“We feed Ukraine, we work hard, and they murder us. How can it be?” says one of them.
Funeral celebrations took place two days later. People were gathering on the main square in front of the Orthodox church, altogether perhaps two or three hundred people. More had been expected.
Three buses pull over in front of the church with a coffin in each of them and a picture on each windshield. When the coffins were taken out, the crowd stood there in silence. Finally, a woman shouted: “Glory!”
“Glory, glory, glory!” responded the crowd. There are more and more slogans directed against nationalism. Then it’s time to focus on the media.
“On this occasion, we would like to ask the media to present the truth,” an elderly man is shouting through a megaphone.
“Truth, truth, truth,” the crowd is responding. Some discussions begin and the conclusion is that foreign media are not needed. Of course, with the exception of the Russian media that are doing a great job, according to the separatists’ sympathizers. It is only the Ukrainian media that are even worse than the foreign ones.
“Look, what they are saying there. These are pure lies,” a man standing in front of the church tries to convince me.
Stella Khorosheva, Ponomarev’s press secretary, is usually the first representative of the “people’s authorities” that journalists meet. She is forty-eight. When I see her for the first time she is wearing a grey jacket, a white blouse, and jeans. She has grey hair and glasses. Her phone is ringing all the time and she never silences it. She writes poetry and lives in Italy. She supports Forza Italia and Silvio Berlusconi. She came to Slovyansk only when the Russian Spring had already taken Crimea. She still has a lot of connections in Italy, so she tries to stir up public opinion there. She sometimes boasts about her articles on Facebook. At each press conference she moves around the room, darting and talking. She seems very chaotic. You realize very quickly that you shouldn’t ask this person any questions because she is always the last to know anything.
After the morning press conference with Ponomarev, together with other journalists who have just met the “mayor” I go to the barricade near the SSU building. “Greens” want to show off another Ukrainian nationalist who was captured. He supposedly has a list of colleagues’ phone numbers.
“Call and talk to them,” one of the “greens” encourages him. When the nationalist (from Right Sector, of course) stammers, a man in uniform prompts him about what to say. Another whispers to the Russian journalist and asks her to make the nationalist’s statement more precise.
But before the show begins Khorosheva turns up. She looks for something.
“Excuse me, what is Ponomarev going to do at twelve? Unfortunately, I have not heard what he was saying at the conference,” she says at last, turning to one of the journalists. She finds out that the self-proclaimed mayor is about to meet with the special observation mission of the OSCE. Then she tries to enter the space between the barricades. One of the “greens,” however, stops her.
“What are you looking for here?” he asks.
“I am Ponomarev’s press secretary and I have to get there,” she points toward the SSU.
“I am sorry, but you can’t pass,” the armed man says to end the conversation, and Khorosheva walks away toward the City Council.
At the same moment a question I had been asking myself since my arrival in Slovyansk came back to me: Who is in charge here? Who exercises control over whom? The City Council over “greens”? Or perhaps “greens” over the City Council?
Right after my arrival in the city I addressed this question to Anatoly Khmelovy, a former parliamentary deputy and presently the First Secretary of the Communist Party of Ukraine.
“‘Greens’ do not control the City Council, nor does the City Council control ‘greens,’” Khmelovy told me. I notice very quickly that it wasn’t a truthful answer. The City Council totally defers to Ponomarev. Undoubtedly the majority of its members believe in the legitimacy of his actions. If someone was of a different opinion, he would keep it to himself, because his career could come to an end very quickly. Here nobody has ever heard about brave people who would oppose the “people’s power.”
“Please, have a look, everything is working fine,” the mayor kept boasting about the order in the city.
Black hoodie with the ribbon of Saint George attached, black polo shirt, black cap, and jeans—this is Ponomarev’s typical outfit. From time to time you can see him in uniform. He often covers or hides his left hand with its missing index finger. He is forty-nine, but very little is known about his past.
He is a retired soldier. He claims that during Soviet times he served in northern Russia. It is possible that he participated in special operations. As some Russian media maintain, after the fall of the Soviet Union he was selling cars to Russia and was the manager of a garment factory. The residents who don’t support his activities allege that in reality he was dealing drugs. This is a popular enough business idea in Slovyansk. That’s why in April the militants paid a call on the local Roma households. People who were unsympathetic to the mayor said that the basis for this was not racism but business. Therefore only a few Roma families met with repression. Ponomarev himself says very little about the 1990s.
“What did I do before the conflict? I was a co-owner of the soap factory,” he describes his last job. As he points out, he is a simple man, who is not afraid of any work. If need be, he is ready to fight alongside the rank-and-file militants. Was he a popular figure in Slovyansk? No. Before he proclaimed himself the “people’s mayor” hardly anybody had ever heard of him.
Although Ponomarev is the only one who can count on the support of “greens,” he doesn’t command them. He is a pawn. It is not at the City Council building that you can find all the military equipment, but at the SSU headquarters. This means that the command center is there. The journalists’ access to this facility is very limited. You can enter Marx Street only during the “presentation” of captured nationalists or for an interview with some high-ranking officials. I have managed to talk to more or less fifty-year-old Evgeny Gorbik twice.
“What did you do before the war?” one of the journalists asks him during the “presentation.”
“I was an entrepreneur,” Gorbik replies.
“In the region?”
“You might say so.”
The second time, I showed up with a Crimean photographer. Then “You might say so” got a more precise geographical location.
“You are from Crimea? I am from there, too,” Gorbik addressed my companion very cheerfully.
When on April 26 the representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic came to Slovyansk, they didn’t call on Ponomarev but instead went to the SSU. It was the first time Igor Strelkov appeared on the Donbas scene. It was his first press conference. Soon after he was interviewed by Komsomolskaya Pravda. Unlike Ponomarev, he never takes off his uniform.
Strelkov took part in the occupation of Crimea and from there he came to Slovyansk. According to him, he was persuaded by the soldiers from his unit, who for the most part were Donbas residents. But not only, he emphasizes: in his unit there are people from Crimea and other Ukrainian regions, and one-third of them don’t have Ukrainian passports at all.
According to the information published by the SSU, his real name is Igor Girkin, he is forty-four and he is an officer of the Russian intelligence agency—GRU. On the other hand, he claims to be a former officer of the Federal Security Service (FSB), now retired. This gets some confirmation by Ponomarev, who would say that they had known each other for a long time and that they were both pensioners.