws did not apply
in the "Donetsk People's Republic," either. All those who participated
in the Euromaidan protests (both in Kyiv and Donetsk) were retroactively
declared enemies and "sentenced to death."
Once the bandits got their hands on weapons, things really got started.
A
local lawmaker was kidnapped in Horlivka. His gutted body was found
near Slovyansk. For what? Simply for opposing pro-Russian militants who
tried to raise a Russian flag over the city council building. That's
all! In Slovyansk, an elderly man was gunned down simply for bringing
water to a Ukrainian checkpoint. Anyone who publicly expressed support
for Ukraine was thrown in a separatist jail, or worse.
FerFAL
Comment: Flags, clothe colours, comments you make to a friend or
neighbour, YOUR FACEBOOK comments! All of it can get you imprisoned or
killed.By the way, fans of the "Russian world" were
somewhat upset that their leaders confronted Ukrainian nationalism not
with internationalism but with bona fide Russian nationalism,
monarchical bells and whistles, and a boorish rejection of all things
progressive. For some reason, this was called "antifascism."
These
"defenders" then proceeded to strip Donbas residents of their freedom of
movement (they established checkpoints) and violate their private
property (they freely entered flats and vehicles at checkpoints).
It
was precisely Donbas residents who were locked up, executed, deprived
of their civil rights: free speech, freedom of conscience, and religion
(Protestants and Orthodox believers of the Kyiv Patriarchate, for
instance, were massively repressed in the areas controlled by the
militants).
These "defenders" brought war into the homes of Donbas
residents, even though they were not under any real attack. They also
went for Donbas journalists as soon as they got weapons. And all this
happened before Ukraine's antiterrorism operation even began!
It was
because of their attempts to storm it on May 26 that the ultramodern
Donetsk airport, which had cost so much to build, was destroyed. It is
them, the fighters of the "Donetsk People's Republic," who confiscated
the cars of numerous Donetsk residents (including Russian and
Russian-speaking!). Businesses were raided, too. Many were forced to
shut down because they had been looted by militants, and people lost
their jobs.
Because of them, banks and post offices no longer work.
Because of them, our school and university graduates are receiving bogus
papers instead of real diplomas. Because of them, there is no legal and
social protection here and pensions and social benefits are not paid.
Because of them, we have to live in this unrecognized "Donetsk People's
Republic" that is not from Donetsk, does not belong to the people, and
is not a republic.
After just a month in these conditions, you
understand how much you actually love Ukraine! We were elated to hear on
May 2 that the antiterrorist operation was entering its active phase.
Shattered glass in a room at a hospital damaged by shelling in Donetsk in January.Unfortunately,
our territories were not freed from the pro-Russians in August as we
had hoped. But now, when I travel to the liberated areas and see
Ukrainian flags and soldiers defending Ukraine, I feel a lot more
emotional than before. I see that, a few dozen kilometers from our hell,
our Donbas people lead normal, peaceful lives. They study, they work,
laws and law-enforcement organs function. Yes, they are not ideal. But
people there live in their country and they are protected.
Right
under my window, I can see separatists firing toward the airport. We
very much want to believe they won't rule here much longer. I think I
know one more reason why Putin just can't resolve to leave Donetsk,
although all signs point to this being inevitable and necessary.
He
is afraid that, when the city is freed, huge numbers of Donetsk
residents to whom he and his sidekicks inflicted so much grief will
gather on the central square with Ukrainian flags. He is afraid of
seeing this scene, because it will be the final nail in the coffin of
his propaganda.
Nadiya Nadezhdyna, sociologist, DonetskMany
local residents describe Donetsk's bomb shelters as hell on earth.
Dirt, stench, tears, and blood. Bunkers are full of makeshift beds
covered with multicolored pieces of cloth and blankets and bed linens of
various degrees of freshness. It's damp and cold.
Anyone who has
spent even just a week under shelling suffers from post-traumatic stress
disorder. There are currently hundreds, maybe thousands, of people in
Donetsk with post-traumatic stress disorder. They almost never leave the
bomb shelters, although no one is shelling them anymore. Whenever they
go out, they jump at every noise, some of them collapse and go into
hysterics…
FerFAL Comment: As sad as bunkers may be, you’ll desperately need one if bombs start dropping.Heart
attacks and strokes are common. But, of course, no data is available
anywhere about post-traumatic stress disorder. Doctors are starting to
talk about suicides. Nobody knows how many people died from the
consequences of the war, either.
