Life and war

About how people live when there is a civil war around

The clashes of the Ukrainian army with armed militias supporting the "Donetsk People’s Republic" were supplemented by battles in Donetsk. The warring parties without much success tried to establish control of the city airport located only in a couple of quarters from residential areas

A private house in the area of ​​Slavyansk after a mortar shelling. May 20, 2014/Photo: Ilya Talev/Kommersant

Konstantinovka

The militias are preparing for the missile shelling of the positions of the Ukrainian army. May 19, 2014 near Slavyansk

“Our Konstantinovka was in the interval between Kramatorsk and Donetsk. Therefore, on the one hand, the commandant hour, on the other hand, does not delay salaries, everything happens on time, ”says Rimma Nikolaevna (name changed), a full -time, brushing woman with her immutions of about 50 years old.

She walks tiredly along Konstantinovka Street home home and says that when activists who support the Donetsk People’s Republic captured the city executive committee and there was a serious danger of military operations around the city, the director had to close the school: “But then the team and I consulted and decided that if we close the schools, then the adolescents would do something to the barricades, and if something happened to them, then something happened to them, then something happens to them Who will be to blame? That's right, teachers. "

As a result, at the school, in which Rimma Nikolaevna works, parental meetings were gathered and suggested: you can keep the children at home under your responsibility, but the school will continue the work. According to the teacher, in early May, when the tension in the city was preserved, literally 5-6 children went to classes. In recent days, traffic has recovered. Only a few children do not go to the lessons, whom parents sent to relatives away from the Donetsk region.

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More recently, Slavyansk was famous as a resort city: any Ukrainian with diseases of the musculoskeletal system got into local boarding houses at least once.

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On May 28, the Kyiv authorities habitually accrued salaries to state employees of the city. Only departments of Privatbank, owned by the Dnepropetrovsk governor Igor Kolomoisky, do not work in the city - Privatbank ATM activists are actively burning.

“Pharmacies and grocery stores work in the same mode, the main problem was the lack of water: in our half of Konstantinovka it was not three days, and in the other - all five. So in schools and kindergartens were brought water to cans, ”Rimma Nikolaevna shares. “But now they slowly began to give water.”

In Konstantinovka, 65 kilometers from Donetsk, about 80 thousand people live, the city in half is cutting the river Krivoy Torets. Once the city was considered a fairly large industrial center, a metallurgical, chemical, glass factories worked here. In the 1990s, most of them were closed, the population of the city was halved, and a giant industrial zone from the workshops of the collapsed enterprises, stretching through the entire Konstantinovka, is more similar to the scenery to the film "Stalker".

Donetsk streets May 20, 2014 /Photo: Fabio Bucciaralli /AFP

Slavyansk and Kramatorsk

These cities are almost completely blocked by the Ukrainian army, and Kyiv suspended the payment of salaries to state employees. On May 19–20, pension and scholarships were not transferred. After already a week, according to the Ministry of Social Policy, the debt on social payments exceeded 100 million hryvnias. Most of the banks in these cities closed, in early May there were interruptions in the supply of products and medicines, but then the businessmen realized that they could continue to work relatively safely - and the cities again went to the cities and even collection vehicles, unless they belong to Privatbank. Oshcadbank, Ukrsibbank and branches of Russian financial enterprises - with breaks in the days of particularly fierce clashes - continue.

Now it is already difficult to believe in this, but until recently Slavyansk was famous as a resort city: any Ukrainian with diseases of the musculoskeletal system got into local boarding houses at least once. We came to be treated from Russia. Needless to say, due to the breakdown of the holiday season, local businessmen will suffer no less, or even more Crimean ones. All trains are moving to the bypass of Slavyansk, so they arrive from Kyiv to Donetsk with a delay for 2-3 hours.

Opposite the building of the regional administration May 29, 2014 /Photo: Maxim Shipenkov /ITAR-TASS

Donetsk

At the block post on the way to Donetsk Airport. May 28, 2014 /Photo: Yannis Behrakis /Reuters

In the last week, when the Ukrainian army began intensive battles using artillery, aviation and assault helicopters for control of the Donetsk airport, to freeze life in the capital of Donbass. Back on Monday, May 26, when aviation began to apply the first blows to the captured airport, regular buses continued to run in the combat area. But the very next day, the central highway of Donetsk looked extinct, people once again tried not to leave the house and not to leave, most shops, cafes did not open on Artem Street, exchangers worked with interruptions. Ukrainian banks have long been blocking transactions from Russian cards for a long time, it is possible to withdraw money from plastic without problems only in Sberbank.

The hero of the Donetsk Internet is the head of the kindergarten No. 229 in the Kuibyshevsky district of the city of Victoria Fedotenko. On the day of the first fierce battles on the outskirts of the city, she started almost 70 children into a protected room without windows and entertained them for several hours, reading fairy tales. “Thanks to her, the children took shooting outside the windows as a game, because she did not panic and did not fuss. The children did not understand that the walls were war, so their psyche is in order, ”says one of the mothers, who in recent days is actively shared on social networks and diverges through city forums. - The old slate, old as a mammoth shit, was torn from the roof. I will keep all the epithets with which I am ready to reward departments that have not covered the kindergarten with a normal slate. But I ask the city authorities to somehow thank this woman, who took responsibility for the fate of her children. And she did not fade, like many, but really showed miracles of generosity, courage, simple humanity. ”

Not only residents of Donetsk and Lugansk regions suffer from the consequences of operations in the southeast and economic instability. Student Anya from Kharkov complains that in recent months, the main foods have risen sharply: “The entire borscht set - onions, cabbage, carrot - rose 2-3 times, bananas - 2 times. Drops for the eyes cost 28 hryvnias, and now - 54. Transport, gas has risen in price, electricity is getting more expensive from June 1, ”she lists. - with an average salary of 2500 hryvnias (7.2 thousand rubles. - The New Times), for example, we used to pay 750 hryvnias for the apartment, now more than a thousand. As pensioners will survive in these conditions, it is incomprehensible. Many people think about moving. Those who have relatives in Russia go there, my former young man went to live in Amsterdam a week ago. ”