On the checkpoint named after Makhno

Russia, she is hope

It is amazing me with what ease, it turns out, you can turn a huge piece of land, which is not somewhere in Asia, but in the most in Europe, into the combat zone with hostages, terrorists, torture and looting. We are accustomed to stereotype: terrorists occupy cities in Islamic countries, where the price of life is completely low, and a dispute between different currents of religion is enough to kindle the bloody bath. And here you have Donbass. Eastern Ukraine, Russian Ukrainians, and the majority does not understand who whose, many relatives have both here and there. Donbass above all.

I stand near the building of the City Council of Mariupol with Nikolai. Nikolai discusses why in Mariupol people are ready to protect the separatists from the Ukrainian security forces with their bare hands. Nikolai gives the impression of a rational person, he does not fall into hysteria and in the evening sober. We are standing on the edge of the fountain. This is a pit in front of the barricades, which, judging by the holes in the pipes, has been filled only with rainwater for many years. "Why aren't you leaving?" - I ask him. “Because you still need to accumulate money for a ticket. The average salary in the city is three hundred bucks, almost all of the Zaksa. Everyone wants a potato for dinner. The salary is immediately put on the card. And where to go? We do not believe the new Kyiv authorities, because all the previous authorities of Ukraine deceived us. And these did not even choose why we should believe them? " In the process of conversation, it turns out that Russia for Nikolai is not a specific goal, but an abstract reference point with which you can try to start all over again, including a credit history. “Let them not come here and lack people,” he says. “Why, then, there are so few people and mainly women in front of the City Council, do you say that the whole city is for you?” I clarify. “But because everyone works, if there were a weekend, then everyone would have come, but there’s no weekend who will leave work, they didn’t specially make a day off,” my interlocutor says.

Brown smoke from the factory pipe flows over the City Council, on the outskirts there are uninterrupted blows of a hammer. “Although there is a sea,” Nikolai explains already near the military unit, which was stormed a week earlier. A wreath hangs on the tree in front of the gate of the unit - in the place where residents of the city died in a shootout. Previously, the plants belonged to the Red Director Vladimir Boyko, he was some kind of strange, but he gave money for kindergartens, clinics, and the city decorated. And since the factories took Akhmetov, everything is over, my interlocutor recalls. The city looks much worse than its beautiful name. Those as the depressive working city should be, with one exception: between the roofs of the houses you can see the bluish-green sea.

Gold in jewelry stores and cars in car dealerships have already ended.

For many years, these people did not ask for anything, but they seemed to say anything, and suddenly the power disappeared, the flag of the Donetsk People’s Republic appeared above them, and you need to quickly shout about everything that boil, abstract Russia in the hope that it will hear and correct everything.

The first thing that catches the eye in Donetsk is few shops; After wandering in search of cigarettes, I ask a local political scientist: why so? “Akhmetov does not like small business,” he replies, but this explanation sounds as another Donetsk myth. However, civil activity in the region is really almost at zero, it is contrary to the plans of local officials and deputies who are more convenient to get votes in the elections. “Look: the police chiefs, mayors - all worked with Rinat in the SCM ,” the local businessman convinces me. “And those who walked near Yanukovych have already returned after the Maidan and resolve issues again.” “Do you know why in the Donetsk region the number of accidents with a fatal outcome is higher than throughout Ukraine, once every three? - asks the other. - The police who roof illegal mines take the corpses of miners on the road and formalize the traffic cops. Everyone knows this. Why are miners silent? And they live like this for years, there is no work, but money is needed. ” “Yes, and by the way, to beat his wife, to drink and sleep is ordinary leisure,” the local boss tells me, but he himself is sure that the region has already been lost. He speaks about it as if with a relief. Prok Ukrainian activists, at which the militants of the republic launched a real hunt, have already gone where. Those who did not have time replenished the list of hostages that passed through the tenth floor of the captured building of the regional administration, named there the NKVD.

