Life on the frontline of the Ukraine conflict

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/jan/14/-sp-life-civilians-front-line-ukraine-conflict

Version 0 of 1.

Mykhaylo Vasilyev is retired and lives in Luhansk

Luhansk used to be poetically called ‘the city of fountains and roses’. Now it is the city of downcast faces. Sad, downcast, emaciated. And very tired – tired of having no money, mass unemployment, poverty and damaged homes, constant problems with electricity, water, heating, and telephones. But most of all, tired from the loss of hope.

Gloomy people are very cautiously buying groceries. And gloomy clerks are sympathetically measuring out 50g of cheese or liverwurst, packing two or three cracked eggs into a plastic bag (they are cheaper and so in great demand), or weighing out a single frozen chicken wing.

They categorically refuse to accept change. Change has become the subject of fierce arguments. A cashier in one downtown grocery angrily said they have several hundred thousand hryvnyas in change in their basement and they can’t get rid of it.

A smile in Luhansk has become a rare thing, like a dandelion in winter

The same is true of the 100 hryvnya (£4.16) notes with the little portrait of Taras Shevchenko that were given to many pensioners on the eve of the “elections” in the “Luhansk People’s Republic”. They, it is said, are no longer valid, banks don’t take them. And so stores and traders don’t either. Retirees are unhappy, upset. They swear a lot, but they don’t threaten to file a complaint. There is no one and nowhere to complain to.

Not a single bank in Luhansk is open for business. Recently the last Sberbank offices shut their doors. There are long lines at the bank machines despite the cold.

Now lines are forming at internet providers. The infrastructure is damaged and express connections are going for 150 hyrvnyas, which not everyone can afford. A window on the world has closed, one that enabled people to watch Ukrainian television. In Luhansk, they only broadcast Russian, Crimean, and Belarusian television. A door has closed to a world in which heroes are called heroes, terrorists are called terrorists, mercenaries are called mercenaries, and occupiers are called occupiers. And the latter are not portrayed as angels with shining halos.

Many Luhansk residents who were formerly quite chatty have turned to silence

After 4pm, it is better not to leave your home unless you have to. Offices and businesses unofficially close even around lunch time. Grocery stores that formerly were open around the clock, close at 5pm. Why should they stay open when there are no customers? Even in the daytime, there aren’t many. As evening comes, it is scary to walk down the dark, deserted streets.

The faces of the pensioners are particularly gloomy. At 6am, in the dark and the cold, they are trying to cram themselves into packed buses to go to Lisichansk or Starobelsk to collect their pensions. One of my neighbours has already traveled to Izyum four times, but still hasn’t got his pension – some sort of issue with his documents. But he doesn’t complain and maintains a gloomy silence. When I ask him about it, he turns and walks away.

Complaining is not allowed these days. And in general many Luhansk residents who were formerly quite chatty have turned to silence. They might comment on the weather, but no one is speaking about politics, about the economy, about the state of affairs in the city. Even within the circle of their old friends or former colleagues. Who knows? A word is not a swallow that will fly away – many people are recalling 1937 and the black vans that collected the condemned. Shadows, they say, come at midnight.

In short, Luhansk, under the LPR, has become a city of downcast faces. How long must a person live in peace before that expression is washed away? And does it wash away entirely?

Pyotr Ivanov, psychologist, Luhansk

The siege of Luhansk this summer was predictable. The war was in full swing, the city was being shelled, and all those able to flee the city had already done so. Those who had stayed in Luhansk tried to stock up on supplies, bracing for the worst.

When they prepare for war, people often fail to realise that they will run out of water, not of food. And when the water runs out, they find themselves surrounded by bags of grains of which they can only consume a handful, at best.

Water ran out in Luhansk on 31 August. All of it. Some people thought the shortages would affect only drinking water and bought large quantities of water purification tablets. But very soon, there was no water in Luhansk in which to drop these tablets. There was no drinking water, no tap water, not even puddles (it rained only once in August). Two weeks later, bottles [of water] went back on sale, at the market. The price for it was twice – then three times – what it used to be.

When they prepare for war, people often fail to realise that they will run out of water, not of food

Then water started being delivered in vehicles. For free. As many as 200 or 300 hundred people would queue up, there were scuffles. Residents were eventually given access to the city’s water reserves. Again, hundreds of people would stand in line and scuffles broke out. The fighting ended when machine-gun-touting insurgents began supervising the queues. All in all, we gathered water at gunpoint.

