Sluggish ATO

Anti -terrorist operation in eastern Ukraine, the second stage of which was declared a week ago, seemed to have come to a standstill

Having occupied the three blocks near Slavyansk, which has now become the headquarters of pro-Russian activists, the Ukrainian security forces retreated again, and then completely abandoned the assault on the city, announcing its blockade. Although it seems to have not been completely blocking the city of the security forces. Now the parties stand against each other, each on their blocks, and what to do next with this path situation, in Kyiv, it seems, no longer represented. The New Times correspondent drove through the blocks of this still not yet begun war

Each war has its own distribution radius. Crossing which, you understand - peaceful life remained behind. Inside this circle, everything is different. Other laws, other models of behavior, a different value of life. This is a physical sensation. The stronger the war, the worse the situation, the greater this circle of war. Ossetian began in Java, Chechen - already in Mozdok.
In Ukraine, war has not yet been felt. Despite the fact that they say about her all over the country: from west to east, from the administrator’s rack in a hotel to visitors to cafes on the streets and even walking in the evenings along the embankments of couples - only about war and politics, there is no sense of the intersection of the line.

Outside of cities, roads are empty. There are few cars. People try not to drive far from home. Do not cross the boundaries of neighboring areas, which are becoming more and more by separate clusters of the state-each area is now closed on itself, fenced with blocks and solves its own problems. Not local numbers - the first reason for verification.
Villages exist, it seems, already completely in their dimension and have nothing to do with the big world. But at the same time, all fields are plowed. I don’t know that there Russian media broadcast about the breakdown of the sowing - every piece is processed.
The villages, by the way, are clean, neat, all in flowering greens, with plastered neat fuelons. The houses are like in the cinema about the evenings of savages - white with blue, with a front garden and lilac. Very beautiful.
The fact that in just a few tens of kilometers there is a captured by the militants and Blocked by the army of Slavyansk, says nothing. Military equipment is not visible, aviation does not fly. In the Kharkov region, Ukrainian flags on cars are already rare. And the blocks of the folk militia is no longer visible at all.

Dnepropetrovsk - raisins
After crossing the border of the Donetsk region, the space around generally freezes.
If you do not read the news, then it would be completely impossible to understand that the key events for the country are now taking place.
Raisins are a small provincial dusty town. Children play on the site, taxi drivers are missing near the bus station, a wedding motorcade is traveling along the main street. The army is not visible. It would seem that the city closest to the Ukrainian authorities to Slavyansk, like Mozdok during the Chechen war, should be stuffed with equipment and soldiers, but no, no one can see anyone at all. They say that four machine gunners are patrolled by the central park, but it was not possible to find them.

The administration over which the Ukrainian flag is developing is also empty. Saturday. War-Walled, and the weekend on schedule. On the monument to Lenin, the sticker is “Ukraine Puna mustard”. Nothing else.
The entrance to the police department is blocked by trucks. Police in tracksuits miss the steps. Lazily smoked on benches. This is not very similar to the city police department, which is preparing to reflect the probable (and, judging by the logic of events, quite likely).

The Slavyansk highway is raisins
The first real army block-post is not far from Raisins. On the blocked highway Slavyansk-Izum. The block is large. A helicopter, equipment, several dozen fighters - from soldiers of internal troops to special forces officers. Two stop the car. Young guys. "Crossers?" They nod affirmatively. I hold out an editorial certificate, I am waiting for further questions, but this is quite enough. No one asks for a passport. The car is not inspected. They communicate quite friendly. But they are not allowed to photograph.

The block post is located, in my opinion, unsuccessfully-in the lowland, between two hills. Review - two hundred meters to the right, two hundred meters to the left. But he himself is in the palm of your hand. It seems that there is a technique, and there are a lot of people, and the helicopter stands (though for some reason, with the withdrawn weapons) and everything is good but ... some kind of dual sensation. The place is chosen illiterate. Some kind of sleepy people. The military is on their own, the police are on their own.
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“We stood on the Maidan,” says one of them. - When they left Kiev, they were criminals. They came here - along the way became the national guard "

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There is no animation, the sense of clarity and the structure of the military unit, which always distinguishes block-poles in those places where the war is seriously. And if the tasks of the army are more or less clear, then the explosives, in my opinion, do not quite understand what they are doing here, what they want from them and who they are at all for.
“We stood on the Maidan,” one of them says. - When they left Kyiv, they were criminals. They came here - along the way became the national guard. In general, everyone has the right to their opinion ...

To my remark that if the opinion is confirmed by the armed hostage, then this is already slightly different, sluggishly answers "what, on the Maidan or something they did not shoot ...", in my opinion, he did not really want to fight for the territorial integrity of Ukraine. This is a unit from Krivoy Rog - the most sympathetic Donetsk Republic in the region. But there are others. Sports, well -armed and equipped people in police uniforms with masks closed by faces. Who are they do not say, work silently, do not enter into conversations, it is felt that they know their business. The car is inspected in full. These with motivation, it seems, is all right.

- Will there be war? - I ask.

- Happy path. Drive.

On the road is a civilian car with a Ukrainian flag. The first, and, as it turns out, the only one I met in the Kharkov region. The driver is talking with the soldiers. Apparently, this is not the first time he has come.

- Not afraid? - I ask, nodding to the flag. Still, to Slavyansk, a stone's throw.

“No,” the driver answers. - Just don't take pictures.