Legends and myths of the new Transnistria

Donbass lives the myths of the late USSR, the most persistent of them - that the edge feeds the whole of Ukraine, and if you leave the money for itself, then everything will heal happily. It is useless to prove that this is not so. “We will nationalize everything, and then we will heal happily,” is heard in response to this. The conjuncture of coal prices, of course, is not discussed.

The second myth is that the Ukrainian media all lie. Of course, everything lies in their own, which means that strangers tell the truth. The truth is drawn exclusively from Russian television, which unleashed a real information attack, what is read in Moscow as propaganda is perceived in Donetsk and Lugansk as a guide to action. It did not start now. The Party of Regions and Local Communists for many years processed their electorate, after which the words spoken on central television lay down as a cartridge in the Kalashnikov trunk. Finally we will do at least something. Moreover, this is something good, they will not be imprisoned for it, but they will praise on TV. This causes approval.

The inaction of the police in the Donbass causes contempt, but not bitterness. They do not climb - and okay, what to expect from them. Here, conversations about the Golden Eagle wounded on the Maidan almost do not sound. Police do not trust the same as they did not trust in Kyiv, even more. The police of Donbass serves the owners, they are not ideological enemies, but ordinary liner cops, what to take from them.

A hundred kilometers from Donetsk in the field stands a checkpoint. The Ukrainian flag flies over it. The villagers are on duty, they speak Ukrainian among themselves. It was built by a local entrepreneur, the owner of a construction supermarket, who fears that bandits from Slavyansk will be stolen. “I put 80 tons of sand here,” he tells me proudly and tells me that he has a sister and brothers who live in Russia. “Every year they came to these Makhnov region to rest, but this year they didn’t even call. They betrayed me, but they betrayed themselves, ”he concludes.

In a referendum on independence, I interview people, for which they voted and what will happen next. The question of the future is at a dead end of almost everyone. There is no exact plan, as, probably, those who voted at the famous referendum on the preservation of the Soviet Union, which Russian communists like to refer, did not have it.

One calls me at night and says: "Well, do you sleep, Bandera?" And I answer him: "No, I'm waiting for you to cut the belts."

Slavyansk, where the inhabitants of the city turned into a shield from the Ukrainian military, in which case it is possible to compare only with Budennovsky, and the statement of the Russian Foreign Ministry that they did not hear the requests for the accession of the Donetsk region to Russia - with the famous conversation of Viktor Chernomyrdin by phone: "Shamil Basayev, you are not heard." Only instead of Basayev, they do not hear a citizen of Russia Igor Girkin, the maneuverable mayor of Vyacheslav Ponomarev or the builder of the Pyramid MMM Denis Pushilin.

Turning a working land into a semblance of Chechnya was very simple, but, of course, the analogy with Transnistria is most suggested. This requires a poor, limp population. Completely corrupt police. The bureaucracy and bold adventurers, who are ready to build the first barricade, tied with interests. And it is completely incomprehensible what to do Kyiv in the event of a final victory over terrorists in Slavyansk. In order for that part of the Donbass, which does not live in Ukrainian villages, but lives in the towns forgotten by God, did not become more for Ukraine than armed militias, Kyiv needs to change the rules of the game. But it is impossible to do this only here. So, it will be necessary to affect the interests of all the oligarchs, including the patriotically tuned Kolomoisky, and his friend Yulia Tymoshenko Sergey Taruta, and Petro Poroshenko, and all those who built Ukrainian capitalism. I believe it with difficulty so far. And it seems very little time.

Already now, people armed with machine guns set up a quitter on checkpoints, collecting a tribute from Ukrainian businessmen who carry products in Donetsk and Lugansk. Gold in jewelry stores and cars in car dealerships have already ended. It’s pointless to rob the population, in general, and selling coal is pointless. But waging war can be very profitable in itself.

Firstly, this is a training ground for training mercenaries. Secondly, the base for killers, the abductors of people, thirdly, the place of constant attention of the Russian security forces who can make careers on unsweet conflicts. And for Ukrainian politicians it may be better not to be responsible for the population of Donbass than to win and something to seriously change there. And the inhabitants of Mariupol will get used to it, they are used to living without hope with a view of the sea for so many years.

