Translated material
Maryinka between a hammer and a gravity
The New Times correspondent visited the city divided by the war. Most of Maryinka is controlled by the Ukrainian military, the smaller - the forces of the self -proclaimed DPR
About five and a half thousand people are hidden from daily shelling here. What do people live in hostages of the bloody conflict live on both sides of the front line?
Entrance to Maryinka by Kurakhovo, engaged in Ukrainian troops, June 2015
Trudovsky ”is a conglomerate of settlements, located west of the regularly sheated Petrovsky district of Donetsk and directly bordering Maryinka. Surprisingly, it’s surprising to get there from the center: just sit on bus No. 42. At the request to tell where the stop, a dense bald taxi driver in a blue T -shirt smiles sarcastically: “Stop forty -second? Brother, this is from the other side,-indicates somewhere for the stalls. - Polibani one hundred and fifty grams and go boldly! ”
In the newly indicated taxi driver, a brand new Chinese bus is already waiting for passengers. The passage is three hryvnias, there are no places, only standing. From the bus station, he rushes along the wide avenue to the southwestern outskirts. Outside the window, the streets fly first Kirovsky (it is also sheated), and then Petrovsky districts. Rolled billboards, half -dead stalls with tobacco products, abandoned pavilions of shops closed in winter, gas stations, more similar to pillboxes: a cash desk and speakers from all sides are covered with sand bags. Behind the Victory Square has to go out: since the artillery shelling has become regular, to the Trudovskaya bus station, which used to be final, the bus does not reach. After a couple of meters, in order to continue the path, you will have to transfer to the broken Bogdan (Ukrainian -made bus). In the cabin is empty, most of the passengers are elderly ladies with grocery bags. 
The road weaves along dusty landings. There are no military vehicles or heavy equipment. At the railway crossing checkpoint. Sand bags and anti -tank hedgehogs block the path. While the bus is standing, a tall unshaven “militia” of about forty in a dirty spotted T -shirt and a green bandana enters the cabin. After checking the documents, he distributes paper icons the size of a business card. On the back of the 90th psalm “Living in the help of the Vyshny ...”, on the front side-the Almighty saved. For some reason, not in blue, as it should be according to the canon, but the green mantle. The book in the hands of Christ is discovered on the page where “I give you a new commandment ...” Granny are baptized. The artillery hollows every night, to the line of contact here is about two kilometers. A five -minute ride for a checkpoint is a station. It’s impossible to continue. “See the forest begins? There are already Ukrainians there, ”the saleswoman Oksana nods in the blue apron near the grocery store in the direction of the terricon (the dump of the spent breed remaining after the construction of the mine). "Does it fly here?" - “How else! See a hole? " - She points to the stained roof of the station. The metal visor of the platform, ridiculed with fragments, is more like a colander. “The one that is right, - a year ago, but this,” shows the left hole, “a couple of days like that.” Immediately behind the station is a one -story private sector and a former market. The market was broken by artillery. The store in which Oksana works is the only thing that remains of it. Three quarters of the houses are empty, but for the sake of the remaining store they do not close. Oksana herself had two mines exploded in the courtyard. Miraculously did not hook. Along the barricade to the right of the platform, fighters chat with some girls. One of them is rapidly approaching: "Documents?" - A separate accreditation is needed on the front line. “Yours were allowed without a piece of paper, here they gave the icon.” Seeing the greenish Savior, the fighter nods his head. I learned. 
“The youngest year and nine months, he only knows all the words:“ tank ”,“ women ”and“ mom ”with“ dad ”,“ Lyudmila looks no more than forty, brown hair was removed in the tail. To feed five children, through the front line, she carries fifty -kilogram bags of sugar on a bicycle that has seen species. On the other side, it is two times cheaper. You can resell with profit.
The passage is officially closed, but there is the so -called road of life. Once, even before the war, on this path through the forest, the inhabitants of Maryinka went to the station. Many worked at mines in the city, and it was the shortest way. Now there is also a checkpoint. But the guard of those who, with the Maryinsky registration, let in Donetsk and vice versa. While Lyuda complains of life, a red, short -haired “militia” of about thirty years in an even voice summarizes: “It was necessary to squeeze, and Vova, instead of defeating, hit politics.” Vova is, of course, Putin. On the chest of the “militia”, a patch with the call sign “layman”. Originally from Zhytomyr. This is west of Kyiv, almost Volyn. The brother volunteered for the National Guard. He is in the militia. Parents stayed at home, in the Zhytomyr region. 
"Does he understand that he will have to shoot at you?" “He understands, and I understand,” the guy is pausing. - I did not call him to kill people here. Life is given by God, and only God can take it away. And he went, because I am a Russian person, I do not want to Europe, to this pederasty. I came to defend my point of view, and you know, a lot has changed in this war in me, here people do not abandon their ones: they repair water supply, electricity under bullets. ” - “But you also kill ...” - “I do not kill, I protect the Russian people. I didn’t even serve in the army, I was a builder before the war, I already learned everything here, ”and admits that he does not support his brother. But it promises to stand to the end.
Later, already in Moscow, the NT correspondent was looking for the coordinates of the brother of the militia, who was fighting in the ranks of the Ukrainian army, but has not yet been able to talk to him.
To return to the rear, the path through the checkpoint at the crossing must be done in the opposite direction. There, behind the railway line, behind dinked panel quarters - the center. Wide boulevards, boutiques, restaurants and republican administration. 
