On a humble number

A simple man Funtik lives in the Donbass. Previously, he begged near shopping centers, and now he is the head of the self-defense group on one of the checkpoints with black-blue-red flags. He stops passing cars, opens the trunk, checks the documents, in which case - delay.

Denis Pushilin lives in the Donbass. Previously, he led the local MMM cell and sold confectionery, and now Denis - the chairman of the government of the Donetsk People's Republic. It gives an interview to the press, negotiates with Tymoshenko and Khodorkovsky, ignores Putin's appeals.

And in the Donbass lives Lyudmila Semenovna. She, like several tens of thousands of people, came to vote on a referendum on the state independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic on May 11. I went to the site like a holiday, a Georgian tape tied a jacket on a pocket. And her friend Irina Sergeevna, a pensioner, became the chairman of the election commission, sat me down at the table and gave a pack of ballots - I volunteered to work as a volunteer. Bulletins are such papers from the printer, without any protection. “You put your own signature on them, and that's it,” said Irina Sergeevna. And she also gave me several empty sheets, additional lists of voters in which she demanded that everyone who wants to vote: at least with a passport, even with photocopy, and even without documents. “Let everyone vote! We need everything! " - Irina Sergeevna told me.

A few hours later, I crawled on the ground to the nearest pillar in Krasnoarmeysk to hide from the bullets. Unknown armed people who took the local executive committee during the day to disrupt the referendum process, opened a random line from machine guns into the air. Women who collect ballots with a checkmark in the square “Yes” in cardboard boxes also lay down on the ground. They shouted and cried.

A simple man Funtik lives in the Donbass. Previously, it begged near shopping centers, and now the head of the self -defense group.

The next morning, Donbass woke up a gray zone. At the hotel where I stopped, for some reason they stopped accepting bank cards for payment. The Privatbank, belonging to the Dnepropetrovsk oligarch Kolomoisky, stopped working, who was the first to turn off his departments after the referendum in Crimea. Some shopping centers and car dealerships closed. Instead of high -profile celebrations on the occasion of the victory of the folk will, Donbass plunged into silence. And Putin was silent. Putin did not recognize the state independence of the Donetsk People’s Republic.

Over the past month, Donbass returned to the state of dashing nineties. People who have access to weapons beat windows and plunder fleets, abduct those who adhere to the "pro -Ukrainian" position, beat hostages and shoot the Ukrainian military. For them, the Donetsk People’s Republic is a chance to squeeze out of the situation a maximum of momentary benefit, and 89 percent of the boxes in the square “Yes” in the ballot is a way to legitimize their powerlessness in attempts to organize normal life without crime.

When the inhabitants of Donbass came to the referendum to vote for the DPR, they, naive, did not understand that it was a fiction, that the DPR is a community of workers, small businessmen and poor people who are not controlled by anyone and do not control anyone. The Donetsk People’s Republic exists only in the space of the captured building of the regional administration, where meetings are held under the leadership of Pushilin. This is a virtual cloud created by an inept programmer. The real power in the Donbass is in the hands of pounds stopping cars on checkpoints, and people commanding armed groups.

Lyudmila Semenovna did not know that she had voted for the gray zone. Irina Sergeevna did not suspect that she helped to create her. They sincerely believed that right now they would help the Donbass get rid of the yoke of the terrible Bandera, the evil knight who brought the yellow-blue sword over their humble number. Lyudmila Semenovna and Irina Sergeevna sincerely believed that rich Russia would come to the aid of the Donetsk People’s Republic and save them from all the bad in the name of all the best.

Over the past month, Donbass returned to the state of dashing nineties.

“If only they stopped shooting, if only the order began! - the woman who came to the site where I worked as a volunteer persuaded herself and put a checkmark in the square “yes” without going into the booth. “We just need peace!”

The tragedy in Odessa on May 2 and the random anti -terrorist operation in Slavyansk, shooting in Krasnoarmeysk and battles in Kramatorsk made an inept cloud of the DPR stronger: even more Donetsk residents began to believe that disconnection from Ukraine would help stop the victims.

In the bad film “War of Worlds Z ”, the zombie virus spread through the planet, but Jerusalem saved the high wall, which was surrounded by the city: the infected people could not penetrate inside. In the view of those inhabitants of Donbass who came to a referendum, zombies are people with yellow-blue ribbons, requiring them unity with a country, part of which they do not really consider themselves. And for people with yellow-blue zombies, these are the very inhabitants of Donbass, punts, Pushilins and pensioners with St. George ribbons. Both of them were morally ready to embrace the region with a wall so that the infection would not leak through it.

After the referendum, this wall seems to have grown by itself. A gray wall with a gray zone inside, where an automatic line is periodically heard, an invisible cloud descended to the Donbass.