“Try this honey. We’ve gotten it from the locals. It’s without GMOs!”
“Val,” the most cheerful of the entire company, encourages us. He is about fifty. And very devout. Although the majority in the bunker are religious, he is the most zealous. He has an armband with writing on it. As he explains, it is Psalm 80. Val believes that it will shield him from bullets.
“Bullets don’t touch it,” claims Val. This is his only protection from shells since he doesn’t wear a bulletproof vest. He is convinced he doesn’t need it because faith keeps him safe.
Religiosity and conservative values are nothing particularly odd among pro-Russian insurgents. Back in April they created the Russian Orthodox Army. From the very beginning of the Russian Spring numerous groups of pilgrims had been strolling around the Donetsk State Regional Administration building that was occupied by separatists.
Russian Orthodoxy here is strangely connected with antifascism as they perceive it. Everyone who doesn’t support Russia is a fascist. Local antifascists openly talk about the blood unity of Slavic nations and condemn faiths other than Russian Orthodoxy.
“Take my picture,” says Val.
“The photo will be better if you hold some weapon.” I encourage him.
Val picks up whatever is at hand. It is a rocket-propelled grenade launcher.
“You are holding it the wrong way,” someone is shouting in the darkness.
“It won’t make any difference to these guys.” They burst into laughter.
Then he takes the weapon. This time properly. He doesn’t stop laughing.
Only some of the explosions are heard in the bunker. When the shells from Grads hit the ground one by one you know that something is going on. The firing calms down a little. I go outside to assess the situation and let my friends know I am all right (cell phones don’t work in the bunker).
“It’s odd. The shells are coming from places controlled by our people,” says one of the separatists. When I hear this, I am even more amused by the question everyone asks me: “Who is actually doing the shooting there?”
How am I supposed to know? I am usually on the side that is under fire but I can only hear the explosions. Honestly, it is very rare that you can observe the moment when they fire and the target. How am I supposed to know who is shooting, if even the insurgents and soldiers don’t fully understand what’s happening?
How many insurgents are in the bunker? Including those standing watch (they are also lookouts when there is shooting), there are about fifty of us, claims the unit commander nicknamed Cimmerian. Usually a dozen or so stay in the bunker proper. They are all residents of Donbas. What did they do before the war? Among them there is a miner, a mechanic, and a blacksmith. Outside of their obligatory limited training they don’t have any military experience.
The commander claims that his unit is the only one here and that they cannot count on any reinforcement. Semen Semenchenko, whom I will meet a few days later, is the commander of the volunteer battalion Donbas. Fighting for the Ukrainian side, he will have a different opinion. According to him, there are a lot of artillery forces in the area, so the Ukrainian units can’t fight their way through to Marinka.
“If there had been only fifty people there, we would have dealt with them a long time ago,” he states.
Cimmerian is sitting next to me. At first, he doesn’t say much but finally he starts talking. He and his son, who is also in the unit, know everything about military service. His son got the nickname “Frenchman.” When the father and son talk to each other they use nicknames.
Cimmerian had been in the police, and he retired in March. That’s when the protests began, so he joined them. Then once again he reached for a weapon and signed up with the Donetsk People’s Republic. He had served twenty-five years in the Donetsk police force. He lives somewhere near the city. As often happens in Ukraine, he showed me photos on his phone—of his granddaughter on a horse and of his daughter. There is a picture of Frenchman in uniform; he must have been in the army. In a group photo he is posing with his entire unit. Another photo shows him as a member of the Donetsk mounted police. Finally, Cimmerian shows me photos from the Maidan.
“You were there?” I ask him.
“Yes, several times.”
He shows me more photos.
“How did they talk about it in Poland? Did they support the Maidan?” he asks me.
“Mostly, yes.”
“For what reason?”
I shrugged. “And you were there for what? For Yanukovych?”
“What does Yanukovych have to do with this? We maintained order.”
He starts by saying that everything was the demonstrators’ fault and that the police behaved in exemplary fashion. They only fought troublemakers.
“You were there on December 1?”
“I was there. Look.” He shows me one of the photos in which he is part of the police cordon holding metal shields.
On that day outside the Presidential Administration building a group of demonstrators connected with the rightist organization, the Brotherhood, brought a bulldozer and tried to storm the barricade in front. According to the supporters of the Maidan, it was a provocation. During quite a long time the police were attacked by demonstrators with stones, bottles, and metal chains. They responded with tear gas and stun grenades. Finally, the police reached for their clubs and dispersed the crowd, assaulting whoever was in their path. In these skirmishes about three hundred people were injured. Half of them were police.
“I was beaten by the police there, although they knew I was a journalist,” I tell Cimmerian.
There is a pause. It is the first time he doesn’t respond right away.
“But I wasn’t beating you,” he claims meekly.
I burst into laughter, and we never talk about the Maidan again.
Cimmerian insists that we follow them to the buildings to watch them picking up the residents’ bodies. It is very important to him that it is documented. I try to convince them that we have to leave because we can no longer keep the cabbie who was also in the bunker. “We will give you a ride,” says Cimmerian. We settle accounts with the taxi driver and he quits the bunker. We stay put, waiting for the shooting to fade.
I didn’t check the time carefully, but I think we spent about four hours in the bunker. Finally, Cimmerian organizes the expedition. He takes four volunteers and two local residents. We are going outside. “Single file, five meters apart!” says the commander. We are taking the same route on which I was running away earlier. Cimmerian orders us to walk under the trees. Where there is a clearing, we are to dash to the nearest trees. It will make it more difficult to aim at us.
When we walk by one of the houses, we smell the terrible stench of a decomposing body. They look over the fence but see nothing. “It must be an animal,” asserts one of the locals who clearly is not keen on carrying corpses. So we keep walking.