I go to Kramatorsk by marshrutka. We pass a checkpoint. The passengers are dismayed.
“Are they ours?” one of the women is asking. A few people reply “yes,” hesitantly. After all, you don’t know which ones are “ours.” For some people “ours” are those with the Saint George’s ribbons and the Russian flags, for others the “Kievans.” In the end they turned out to be the latter. Several people started to wave when they saw the Ukrainian flags. This was the largest difference I noticed in comparison with April. The overwhelming majority had changed sides. First they supported the separatists, then they backed the Ukrainian forces. When I saw photos of “liberated” Slovyansk, I immediately remembered the beginning of “people’s” rule in Donbas. In April children posed for pictures with the separatists, today they have photos taken with Ukrainian soldiers. The exhilaration is practically the same. I don’t know whether these people are cynical or whether they finally understood what was behind the Donetsk People’s Republic. After all it was Slovyansk that had experienced the most starvation, fear, and violence.
When it comes to destruction, Kramatorsk looks much worse than Slovyansk. There is a demolished building in the suburbs that appears frightening. It is a high-rise that has been hit by at least two missiles. You can see that a few floors are damaged. On the main square, just next to a poster saying “Kramatorsk is Ukraine,” a shell had landed on the fourth floor balcony of a row house. A nearby housing project was hit by several. In one place a shell struck a staircase, somewhere else it got stuck in the wall. The shrapnel from yet a different shell shredded the wall, so now it looks like Swiss cheese. The windows were shattered into tiny shards like poppy seeds. Several elderly people are sitting outside the building. Their faces are blank.
There is a school behind the project. In front of the entrance you can see a huge bomb crater, thirty or forty centimeters deep. People say it was a 120 mm mortar shell. A building standing next to the school was less fortunate. Part of its roof looks like a dreadful skeleton. There is a hole in the wall. It must have been hit by shells at least several times. When I am looking at this destruction, a man tells me: “Go to the second staircase, second floor.”
The door is open and off its frame. The apartment was hit by a projectile. You can see a pile of rubble, styrofoam, fragments of furniture, and personal belongings. The walls are cracked. Apart from a closet with a Winnie the Pooh sticker nothing in this old room looks like it did before.
Outside I meet Olha who works for the public administration. She lives in the building next to the school. What does she think about all of this? She was exhilarated when she saw the Ukrainian army in the city.
“I was shouting ‘hurrah!’” she says.
A man passing by listens to her and comments: “Madam, you were bombed so nicely.”
Very often it is the Ukrainian army that is accused of the destruction. However Olha doesn’t agree.
“Look, what ‘ours’ have done,” she says sarcastically about the separatists. “For such ‘ours’ thanks a lot.”
Although the Kramatorsk city center is seriously destroyed, its residents don’t suffer as much tragedy as those in Slovyansk. Water shortages are the only problem, but a few water tanks nearby are enough for basic needs. Electricity is everywhere. No one is staggering due to dehydration or hunger. Almost everything is available in the shops. When I open a freezer, it is full of seafood. It is hard to believe that Slovyansk and Kramatorsk are separated by little more than ten kilometers.
7. THE FALLEN CITY
IN JULY 2014 Donetsk is still a relatively peaceful place, but here is where you can best see the changes that have taken place during the conflict. From a typical European city, it has turned into a godforsaken hole.
What stands out at first sight is the emptiness. You can see with your naked eye that, unlike in April or even May, there are fewer people. Traffic in the streets has almost vanished. Traffic jams in Donetsk? No one remembers they ever existed. Some residents took their cars away from the city, others hid them securely.
“They are concealing the cars, because the separatists steal them. It’s simple: if they like a particular vehicle, they take it. All those pricey SUVs were not theirs,” says Pavlo, a cabbie, who drives me around Donetsk. “I don’t even wear my watch because I don’t want to lose it.” He shows me a bare wrist.
One day I’m sitting in one of the few bars that are open until late at night and a Porsche Cayenne pulls over. Two uniformed young men get out. Theoretically, at ten o’clock curfew begins, but it is the insurgents who break it most often. As it turns out, these two are from Russian Ryazan. They have come for a double date. Their girlfriends are already here. Laughing, conversations, flirtations. A car pulls over outside and one of the militants gets up from the table. He pulls two huge bunches of roses out of the car. One is white, the other red. He hands them over to the women sitting at the table. When a few shots are heard nearby, their security guards show up. The “Donbas volunteers,” with rifles, line up in front of the bar. They obediently wait until the rendezvous is over.
It is not only expensive SUVs that fall prey to the separatists. It can be any car or even an ambulance. One day when I was walking down Ilyich Avenue, I was passed by a black car that looked like a delivery vehicle. Inside I noticed a man in uniform. Only when the car drove away did I recognize the lettering AMBULANCE. Probably out of haste or laziness no one had removed the lettering. Rumors spread fast among Donetsk residents that ambulances were to be avoided because you could find a “surprise.” Not all the seized ambulances were repainted.
Empty spaces are particularly visible in places that in April and May were teeming with life, on Pushkin Boulevard, for example. Two months ago it was full of people walking, relaxing, and socializing. Now it is as gloomy as the rest of the city. It’s not a problem to find a seat on a bench because they are almost all empty. It’s more difficult to make a dinner reservation because the restaurants are closing one by one. When I arrived in Donetsk on July 11 there were still many. When I left the city ten days later only half of them were still functioning or they closed very early.
Although many stores have shut down, shopping for food is not difficult. All basic products are available, but the selection is more limited. And there are problems with ATM machines. Some of them have notices posted: “No money.” Similarly, banks are often closed for “technical reasons.” You can’t miss the open ones because they are full of people. Functioning ATM machines have daily limits, getting lower and lower every day. I did manage to find five machines that still dispensed money. They will soon stop working, too. Coming to the city with cash withdrawn somewhere else is the best option.
After a thirty-minute tram ride and a short walk I reached the apartment building where I was renting a flat.
“I have been left alone here. I don’t know what for. Perhaps I should leave, too?” says Raya, my landlady. At the stairwell entrance there is a posted notice. I learn that in case of artillery shelling there is a bomb shelter in a nearby basement. A few days later a new notice appears saying that cold water will only be available from five to ten in the morning and from five to ten at night. Hot water can only be had in the evening. I can’t complain because I live in the city center and the water problem is less bothersome here than on the outskirts. There the water pressure is very low and hot water almost doesn’t exist. Responding to “numerous questions from the residents,” the City Council put out an announcement explaining that water in the fountains is recycled through a closed recirculating system. People had probably been outraged by the presumed wastefulness.