“Glory to Ukraine!” someone shouts from the platform. “Glory to the heroes!” the crowd shouts back. The entire square is filled with Ukrainian flags and hand-painted posters. “I want to live in Ukraine.” A young man holds a piece of paper. He has climbed the pedestal where the Lenin statue used to stand. There is a girl with him of the same age, dressed in a T-shirt showing a trident and waving the Ukrainian flag. Somewhere else you can see a poster saying, “Down with Putin!” and next to it “PTN PNCH,” which is a subtle acronym of the less subtle slogan in Russian, “Putin, go fuck yourself.” The residents are demanding immediate measures that would improve the city’s defensibility. They are ready to protect it, too.
On the next day a group of volunteers went to the eastern checkpoint to assist with building fortifications. There were only several dozen persons, not as many as at the demonstration, but new people were joining in. After they got the appropriate permit from the guardsmen, they set to work. Armed with shovels, they dug for hours every day. No one doubted that thanks to their efforts the city would be defended.
“Our action is symbolic. We want to show to our defenders that they are not alone, that they are backed by the city residents,” says Roman who joined the action. In Mariupol I will hear a similar statement many times.
Another undertaking of Mariupol’s civilian defenders is a “human shield.” The residents formed a human chain in the eastern outskirts of the city and made a pledge to stand there until the tanks showed up. They will defend the city with their own bodies, and they believe that separatists and Russians will not fire at civilians. “Mariupol is Ukraine,” they shout. At a preset time they sing the Ukrainian anthem. Then they approach one of the checkpoints. They call the guardsmen “heroes.” They take pictures with them and thank them for defending Mariupol.
The Mariupol events were the first mobilization of this kind, and so far the only one. In other cities people prefer not to be involved because you never know who will rule the city next. Here, this fear has been partly conquered.
It was back in April, in Slovyansk, that I heard for the first time that the separatists wanted to create a second Transnistria on the territories they controlled. At the same time, Evgeny Gorbik, the leader of the green men, argued that integration with Russia didn’t have to mean becoming part of it.
“It didn’t happen in the cases of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” he said. He added that, to him, Russia was good at making states, which didn’t mean that those states had to join Russia right away. To me, comparing Donbas to two parastates unrecognized by anybody but Russia sounded like a bad joke. Who would like to have the same standards of living as Abkhazians or Ossetians? With time I understood that it wasn’t a joke. A parastate in the post-Soviet style was also being built in Donbas.
The key moment was the collapse of the Ukrainian front with the Ilovaisk encirclement and the arrival of Russian tanks in Novoazovsk. The unrecognized republics caught their second wind and strengthened their positions on their territories. The situation was stable, so there was time for politics. In November, presidential and parliamentary elections were held. The separatists’ representatives stressed that this was done in order to legitimize the government among the residents because earlier the authorities “had elected themselves.” After the “referendum” no other elections had been held and all the officials were being appointed from above.
Donetsk, too, has changed in recent months. There are still no crowds in the streets, but there are more cars. When I was here in July the roads were empty. The people expected that the war would rush in here, too, so they left their homes. After their summer vacations many locals returned. Some of them came from Mariupol, at that time defended by the Ukrainians. For many, the reasons were financial. They could no longer afford to live away from home. Others believed that the ceasefire signed on September 5 in Belarus, in Minsk, would bring peace to Donetsk. All in vain. Soon afterwards the separatists resumed fighting for the Donetsk airport. Every day you can hear explosions coming from the city outskirts. Occasionally projectiles hit the city center.
The northern part of Donetsk near the international airport is falling into ruins. The shelling destroys one building after another and each day kills more people. But the ceasefire continues. Residents are afraid that under such conditions they will not survive the winter.
Donetsk generally is a peculiar city. There is a bazaar around the recently renovated, tidy train station. A little further on, towards the center, you can see high-rise buildings. But if you venture a few hundred meters north, you will have the impression that you have found yourself in some provincial town.
I stop at the bazaar that is not far from the airport. The remains of the bus station and the shop that was there are frightening. The building has been patched up with metal plates. There is only the skeleton of a framework left from its western wall and the roof is partly torn off. Walls perforated by shrapnel, piles of rubble.
“No, this is old,” says a young fellow who sells cigarettes. This house was hit four days before my arrival, but for him it’s ancient history. Here every day brings something new. Who is shooting? One of the residents, Ivan, claims it’s one side, and the other side, too. But first he covers himself, saying, “How am I supposed to know?”
Here, on the (pro-)Russian side of the front, everyone, except Ivan, is convinced that Ukrainians are behind the firing, especially the Ukrainian National Guard, so much hated by the Russians. The residents of Cheerful, the village outside the city limits, a few hundred meters from the airport, present a more complex picture of events. They claim that separatists provoke Ukrainian firing by placing tanks and mortars between the residential buildings. Ukrainian artillery responds with heavy shelling.
Projectiles have hit the bazaar, too. They smashed one of the stands and left craters, shrapnel, and shattered windows. Almost all the stalls have been closed. Only a few people are walking around here. They are glad that they can show journalists what they are going through.
“Look what they are doing to us. We want to live normally,” says an elderly woman, crying. Very often tears get mixed with outrage and helplessness. No one knows what to do next, how and where to live. There are more shattered windows, bombed-out houses, wounded, and dead. Maxim was getting some water from a hydrant since water had not been available in the apartments for a long time. A projectile struck the ground and shrapnel hit Maxim in his temple—it has already been patched up—and his hand. His palm is terribly swollen and you can see a large wound.
“It was a piece of glass,” says Maxim.
The lack of water is especially severe during fires.
“The fire department and the emergency medical services should be brought before a tribunal,” claims Irina who lives nearby. During the shelling the neighboring buildings caught fire. One at first, then two more. The firefighters responded that they wouldn’t come because it was a war zone. Irina asked them at least to provide some water for putting the fire out, but they refused that, too.