In Isolation, page 17
Horrible as it is, all of this purging makes a certain sense politically, but for one minor detail: Why did Donetsk feel called upon to send the Sparta battalion under Motorola to Luhansk, even though Plotnytskyi had the Second Army Corps at his disposal and surely could have coped with a dozen or two “not quite patriotic” individuals? There are two possible explanations for this “aid” from Donetsk.
According to the first, Donetsk has been driving a stake into the LPR since the day a bomb nearly blew up Plotnytskyi in his own car, and Zakharchenko wouldn’t mind “helping” the “republic” along, especially given the prospect of taking over an empty throne. When Zakharchenko sends Motorola to Luhansk and visits Plotnytskyi in the hospital, his real intention is eventually to take Plotnytskyi’s place. Unsurprisingly, right after the attempt on Plotnytskyi’s life, social media in the LPR was swamped with the message to Zakharchenko: “Sasha, take us with you,” an open suggestion that the LPR be integrated into the DPR. But such an outcome is unlikely for the simple reason that both Plotnytskyi and Zakharchenko are puppets who can be replaced only at the behest of the Kremlin. If a force majeure like the killing of Plotnytskyi were to take place, Moscow would likely have a replacement ready. The same would happen in the event of Zakharchenko’s demise.136
Most likely, though, the arrival of the Sparta battalion in Luhansk has a simpler explanation: Plotnytskyi has utterly failed to manage even those who support him, leading to a situation where he can no longer trust anyone, including the units that report to him. Hence the fear, the terror, and the arrests sweeping Luhansk today.
All in all, what are we left with? There is a legend about a bird that sings just once in its life. It leaves its nest and flies off to find a thorn bush and does not rest until it has found one. Once among prickly branches, the bird impales itself upon the longest and sharpest thorn. According to the legend, only then does this bird sing the most beautiful song in the world. As always, reality is more prosaic: the Donbas did manage to leave Ukraine and find a sharp thorn. But instead of a song, all that has come out of it is moaning and screeching.
October 1, 2016
Dzerkalo Tyzhnia
“Primaries” under the Occupation
Last Sunday, in the territories controlled by the DPR and LPR, this thing happened that Luhansk separatist leader Ihor Plotnytskyi apologetically chose to name using a “somewhat foreign” word, primaries. I can describe how it went in Donetsk, since I personally took part in this theater of the absurd.
I came to one of the polling stations to see what the heck was going on. First of all, I have to admit that, much to my disappointment, there were people there after all. I had naively convinced myself that, after two and a half years of falsification by the DPR, at least when it came to elections, things would be pretty clear to people.
About a month before the “primaries,” all of Donetsk was covered in flyers exhorting people not to miss the vote. The flyers appeared in the windows and on the doors of restaurants and plastered all over public transport, homes, and stores, though I knew how the owners of apartments and establishments hated this charade. That was precisely why I thought that no one would show up.
Things turned out differently, though: at two-thirty in the afternoon, I counted fifteen people at one of the polling stations in a Donetsk school. Admittedly, they were all pensioners. In the school lobby, the DPR “police” were on duty and the platforms of the so-called primary candidates had been hung up. But what was interesting here was not so much the policies as the candidates themselves, who all had the beefy look of hitmen straight out of the wild 1990s. Naturally, I wasn’t planning to vote. I was interested in something else. Given that I wasn’t registered in Donetsk, I asked whether I would be allowed to vote here at all. I was immediately told that I would and that they had an auxiliary voter roll intended for just such a situation. The interesting thing was, I got to write myself onto the voter roll since there was no one at the “auxiliary roll” table, they told me to sign in on my own and wait. A few minutes later, some guy came out, took a look at my passport and, without even checking what I had filled in on the form, issued me three ballots. I went into the voting booth and stood around for a few minutes, then threw the empty ballots into the ballot box.
That was just the beginning of the fun.
About an hour later, I found myself in a different district of Donetsk, not far from another polling station. Just out of curiosity, I went into that one, too. I was allowed to “vote” here, as well. What’s more, at this station, which is nowhere near where I live—let alone have listed in my passport—things were pretty pathetic. First of all, the group of voters here was even older, mostly women in their seventies, to whom someone was trying to explain what was on the ballots in the dimly-lit corridor. Second of all, they didn’t even bother to check my passport here; I simply gave them a nearby address, signed the register, and got my ballots. I could have gone on voting like this all day.
Why? Because nobody cared who you were planning to vote for. There could be no ballot stuffing here simply because the stuffing had taken place a long time ago. Even the debates that had been broadcast the day before, between the incumbent “mayor” of Donetsk, Martynov,137 and his opponent, were a Potemkin village. What was being evaluated here was something quite different: the “election” was set up to test the civic fitness of Donetskites after two and a half years of a complete circus—a test that once again, in my opinion, they failed.
October 3, 2016
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
A banner in Donetsk portraying Oleksandr Zakharchenko and Saint George’s ribbons, ahead of Defender of the Fatherland Day (February 23).
Propaganda on the Streets of Donetsk
Visually, Donetsk today looks like a cast mold of continuous propaganda. No matter what district of the city you are in, you will see at least one billboard glorifying either the DPR or its leadership. The heaviest concentration of propaganda can be seen in the Voroshylov District of downtown Donetsk, the part of the city where residents go to relax and militant leaders like to hang out.
