By Roman Olearchyk
in Donetsk
At an electronics store in Donetsk, stronghold of the Russia-backed
separatists who control Ukraine’s breakaway east, Vasili declines payment of 100 hryvnias to
install the internet on a mobile phone.
“We don’t accept hryvnia any more, only roubles,” the shop assistant says,
explaining that they exclusively use the Russian currency now on orders of the
region’s separatist leadership.
A short distance away in Makiivka, a conversation with factory worker
Marina underscores how Russian money has become the de facto currency.
The steel plant where she works is one of the few in the war-torn region that was once Ukraine’s industrial heartland that continues to pay
salaries in the national currency. “We immediately exchange it to roubles as
you can’t buy anything here in hryvnia any more,” she says.
Two years after the Ukrainian conflict erupted — when Russian-backed rebels
seized government buildings in scores of towns across the country’s
Russian-speaking east and set up their own breakaway republics — the Donetsk
and neighbouring Lugansk regions have not (unlike Crimea) been annexed by
Moscow.
The Russians held back, perhaps fearing further western sanctions —
although many say it was more Moscow’s reluctance to shoulder the cost of a
densely populated region and its hundreds of thousands of pensioners.
But more than 25 years since Ukraine broke away from the Soviet Union,
Donetsk is a city that feels increasingly Russified — politically, economically
and socially. The fibres that once held the east to the rest of Ukraine are
being torn away, thread by thread.
At local supermarkets the shelves that were emptied at the height of the
conflict that has so far claimed nearly 10,000 lives and continues to smoulder,
are stocked mostly with Russian imports.
Russian textbooks supplied by Moscow are used at local schools that no
longer teach Ukrainian history. Children instead learn a Russian version of the
past that glorifies the Soviet era. Russian and separatist broadcasting has
replaced Ukrainian channels. Websites are registered under .ru and not the .ua
domain.
Even speaking Ukrainian, two years ago the state language, can be
dangerous, sparking animosity from locals or suspicions of subversiveness from
gun-toting rebels.
Many worry the ever-widening split with the rest of Ukraine could greatly
complicate reintegration should efforts succeed in rekindling the stalled,
15-month-old Minsk agreement aimed to plot a path to peace in the breakaway
regions.
Worse, if Minsk continues to languish, the fear among residents is that
they will end up living in a frozen conflict zone, similar to Abkhazia and
South Ossetia in Georgia or Moldova’s Transnistria — propped up by Moscow but
not properly part of either country.
Rumours abound over how Moscow subsidises the self-declared Donetsk and
Lugansk People’s Republics, which operate semi-functional governments that
provide basic services such as rubbish collections and pay meagre wages. It is
impossible to tell how many residents and businesses pay taxes to the
pro-Russian leaderships.
Some factories that are still operational provide employment, but prices
for basic goods have surged and wages have plummeted.
Yet, braving 12-hour queues at checkpoints where shots are often fired,
much of the population that had fled this once almost 1m strong city has
returned in the past year as the worst of the fighting has passed.
Denis Pushilin, head of the parliament for the Donetsk-based separatists,
says he travels using a passport issued by the Donetsk People’s Republic.
Others say they are keeping their Ukrainian citizenship — and their Ukrainian
vehicle plates. In theory it is possible to apply for a Russian passport, but
it is a complicated and time-consuming process.
Some, though, are optimistic “I think we’ll have a big future with Russia,”
says Dima Vesov, a 17-year-old Donetsk resident who has just graduated from a
separatist-run school. “Without Russia we wouldn’t survive.”
The downtown area were Mr Vesov’s school is located is well kept, with rose
plants, flowing fountains and outdoor cafés. But just streets away the
conditions are grim, with boarded-up shops and residents lining up for
humanitarian aid.
A few miles north is the front line, where Ukrainian government and
separatist forces fire bullets, mortars and heavier calibre shells at each
other from entrenched positions a few hundred metres apart.
During a recent visit to the front by ceasefire monitors from the Organization
for Security and Co-operation in Europe — where sniper fire whistled overhead —
Alexander Hug, deputy head of the monitoring mission, repeated calls for both
sides to pull back.
Separatists used the visit to retrieve three dead bodies. Days earlier, seven
Ukrainian soldiers had been killed, the most in a single day in more than a
year.
Brandishing a chest pin of Joseph Stalin, Eduard Basurin, deputy defence
minister for the local pro-Russian militants, defends the former Soviet leader
for raising the “USSR to a level when it was respected in the entire world”.
“We here in the east are more orientated towards Russia,” he insists,
saying that Ukraine, whose current leadership has set course for EU
integration, is an artificially created state.
The OSCE’s hope is that increasing the separation within a wide buffer zone
will help fully enforce a complete ceasefire that both sides and many citizens
say they want. Others say it is too late.
“Too much blood has been spilled,” said Marina, the Makiivka factory
worker.
“My husband, my brother, my father, all of them fought in the war. My
mother’s friend lost her leg. My best friend’s house was destroyed. We had many
friends who died. How can we live on friendly terms?”
Vasili, the shop clerk, is more amenable, but even he cannot be sure.
“I am a citizen of Ukraine, I have a Ukrainian passport. I don’t have a
Donetsk People’s Republic or a Russian passport. But I can’t give you an answer
on whether this is Ukraine, Russia or some sort of Donetsk People’s Republic,”
he says. “We were all better off before this.”
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