Greetings from Novorossiya

1. CHEERFUL IN DONETSK

OCTOBER 2014, in the vicinity of the Donetsk airport. Artem lives less than a kilometer away. The village is totally devastated. You can hardly find even a few houses without shrapnel holes. Rockets are sticking out of the ground, and the asphalt around is completely furrowed from explosions. There are practically no people here, but there are many dogs that suddenly became homeless. Ironically, the village is called Vesele, which means “cheerful.”

The destruction is a result of more than a month of fighting for the Donetsk airport, controlled by the Ukrainian forces. The separatists want to retake it. Both sides are shooting at each other. Every now and then sounds of explosions alternate with the noise of rifles. Those residents who have decided to stay hardly even pay any attention.

“Oh, a rifle,” Artem announces impassively.

Not even for one moment does he lift up his bent neck. He is moving forward to show us “an interesting hole” created by one of the rockets. The hole is like any other hole. During the months spent in Donbas I saw a lot of them.

“Look inside.”

It is narrow, but at least a meter deep. Apparently the explosion was terribly loud and damaged a few buildings. The rockets keep going off around us, near and far away. Finally, one can hear a whoosh.

“Oh, now you can see,” Artem nods in the direction of the sound. In a split second we hear a roaring explosion. He didn’t even budge, but a photographer standing next to him cringed.

“Don’t be afraid, sir. It’s far away,” Artem laughs.

By now, Artem knows which whooshes should be feared. He regarded this one as innocuous. After all, you can’t do much when you hear a whoosh, because the rocket is already too close to its target.

A few hundred meters away a girl who was walking home was not so lucky. She died instantly, killed by shrapnel. She lies on the sidewalk, covered with a sheet. After a while an elderly woman lifts the sheet up.

“Oh, my God! Nastia!,” she begins to sob. It is her granddaughter.

Two meters from the girl I can see a bloodstain, some broken eggs, and a flat hat. Two pieces of shrapnel hit the man right in a lung. His relatives hid him in a shack. He is breathing, his entire shirt is covered with blood and he lies in a pool of blood. You can hardly expect an ambulance here because paramedics are afraid to come to neighborhoods under fire. Finally, two private cars show up. The wounded man is loaded into one of them. This is the only way to get him to the hospital on time.

I have never thought I would find myself in a war. Even less so that it would be Ukraine. Nevertheless, war has come here. And in an instant, full speed ahead.

According to the official data, by early October 2014 more than thirty-five hundred people had died in the Ukrainian conflict. Unofficial statistics are much higher, and as the conflict continued estimates later reached ten thousand. There is no indication that the conflict will end soon.

It all began in March. Initially, it looked like the usual sort of protests. However, with the passing of time, they turned more and more violent. In only a month and a half people were reaching for firearms. Armed units showed up, the first clashes took place. In May the fighting erupted for real.

I arrived for the first time in Donbas in April 2014, when the conflict was already going on. Although I have been going to Ukraine since 2008, only now for the first time did I experience its eastern part. I had known it before from articles, news reports, and essays. Since April I have traveled all over.

What did I want to see there? Initially, everything indicated that it would be a grotesque and more brutal copy of the protests on the Maidan in Kiev. However, when in April I came to Slovyansk, it turned out that what came into play were not only protests, or even machine guns, but also armored vehicles.

I realize that a report from an ongoing war is a risky business. Especially because I wrote this in a hurry and its ending is just my prediction of future events and may turn out to be wrong.

This book is not meant to be a detailed chronology of the war or a geopolitical analysis. Mainly, I try to present events that I have witnessed myself, my impressions, and impressions of the people on both sides of the conflict, even if in the future they will turn out to be illusory.