What did people eat during the siege? Almost all the shops were closed. Out of a dozen shopping sites in the city, only one still operated. The remaining products were sold there and at the market. The bakery worked round-the-clock, but there still long queues for bread. People feared there wouldn’t be enough. Elderly people started queuing at 5am. Fortunately, the shelling would usually start later, after “breakfast time” as residents joked.

I would sit on the balcony in the evening, under the starry sky in a city without lights, without noise, and I would listen to Chinese music

During a siege, candles and batteries are essential. I cursed myself a lot for failing to put batteries in our old transistor radio. By the time I realised my mistake, I couldn’t afford to buy four batteries (the price for one had already climbed to 85p).

This summer in Luhansk, a radio was worth more than 20 computers put together. That’s because transistor radios can pick up stations that broadcast useful information, news. For some reason, more recent models like mine caught Chinese radio stations better than Russian and Ukrainian-language ones.

So I would sit on the balcony in the evening, under the starry sky in a city without lights, without noise, and I would listen to Chinese music. In the morning, my neighbours would ask me to switch the radio on again. As it turned out, they also listened to it from their windows.

Halyna Mudra, mathematician, Donetsk

The Ukrainian president and his cabinet of ministers have imposed a total financial and economic blockade on territories controlled by the separatists. They have also stopped paying pensions and other social allowances to people there.

This has prompted the leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics (the DNR and LNR) to come up with their own measures.

On 4 December, DNR head Oleksandr Zakharchenko and LNR head Ihor Plotnitskiy approved the action plan drafted by the so-called council of ministers of the republics. The measures will allegedly ensure the stable payment of pensions and social allowances, create a financial system, establish regulations governing budgetary processes, set up a temporary banking system, which will in turn support socially vulnerable people, and create financial institutions while remaining in the Hryvnia zone.

The road map was first applied on 4 November in the town of Torez. In the building of the local pension fund, employees started distributing 1,000 hryvnya (£41.63) vouchers to pensioners. According to a special schedule, every day 50 pensioners can exchange their voucher for money at the DNR “bank.”

People start queuing up at 4am. Fights and brawls are common – four people have already been trampled, one woman broke her leg. The militants restore order by firing their rifles into the air.

The pension fund handed out as many as 2,500 vouchers in just two days, which means the last of these vouchers will be exchanged on 25 January 2015. The lucky first 100 pensioners received their cash on 4 and 5 December. The origin of this money is murky, especially considering that the DNR “bank” is based in the seized building of the former Privatbank, on Gagarin Street.

In view of the project’s complete economic failure, residents of the Donetsk region, even those who voted for the DNR, are starting to doubt

Torez is now ruled by a “military commander” and a “police” force. Electrical and water supply is sporadic, banks and cash points are closed, government and official law-enforcement agencies have been evacuated. As for doctors, teachers, and other public sector employees, they have not been paid since July.

Ahead of the 2 November “elections” of the DNR’s so-called People’s Council, all housing offices across the Donetsk region accepted applications for 1,800 hryvnya in retirement benefits. They sent people home and told people to wait. When the payments failed to arrive, impatient pensioners demanded their money. Now, pensioners are being asked to file new applications for retirement benefits, this time only to the amount of between 500 and 1,000 hryvnyas.

In view of the project’s complete economic failure, residents of the Donetsk region, even those who voted for the DNR, are starting to doubt. They don’t understand what kind of economic, political, and social system these “people’s republics” are supposed to have.

Pyotr Ivanov, psychologist, Luhansk

War is most disastrous for city dwellers. Their survival depends not on whether cherries ripen on time in their garden but on whether they receive their salaries or pensions.

I lost my job in June when my company shut down. Despite the shelling, I decided to look for another job in Luhansk. I turned to friends who were in a position to help.

In August, rumours began swirling that a humanitarian convoy was on its way from Russia. Everyone in the city began thinking about this convoy. People forgot about the war, about the bombs. All thoughts and conversations focused on the impending humanitarian aid.

Finally, the white trucks arrived. Residents were told that receiving the aid was very simple. All we had to do was show up at distribution points with our passports.

People almost murdered each other queuing up for these parcels. Rebels with machine guns restored order; there would probably have been casualties otherwise.

What does a humanitarian parcel look like? It consists of two kilos of buckwheat, three cans of corned beef, half a kilo of sugar, and a pack of tea. I received humanitarian aid twice, and only because my neighbor queued up for me. Honestly, I could not have withstood a line of 300 people. This was the first time.

People almost murdered each other queuing up for humanitarian parcels

The second time, the line had grown to 700 people. I know this because people wrote their queue number on their hands.

My neighbour had a seizure because of the heat and I took him home. We eventually got the humanitarian parcels three days later. I don’t know how many people received these parcels, and how many times.