To get to the opposite side, you need to make a short path. The minibus before the Ukrainian security forces of Artemovsk costs 200 hryvnias. From there a bus to Kramatorsk. Through Slavyansk - to the Krasnoarmeysk, located on the Dnipropetrovsk highway 68 km east of Donetsk. From here with a minibus to Kurakhovo. From the last point to Maryinka ten minutes by taxi. Before the Ukrainian checkpoint, private traders take at least two hundred hryvnias. They refuse to go for a checkpoint flatly: “We don’t want to go under the bullets. Further somehow himself. ” On the checkpoint, the Ukrainian customs officer inspects the dirty yellow “six”. "What is this?" - Indicates the bags with sugar, there the Ukrainian "tsukor" is on the label. The package is white, the sticker is red-blue, all together-the colors of the Russian tricolor. “There was no other,” the driver speaks guiltyly and passes past the barrier.
On June 6, three days later, as the situation in the Maryinka area worsened, the deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine and the adviser to the head of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Ukraine Anton Gerashchenko said that there were no civilians in Maryinka, and those who remained, "took responsibility for their lives and are ready to live in conditions when they can die on any day." According to the head of the local administration, Andrei Gavrish, in the city about five and a half thousand residents (there were six in May). About a thousand are children. As a rule, the finger begins with automatic bursts on the outskirts, closer to the evening. This is a kind of “overture”. A little later, artillery enters, at first timidly, “because of the tact” is an “exposition”, then much louder, expressing himself in the musical language-“development”. “21.47 - shootings resumed from the state farm. 22.18 - sometimes bang and shoot. 2 
From the building of the Maryinsky city administration, broken by artillery of separatists, the house of culture, the police department and the local history museum to the labor market in a straight line of three kilometers. To the left of the monument to Ilyich (here he stands unharmed) - Lenin Street. All the same private sector. Windows beaten with fragments, gaps in the roofs of houses are covered with plastic film.
In a colorful robe, 85-year-old Vera Alekseevna shows a fence in traces from fragments. To the line of contact from here no more than 300 meters. Vera Alekseevna unlocks the gate, pushing the soundless mongrel, at the sight of a stranger, turning to barking. Love cherries at the entrance. In the courtyard, the ideal cleanliness, in the rose front garden, the platbands are painted with blue paint - just such a house could stand under Poltava, and under Cherkasy, and under the same Zhytomyr. Only the windows are clogged with plywood. “Bachh is rushing, vikna empty,” Baba Vera was born and grew up in Maryinka, but speaks in Ukrainian, only occasionally inserting Russian words. "If the war is Kinets?" - The woman wipes her tears. 
The city was seriously injured. Here and there, broken huts, administrative buildings with large holes in the walls, destroyed by five- and ten-storytakes of brick. There are no drinking water in half of the quarters (volunteers are delivered to the cans), there are no gas, the products are received with interruptions. Since June 16, according to the new rules for traveling to the ATO zone of goods to the enemy territory, it is prohibited. Most of the Maryinka is controlled by Ukrainian troops, but the customs checkpoint separating the city from the "mainland" Ukraine - to the city, and, following the letter of the rules, has no right to let the goods. “We have to make a letter from the city council for each car, we found ourselves between two lights, in the gray zone,” says Andrei Gavrish. 
The same music
All enterprises that worked in the city (mainly the food industry) have now stopped. The ventilation trunk of the labor mine is even visible from the center (the main barrel is located on the territory of the self -proclaimed DPR, two kilometers of underground corridors separates both objects from each other). “Many were working in Donetsk before the war, but we have a suburb - to the city close, but quietly, nature, - the taxi driver Alexander drives up to the bridge over the Osinovka river to show the tower. “The miners from Maryinka went down right here so as not to cut circles to the Petrovsky district and back by bus.” 
Past the terrylic, overgrown with forest, Irina Semenchenko, the namesake of the former commander of the Donbass National Guard battalion, is returning from a store with four -year -old Nikita. About the referendum on independence that took place more than a year ago, refuses to talk: “Now no one even recalls it, no one has any beliefs left, everyone wants only one thing: to stop shooting.” 
On the way to the conversation, her friends are connected: “And who shoots? Their own and shoot! " “No, I live the closest all, this is the DPR, and the Ukrainians answer.” On the next street, the commandant of the sector meets with residents. Black jeep with the military surrounded women. In the hands of the commandant, a list of addresses: “You complain that your homes were occupied illegally ...” A full woman in a white blouse almost shouts: “Three castles hung there, what right they had to enter!” “I repeat, we occupy all the extreme to the line of the front of the house, if we do not take them, they will be taken from the other side,” the commandant tries to be tactful. Someone on the left insists: "When will the war end?" - "How do I know?" - Sincerely surprised the military. While women are bothering, on the left, from the side of the contact line, no more than three hundred meters from us, automatic queues sound. Loud. Very close. Do not stop. The military jumps in a jeep, women grab children in an armful and run home. “The school managed to complete the academic year before the start of daily shelling. There are new glasses there, life continues ... ”-the taxi driver Alexander does not have time to finish the phrase-the first salvo of artillery rattles due to landings. "Oh, here the guns connected!" - the taxi driver states and hastily turns the ignition key. Already in the evening, in the report from the Internet forum for June 29, it will appear: “16.30-machine guns and mortars are heard. 17.25 - So far, it was silent. ” And after this about the new cannonade after a temporary lull: “21.30 - woke up. Ghouls. "
Photo: Dmitry Rebrov