Greetings from Novorossiya: Eyewitness to the War in Ukraine

10. TRANSNISTRIA ON THE DON

IT IS SEPTEMBER 6, late evening. The eastern outskirts of Mariupol are being shelled. I found myself in this city with three other journalists. We had been sitting in a seaside restaurant when suddenly we heard explosions. The recently arrived reporter and cameraman from one of the TV stations had endured similar conditions several times earlier. They rented a car, so it was easier for all of us to get to the event site rapidly. The third among my companions was a print journalist. He had spent more time in Donbas than anybody else. It was not our first trip together. We decided to go, but we had to stop by the hotel to pick up our helmets and bulletproof vests.

Yesterday yet another ceasefire agreement was signed between the separatists and Kiev. I had no illusions that it would last, but I thought that fighting would start at least two days later. Yet it erupted the next day. The Press Service of the Donetsk People’s Republic announced on Twitter that “The Armed Forces of Novorossiya are capturing Mariupol.” There was no doubt who was behind the attack. There was a rumor that a large fleet of tanks and armored personnel carriers had crossed the Russian border heading toward Mariupol.

When we get closer to the battlefield, we realize that the situation is more serious than we thought. Heavy shelling is really close. It must be large caliber because the explosions are very powerful. We hide behind the last apartment building, only several hundred meters from the shelled Ukrainian checkpoint. It is a half kilometer or so from where the shells hit the ground. With each strike you can hear a terrible boom and the ground shudders slightly.

Instead of hiding in the basement the local residents stand outside the stairwell, in the middle of the square, and despair. A guardsman from Azov has arrived. He may be twenty and he is scared.

“So what that we have rifles if they have artillery?” he asks rhetorically.

I run downstairs and open the basement door. You can enter the basement not only from the stairwell but also from the main entrance.

“Please go to the basement. It is safer there,” I tell people who stand outside.

“And if the basement collapses, then what?” someone from the crowd asks me.

I don’t tell him, but maybe I should, that if the basement gives way in the explosion, not even shreds will be left of him standing there in the open space.

“If you don’t want to stay in the basement, at least don’t stand in the middle of the square, come closer to the walls.”

Some have listened to me, others are still outside because they think they know better. Even a young fellow in uniform can’t convince them. He keeps trying to get them to respect his military background.

“You journalists, you only talk and talk, but you do nothing,” a man suddenly snaps at me. Missiles explode around us, so a conversation about what it means to be a journalist seems to me a little inappropriate.

“And what is it you are doing?” I ask him.

“I’m standing here… I live here,” he responds, thrown off balance.

In the end he decides to hide in the stairwell.

After about two hours the situation calms down. We walk toward the checkpoint. Many journalists have come to the scene. The checkpoint itself was only slightly damaged. But a truck, some grass, a gas station, and a medical emergency building were completely incinerated.

Even a few days before the shelling Mariupol had already been living in fear. In Novoazovsk, forty kilometers from Mariupol and ten kilometers from the Russian border, at least thirty tanks appeared. They came from abroad and dislodged the remaining units of the National Guard from the city. The Ukrainian forces, which had been in no way equipped to defend the place, were taken by surprise. Apart from scattered units of the National Guard, only three volunteer battalions, Azov, Dnipro-1, and Shakhtarsk, are based in Mariupol. Almost every day the governor of the Donetsk region, Serhiy Taruta, affirmed that everything was all right and that the city was ready for defense. Hardly anyone, however, believed his words. In March he said the same about Donetsk, and soon after, he fled the city and moved the entire administration to Mariupol.

The hypothesis that the city has not been secured was confirmed by soldiers. “If these tanks attacked us, the city would be captured in an hour,” “Locha” from the battalion Dnipro-1 tells me. A lack of heavy equipment is a problem here. “We won’t defeat tanks with rifles,” claims one of the guardsmen. Then he adds that even the rocket-propelled grenades they have are too old to fight the modern tanks advancing on Novoazovsk.

Almost every pro-Ukrainian resident would say: “We need tanks.”

Others would add: “…and antitank weapons.”

In the next few days, artillery, tanks, and other military units were sent here to defend the city. They brought heavy equipment for building fortifications and digging antitank ditches.

Earlier, something unusual had happened in Mariupol. The city, rather passive and politically indifferent in the past, suddenly turned into a place with a strong movement of pro-Ukrainian resistance. When its residents heard that Mariupol might be attacked and return under separatist control, they started to organize.

On August 28 an antiwar and pro-Ukrainian demonstration was held, attended by at least five thousand people. This is a surprising number for Mariupol with its population of five hundred thousand, who are generally not willing to take to the streets, and many of whom still support the separatists. Although there were no tents and no one wanted to occupy the main square, the atmosphere resembled that of the early Maidan in Kiev.

“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.

“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?”

It’s true that the “constitution” was approved back in June, but it is only a formal and legal framework. On the one hand, the self-proclaimed authorities declare that they want to be an independent and democratic state. On the other, they affirm their attachment to Soviet traditions.

Asking about how city and communal institutions work here turns out to be problematic. “Everything is all right. We work as we did before,” a doctor tells me but he doesn’t agree to be recorded. The hospital administration barred him from talking to the media.

In the schools, children follow the program set by the Ukrainian Ministry of Education. “The only thing that has changed is one hour of Russian that was added to some grades,” says the principal of a Russian-language school. Most of the instructions come from Kiev. To demonstrate this, this woman shows me some documents with Ukrainian emblems. Ukrainian is still being taught. But Ukrainian history has been postponed until the second semester. Schools with classes taught in Ukrainian are functioning as well. Only the schools near the airport were not opened after the summer vacations because it would be too dangerous. Children living near the airport can attend other schools in Donetsk. They were all opened on October 1, but according to the principal they will catch up with the syllabus because the fall break has been cancelled. However, there are rumors that the program will be changed soon. At the universities, too.

The separatists have even decided to impose their new time. In the DPR clocks don’t run on Kiev time. The hands of the clocks are set one hour forward.

Novorossyans are more and more sure that they will create a separate and independent state. They realize that they have a long way to go. In September there was a summit in Minsk that de facto sealed Ukraine’s loss of large parts of the Donetsk and Luhansk territories. Even earlier, Novorossyans published an article on their website Russian Spring, entitled On the Way to a Great “Transnistria.” Its main thesis was that Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko couldn’t immediately recognize independent Novorossiya, but he would do so in the end since he had no other choice.

Right now it’s a stalemate. Both sides are in their trenches, and they can’t take a single step forward.

This report is dated October 2014, Donbas.