“When I called the medical emergency number and told them that someone might have been killed, they told me to take the body to some safe location, so they could pick it up,” she continues. “How was I supposed to do it?” She spreads her arms. There is neither water nor electricity, and gas is supplied very rarely. How to survive the coming winter when there is no chance that the heating will be turned on?
Volodymyr, whom I meet at the destroyed bazaar, asks me to write down his brief message to Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko:
“May you go through what simple people go through because of you.” And then he invites me to tea and apples. He lives next to the bazaar. His house is full of animals: two dogs, two cats, and a rabbit. Not so long ago his neighbor’s house was hit by a missile. They say it came from the Grad rocket launch system. Volodymyr shows me the shrapnel he has found in his backyard. His son Vitaly doesn’t go to school because the neighborhood schools haven’t opened after the summer vacations, and he has no means to get to the center. Despite this Volodymyr doesn’t want to leave his house because as he says: “It is our land.”
Others say: “We stay because we have no place to go.”
I am sitting with Volodymyr, listening to the accompaniment of artillery shelling. You can hear mortars and their typical “popping,” and less often, rifle fire. I have spent several hours here and have counted at least fifty explosions. Some were close, others farther away.
Almost no one pays any attention to distant explosions. People don’t turn their heads, don’t hide, and don’t blink. For those who have stayed, war is a commonplace.
“Over there is a ‘street of death,’” a pro-Russian insurgent points out. He doesn’t tell me his name, just his age. He is twenty-two. “Go to the very end. Our checkpoint will be there. When someone goes beyond it, ukrops start shooting.”
Ukrop means “dill” in Russian. Today it is a derogatory term for “Ukrainian.” This fellow is almost as old as independent Ukraine, but he says it was the Soviet Union that was the country worth living in.
An elderly woman is walking toward the “street of death.”
“Excuse me. Are they shooting there?” She points in that direction. I reply that they haven’t been shooting. One second afterwards we hear an explosion. The elderly lady decides to walk to her apartment that is located right there.
Back in July, several hundred meters from the “street of death” a missile hit a garage. It destroyed it completely but didn’t explode. Inside I can see the unexploded ordnance sticking from the ground. In the summer a bomb disposal unit arrived to take a look but they decided that there was no danger, and they left. A family lives in the house nearby. They are afraid to touch the shell so it is still there.
Recently the missiles have been falling close to the city center. Serhiy lives several hundred meters from the station. He says that a missile went through the roof and ended up in his apartment. “Usually I come home at five p.m., but this time I had to stay a little longer. It must have been a divine intervention.”
The men from a bomb disposal unit who arrived next morning again claimed that there was no danger. And they walked away, leaving the remains of the missile in his apartment. Now, Serhiy practically lives under the open sky. He is worried that he won’t get any assistance soon. The temperature in Donetsk falls to a few degrees Celsius, and in a day or two it will fall below zero at night. The rain will come, followed by frost that is generally more bitter than in Kiev. During the shelling that destroyed Serhiy’s apartment, the projectiles damaged a few other buildings. One hit a grocery store. Two shop assistants were killed. On that day five people lost their lives.
Many people regret that they have left more peaceful places in haste. Olha, holding onto a child, is standing in front of the apartment building that was recently hit. She has returned from somewhere in the Donetsk region. She crosses her arms. “What are we supposed to do?” she asks.
The city itself looks very militarized. The ratio of “men in uniform” to civilians is overwhelming. When I walk in the Donetsk streets I see people with guns in camouflage outfits.
“Documents, please! It’s standard procedure. There is martial law.” An insurgent stops me on the main street. In the center you can’t see any cars labeled milicja but policja, just like in Russia now. They stop all the vehicles and check the drivers.
In the first half of October I was coming to Donetsk from Dnipropetrovsk by minibus. Despite the fighting, buses were running everywhere. At the entry checkpoint my bus was stopped. A militant got in and asked sarcastically in Ukrainian: “Any cute boys from Lviv here?” Nobody reacted, so he got off.
The next checkpoint was more serious. All men aged from eighteen to fifty-five had to get out and show their documents. Of course, when they saw a Pole and my friend, a Slovak photographer, they got very interested and decided to check our papers more carefully. Poles, in particular, raise their suspicions. Back in July in Donetsk, when a Polish journalist was detained, the separatists told him that he had a “fucking shitty passport.” Some representatives of the insurgents don’t want to have anything to do with Poles. It’s because there is a myth among them that Polish mercenaries fight on the Ukrainian side. The problem is that no one has ever seen them. And the only Poles engaged in this conflict happen to fight for the separatists.
Another element of control is curfew. Earlier it was taken with a pinch of salt. Now the jokes are over. Really, it would be better if you didn’t walk the streets in the evening. The curfew begins at eleven at night and lasts until six in the morning.
“There are two strategies. Some people say that you shouldn’t leave your home at nine p.m., others that you shouldn’t do it after ten p.m.,” a friend who has been in Donetsk for quite a while tells me.
The first place any journalist arriving in Donetsk has to visit is the Donetsk Regional State Administration building. In the past it was the office of the local Ukrainian government. You can get a so-called civilian accreditation here. It is quite funny but for a long time even the representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR) called this building the “regional administration,” which suggested that it was still a part of Ukraine. Now they call it Government House, just like in Belarus or Russia.
The most striking change, however, is not about aesthetics or symbols but about organization. Inside the building it is more orderly. On each floor there are special information desks that provide assistance. The Press Center is on the seventh floor. Here I get my new accreditation. On other floors there are “ministerial” offices, a first aid station, and various agencies providing financial aid for insurgents’ families and refugees. Those who lost their apartments or houses due to the shelling can apply for some assistance, too. How many people get what they ask for, and how many are sent away? I don’t know. But every day you see a larger or smaller group of claimants.
It is clear that Novorussians try to keep the building well ordered. The bureaucracy is expanding because the DPR has to guarantee jobs for its citizens. For the time being, the owners of private shops and small businesses can’t be forced to open them, so other options are pursued. Fighting in the units of Novorossiya is also a job. There are attempts to start industrial plants. But how to find funds for all this? No one knows, and the “authorities” emphasize that the money they collect from taxes (the taxes are imposed) is not enough.
There are more organizational questions than answers. In late October a message appeared on the website of the DPR Press Service: “The Court is functioning in the Donetsk People’s Republic.” The recruitment of judges was announced and the presiding judge of the Supreme Court was chosen. But a question comes to my mind: “What kind of law will these courts follow?”