On the other side

A checkpoint in Pokrovsky is somewhere a hundred kilometers from Donetsk. There, the territory of the Donetsk People’s Republic ends quietly. Around the Ukrainian villages. A few people are sitting near the fire under the Ukrainian flag, one of them is Sasha's dense estimate man. Sasha is the father of two sons, they are on duty with him and first cook porridge with meat, which everyone eats from disposable plates with approval jokes, and then fried meat. Night, coals turn brightly, but at the same time near the fire no more than two, the rest follow the road. During the break, they have aim from the new gun to land so that those invisible enemies do not relax.

“One calls me at night and says:“ Well, you won’t sleep, Bandera? ” And I answer him: “No, I'm waiting for you to cut your belts.” All this dialogue Sasha tells in Ukrainian, and from this he sounds a little distant for me, especially since the duty neighbor immediately reports that it was in these places that the first battle was held using the Tachanki and 60 Makhnovites laid the entire Austro-Hungarian regiment, and the flag of Nestor Makhno sewed not a Jew in Aleksandrov, but a grandmother from a neighboring village, where lightning got into stone. “You are the first normal Russian,” Kashevar tells me. “No, you also, you cook porridge well,” another tells him, and Sasha at that time poses in front of the camera. He changes in his face, tries to look more serious, adapts and puts a gun on his neck, obliquely, a barrel up, like a soldier in a guard in the picture. "And that I do not have a holster for a pistol?" - Suddenly, Sasha’s friend fiddling for a belt on a body armor, for which a brand new black fabric holster is shut up. “So you need a machine gun, haha, but I don’t have a machine gun. Give you a store? " - "Which?" - "Real". “Why is he to me,” Sasha reflects good -naturedly and goes to the traffic cops.

Seryozha, now from the village of Krasnaya car will come out. Stop her, shock. This is our veterinarian. I paid him a thousand, and the dog died.

With them, the night duty officers have already developed their own relations. Together all night, both civilian and police officers check the trucks and passengers of buses. “My wife says to me: children are building a post, go to them,” Sasha shares and says: “I'm the oldest here, I am following the children, I hunt.” They can be hagged, I cut them. How does your wife let go of you? " “And I say that fishing,” the young fellow villager replies. "Eh, now to sleep, not to fight."

At the same time, they are seriously testing, behave correctly, look back at the policemen, and those on them. Such an unexpected union, to which, apparently, neither those nor the others are used to. “Seryozha,” the name of one officer is the name, “now from the village of Krasnaya car will come out. Stop her, shock. This is our veterinarian. I paid him a thousand, and the dog died. And he says: I am a doctor, not God. " Ten minutes later, when the red car leaves for the night, Sasha says rather: “Well, you are well done, Seryozha, at least he disgraced. He does not remember. "

At first, the employees of the road inspectorate worried, but then realized that they would give them to earn money, and brought special equipment for a post - for example, spikes to stop cars.

“One man robbed us and fled us, and your one two fraternal people were shaking. In Russia, they either do not want to understand or do not want to think. In Mariupol, they began to shoot again. One farmer, which for a single Ukraine, was burned alive. They locked and burned in the car. ” “So there is no one to shoot there?” - “So, found. Kum in Kuma shot. "

For conversations, it becomes clear that the inhabitants of Donetsk, Slavyansk, and mining cities are not strangers. They are different for them, but understandable people. Much more understandable than, for example, for Kyiv intellectuals. With all the obviously, it can be said that they, accustomed to family and horizontal relations of civil society, do not understand who lives in the east and why they are different. This causes either irritation, then fear. Meanwhile, the industrial East is more and more like the state, but on a corporation, where anyone who calls himself a boss will receive the right to give orders to lower. Here they respect power. Surely every layer of society, each professional community has its own hidden leaders, but they are not identified, not studied and not clear to anyone who monitors the eastern crisis from the outside. At least for now.