Parties

After a few kilometers, two armored personnel carriers. One drags the second on the cable. The rear axle jammed. A driver is picking under the bottom. Combat guards - two people - smokes in the sun. Two traffic cops are sleeping in a nearby traffic inspectorate. The legs in the sneakers stick out of the windows. They don’t even come out when we stop talking. Somehow everything is very relaxed. I remember this relaxation by Chechnya. As you know, nothing good came out of this. On the second, the last before Slavic, the block of block, the situation is more intense. Here the circle of war is already felt. Here people are not so relaxed. There are only eight kilometers to the block of separatists, he, somewhere there, behind the green.
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“These people want to fight. These people know how to fight better than the Ukrainian army. These people are motivated and have sufficient will "

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Concrete blocks that have blocked the road, several dozen of various fighters: the army (paratroopers), the police, and internal troops, several units of equipment, poor and out of place dug trenches. Psychologically, people here seem to be ready. If you do not advance, then at least defend.

But, again, Zelenka is not cut down, the equipment is poorly dug, the pickets of combat guards are not there and not about, there is no dugout ... All this is quite deplorable.

- We are the last. Or the first to watch from which side, ”says the commander of the post. -

Further - only separatism.
One of the fighters sits in a chair and constantly looks at "separatism" in good binoculars. Observation is at least conducted.
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“More than ten killed, missing people, hostages in the cellars of militants, captured soldiers and armored vehicles, gypsy sweeps found in the river of the body of a deputy of the City Council and a Kiev student with traces of torture”

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In general, the situation resembles the first years of the Chechen war. When the army had not yet realized the war as its own, did not get involved in it, have not yet learned how to fight and did not receive a strict motivation in the form of personal relationships - unanimity, simply put. Blocks are organized quite weakly. Almost all the main mistakes are made. The army arrived, became blocks and began to guard itself. And protect rather mediocre. The militants move around the district freely, a helicopter at the airfield in Kramatorsk was hit, the plane was hit, during the next shelling, two soldiers were injured. There is no coordination between power structures. Political will is not felt either.

The leadership of the ATO, they say, in the area of ​​its holding is present. It seems that no one wants to take responsibility for her failure, which is quite likely to take on. It would seem that the knowledge of the counter -terrorist war was paid by a neighbor on the air by thousands of dead. Take and study. But no. There are no conclusions on the mistakes of the neighbor. All errors are repeated. All this will end in losses.
It seems that they themselves understand this at the block. The views of people are not at all joyful. Everyone is very tense, no one smiles. But most importantly, the initiative is lost. Unlike the enemy, who captured Slavyansk people in masks are initiative and active. Diversion sorties, or shelling, or captures make every day. They captured the OSCE mission. On Thursday, a helicopter at the airfield in Kramatorsk was knocked out. On Saturday, they tried to capture the plant there. On Sunday - weapons warehouses in Artemovsk. They captured three SBU employees in Gorlovka. Journalists are detained almost every other day.

The last innovation is visiting visas, without which it is forbidden for journalists to leave the city. The greatest success, of course, is the capture of the three SBU employees sent, according to them, to capture or liquidate Igor Bezler, by the nickname "Demon", one of the leaders of the Donetsk People’s Republic.
These people want to fight. These people know how to fight better than the Ukrainian army. These people are motivated and have sufficient will. And after the capture of several BMDs, the Non self -propelled installation, anti -tank guided missiles (which were shot by a helicopter in Kramtorsk) - also sufficient weapons. And for sure they will not stop there. The initiative is definitely on their side.

This war is very local, in only three cities - Slavyansk, Kramatorsk, Gorlovka - and there is point -in -law, a hundred meters from the captured buildings, people already live their usual life,
Sluggish, but still - -Wed. More than ten killed, missing people, hostages in the cellars of militants, captured soldiers and armored vehicles, gypsy sweeps found in the river of the body of a deputy of the City Council and a Kyiv student with traces of torture ...

The army, constrained by hand and feet by the impossibility of victims among the civilian population, meets the counter-attacks of the separatists' posts, captures them, but then goes back and everything returns to its own circles. The group collected here is in the green nearby green, but almost does not show itself. The active phase of the anti -terrorist operation is replaced by inactive and vice versa, but neither one nor the other is not brought to tangible results. Helicopters and armored vehicles are still used for psychological pressure. But, according to the logic of the development of events, all this should also shoot.

Slavyansk - Dnepropetrovsk
"People’s Republic" for now -at least so far - -the Donetsk phenomenon. It is only worth crossing the border of the region in the direction of Dnepropetrovsk, and already in the first villages - the block - the folk militia, the national guard, Ukrainian flags on poles and cars, and even large state flags over private houses.

The capture of Slavyansk here caused the exact opposite reaction - people looked at what was happening, and went to sign up for the militia. At some blocks of particularly dangerous areas, there are already fighters of the formed parts of the national guard-armed and well-equipped. Money for equipment, by the way, was collected by the whole world.
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"Couples from a neighboring village are photographed against the backdrop of a block floor with a national flag"

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With motivation, they are all right. With the support of the local population too. The couples from a neighboring village are photographed against the background of a block floor with a national flag. As the deputy governor Boris Filatov "Flowers under the caterpillars of Russian tanks said, no one will throw - in the event of an invasion there will be a total partisan war." And it looks like that.

In Kharkov, this is not expressed so brightly, but there, separatism is no longer supported by what they support. And these are two key areas of the East. Be that as it may, in the conditions of the objective weakness of the Ukrainian army and the sluggish sabotage of the police, the main role in the case of a full -scale conflict, if he, God forbid, will begin, the folk militia will play.