Doctors say: "If no one can give us a
death toll from the war, then we definitely have no idea how many
people died from its consequences."
In any case, there must already have been thousands of such indirect deaths.
This
lack of data is largely to blame for the state of bomb shelters. They
are in bad shape, as rescuers and experts from the department of
civilian protection and military mobilization already observed back in
May. These services were discontinued precisely because there is no
data.
I was able to find out that the technical inventory of
protective structures started by the cabinet of ministers in 2009 was
scheduled to end this year. It was never completed.
The available
information paints a very bleak picture. Over half of the region's
protective structures were inventoried in the past five years. In
Donetsk, this figure represents 56 percent, including 88 percent of
structures owned by the municipality. By law, some bunkers are reserved
for people working in big companies, while others are for unemployed
people.
A woman waits in a shelter for shelling to end in Donetsk's Petrovski district on February 4.
The majority of shelters were deemed uninhabitable.
"These
structures were built in the 1960s to the '80s," the Emergencies
Ministry said last spring. "They were well-maintained during the Cold
War era, but today they are outdated. The equipment doesn't function,
for instance. The filters of the ventilation systems need to be changed,
etc."
One should also bear in mind the fact that many bomb shelters
fell into disrepair when companies shut down in the 1990s. Most of these
companies were privatized.
When disaster struck, people had nowhere
to hide. If the Ukrainian Army had stormed Donetsk like the Russians
once stormed Grozny, tens of thousands of people would have died. It did
not happen, and so the situation with bomb shelters was tackled.
Experience has shown that during emergencies, wars, or terror attacks,
the state and number of bomb shelters play an important role.
The
commission's final conclusion at the time was the following: "The
protective structures of companies such as the Donetsk Coal Energy
Company, the Tochmash factory, the Donetsk Metallurgical Plant, the
Donetsk State Factory of Chemical Products, and many other companies are
not ready for use." This became a death sentence for some local
residents. These are the areas of the city that saw the worst shelling.
How
are people supposed to survive in these conditions? Where are they
supposed to run if they are at home or in the street during an emergency
This
is why basements and underground parking garages were turned into bomb
shelters. So were the cellars of schools, houses of culture, and
hospitals.
Rescuers, however, are skeptical. "This is a place to wait
out the danger," they say. "But in the event of a direct hit, it won't
protect anyone. Even a proper bomb shelter won't."
Even several weeks
ago, Donetsk residents did not take the guidance on bomb shelters
issued by city authorities seriously. It seemed like out of a war movie.
Attitudes have since changed dramatically.
The situation with bomb
shelters in the areas at the epicenter of the fighting is dire. In the
Leninsky district, which has been shelled from the Shirokiy suburb,
there is only one equipped bomb shelter: in the 21st Party
Congress-House of Culture. For many, it is simply too far to reach if
shelling breaks out.
Local residents say that basements are locked
and that they have to run to shelters as explosions go off and shrapnel
flies all around.
"I need to run three bus stops to reach the [House
of Culture]. If shelling started, we would not make it alive," a young
woman told me. She was with two children ages 3 and 5. The youngest was
clutching a doll; the other pressed a kitten tightly against her chest.
You could see fear and despair in their eyes.
Mafia groups are
rumored to be running the bomb shelters. When the shelling starts, they
let in only their own people and demand money from the others.
FerFAL
Comment: Even more reasons to a)have your own b)explore and find other
viable shelter options c) Reach some sort of agreement with such people
d)Quickly and discretely get rid of such people.There are
several open shelters in the Budonyvskiy district, mostly basements on
October Street. The only real bomb shelter is behind the Pushkin
monument. It was built in the 1960s and is very solid, but it is unsafe
to stay inside for long. It's damp, moldy, and the walls are moist with
humidity.
The situation in other districts is just as bad. But
despite the awful conditions in these shelters, people continue living
in them. They have no choice. The windows of their homes are shattered,
the walls are cracked, and the roofs are destroyed
And so the bomb
shelters have become their refuge. Even people whose homes were spared
by the shelling are afraid of sleeping in them. They go to their homes
only to wash and cook. They spend the rest of the time underground.
This
is how life is now in Donetsk. One resident described it this way: "We
live in basements. We queue for humanitarian aid. Many people are sick,
many are dying."
FerFAL Comment: There is still more to come.
Some information is more redundant but other comments have new,
interesting perspectives. FerFAL
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.
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