At some point I realised that this humanitarian aid wasn’t worth the calories spent on receiving it and I stopped thinking about it.

I held two jobs in the course of the siege. Then autumn came. Refugees started returning. Hospitals and schools reopened; many businesses resumed their activities.

Entrepreneurs, whose livelihoods relied solely on cash inflow from customers, enjoyed the most advantageous situation. I won’t go into the problems tied to running a business nowadays in Luhansk; they do exist.

The situation for public sector employees was, and is, much worse. The most fortunate receive their salaries in the shape of food rations similar in content to the humanitarian parcels.

The question of public sector salaries is still up in the air, since the legal status of schools and hospitals is unclear. The Ukrainian government’s decision to relieve itself of financial responsibility toward employees of state-run institutions in Luhansk and Donetsk put an end to any hope of help from Kyiv. On the other hand, there is obviously no local source of funding for public-sector agencies in Luhansk.

Many nonetheless continue to act in line with their stereotypes. They go to work in the morning, although they haven’t been paid for almost six months.

Viktor Alanov, social worker, Donetsk

It has unfortunately become fashionable to consider that all those who stayed back in the rebel-controlled territories are pro-Russian morons and accomplices of terrorists, and that all decent people fled a long time ago.

It has become fashionable to state that this “cut-off slice” must be left alone, that there’s no point fighting for it. Let them die out there in their “Russian world” they wanted so badly.

Unfortunately, this stance is not only misguided, it is also harmful – both for those living in the occupied territories and for Ukraine as a whole.

It has unfortunately become fashionable to consider that all those who stayed back in the rebel-controlled territories are pro-Russian morons

Firstly, as long as these armed pro-Russians continue to run the show here, there is a real threat of war for the rest of Ukraine. This cannot be denied. Freeing all the territories is the only hope for solid and lasting peace in Ukraine.

Secondly, there are, indeed, many of these morons here. Many more than some would like. But there are also numerous pro-Ukraine residents here who didn’t participate in the referendum and the pseudo-elections.

Yes, we in Donbas have our “own way” of loving Ukraine. Not all of us approve of monuments being knocked down in our cities. Far from all of us regard the [Second World War-era anti-Soviet] Ukrainian Insurgent Army and [Stepan] Bandera as heroes. Many of us believe Russian should enjoy the status of second national language in Ukraine. And no, let’s be honest, not all of us supported the Maidan protests.

No, let’s be honest, not all of us supported the Maidan protests

We are, however, united by the desire to live in Ukraine, and we have not backed the separatists in any way. Today, in occupied Donetsk, former anti-Banderas supporting Ukraine’s territorial integrity shake hands with Banderas; advocates of dual-language status shake hands with supporters of Ukrainian as the sole official language. Do you understand what is going on here?

Here in Donetsk, we are uniting, which is almost unprecedented, while in “mainland Ukraine” we often hear that we don’t exist and that we must be “let go”.

Please answer this question: what do these people, who are not guilty in any way toward Ukraine and its people, who live in areas where their country cannot protect them, who wake up and go to sleep every day with the knowledge they can be “picked up” and killed any minute, who are robbed and humiliated by pro-Russian militants, who have no means of publicly voicing their opinions, who are still clinging to the hope that their land will be reunited with Ukraine, what do these people feel when they hear that “all of them out there” must be barred from either entering or leaving, that they must be contained by moats and barbed wire, and deprived of electricity and gas? You must answer this question not to me but to yourself.

Sooner or later, the occupied parts of Donbas will return into Ukraine’s fold. We have absolutely no doubt about that

And why then, when some claim that only accomplices of terrorists remain out there, all the decent people have left, are these “decent people” unable to find rented accommodation and employment? Where are they supposed to go when citizens of this united Ukraine don’t want to have anything to do with them? Thankfully, such behaviour is not the rule, although it’s far from rare.

Sooner or later, the occupied parts of Donbas will return into Ukraine’s fold. We have absolutely no doubt about that. Our country will be united again. But every one of you, brothers, must understand that, while we wage a ruthless war against terrorism, efforts must already be made to win the minds of residents in occupied territories instead of thrusting them aside.

Share your stories

If you live in Donetsk and Luhansk we’d love to hear from you. How has your life changed? Does it echo the testimonies of those above or have you had a different experience? If you have friends and relatives in the region we’d like to hear from you too. How have you been supporting them?

Add your stories in the comment thread below and we’ll follow up on them for the New East network. If you’d prefer to not use the comments you please email maeve.shearlaw@gmail.com. Please also use that address if you want to share any photos or videos.