The propaganda itself has two main aspects. One manifestation cultivates the Soviet past, especially anything tied to victory in the Second World War. To this day you can see posters with slogans for May 9 all over Donetsk. You will also see them for Donbas Liberation Day. Clearly, a parallel is being drawn between the soldiers who defended this land in the 1940s and today’s militants. Huge posters, sometimes the height of an entire tall building, portray Soviet soldiers embracing their wives. And over here, just a little lower, the same kind of image, but this one with local militants. And the message is: “We won then and we’re going to win now.” On some buildings, you can see graffiti of armed rebels giving flowers to kids or holding kids in their arms.
The second form that propaganda takes is connected with the current time, with the DPR itself, and with Russia. On many buildings in Donetsk, you can see the Russian tricolor and right downtown, up until recently, you could find posters saying “Thanks, Russia!” in gratitude to Russia for its “humanitarian shipments.” 138 The rest of the propaganda is all dedicated to the DPR itself. Billboards glorify the separatist leader, Zakharchenko, around whom a personality cult has been built here, as you will no longer find any of the other militant leaders being portrayed. And everywhere you can see information about industrial milestones, happy families, and students promoting studies at DPR colleges.
However, there are some organizations that are given rhetorical space in the public arena—the Oplot unit, for example. There is now a “civic movement” by the same name. On one of the former student dorms in the very heart of Donetsk, a huge banner hangs for the Oplot militants. Indeed, the spot where it has been hung up might be called a “propaganda wall,” as just to the left of the banner is an advertisement for Phoenix, a local internet services provider and the militants’ mobile operator. And on the right, yet another piece of the propaganda mosaic: a portrait of Oles Buzyna,139 with the date of his death and the words, “To win, you must not only be right but also strong.” To increase the impact of these words, they have been painted bloodred.
As for Buzyna, the appearance of his portrait in the center of the city was a big surprise for Donetskites themselves, since most of them had never heard of him. And those who did recognize the name probably had no idea what he was killed for—let alone what views he held.
October 13, 2016
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
Occupation as It Is: Khartsyzk
Life in the occupied territory is a bit like standing in the light of a dim streetlamp. When you are close to it, you get some light and can even distinguish a few things. But the further from the source you are, the more the light scatters, growing darker and darker.
All you have to do is drive a few miles from the center of Donetsk, where many cafés, restaurants, and theaters are still open, and you will see a very different picture, one with sporadic machine-gun fire, torn-up roads, craters from exploded mines, and people who look very poor.
The further you move away from the center, the more wretched the situation becomes. Khartsyzk stands on the periphery of the most neglected and depressed areas of the occupied territory. In some ways, the city manages to imitate Donetsk. In fact, the city center and the half-mile radius around the bus station is relatively quiet and clean. But Khartsyzk, not especially large even before the war, became depopulated after it began. Life here is centered around small oases: the local recreation center and the Obzhora 140 supermarket. Some locals even call the former ATB supermarket 141—now called the First Republican—the “center of the world.”
But the outlying districts of Khartsyzk are the perfect image of stagnation, and it is not just an economic matter. Because it has extensive industrial districts, Khartsyzk has become a boundless military base where militants house equipment and personnel. This activity is reflected in the local population: some of the men from villages like Komunist belong to illegal military units where they receive at least some kind of pay packet. The rest of the population spend their time drinking and earn money by scavenging defunct factories for scrap metal that has not yet been cut up and sold by the militants themselves. A majority of the industrial companies here have either been stripped to the walls or are working at half their capacity. According to locals, the Khartsyzk Piping Plant, which was once one of the most powerful enterprises in the Donbas, paid workers their July wage only in October. If you walk around the city, you will see almost no job offers among the notices on lamp posts; most ads are about services for moving to the Russian Federation and Crimea, or about applying for state pensions from Kyiv.
The local railway station says everything about the situation in Khartsyzk. Of its fifteen tracks, only two are in active use right now. What is more, probably the only local commuter train comes in on the first track, the Iasynuvata-Ilovaisk, pulling all of four cars. The second track is occupied by a freight train carrying local coal, but the cars are all Russian-made and the coal is heading out to Russia, as well. Indeed, the cars with Khartsyzk coal are marked “RZhD, owned by OAO VZB-Leasing,” 142 followed by a phone number with a Moscow area code.
But, mind you, the remaining tracks are not empty. More than a dozen rusting Ukrainian-made trains are parked here, with the bottoms of some of the cars corroded entirely away, so that coal could not be poured into them. In truth, there is nothing to put into them, anyway, with most of the coal mines shut down at this point. What little coal extraction has been kept up under occupation goes in the new cars to the Russian Federation.
November 4, 2016
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
That Sweet Word, “War”
The war in the Donbas is the best illustration of those miles of tunnels that run under Ukraine’s political realities today. There is an external enemy occupying Ukrainian territory. As soon as Ukraine tries to take the smallest step in the direction of integration with the EU, the unhealed wound of this occupation opens up and begins to bleed again. That’s how this war is seen from the outside.
From the inside, things are far more prosaic. Despite the ubiquity of slogans about patriotism and the national interest, the only villa in Donetsk that has not been occupied by militants is that of their putative antagonist, Rynat Akhmetov, who early in the conflict branded the “republicans” a disgrace. In mainland Ukraine, however, he barely avoided doing time for funding the militants. In a region where every third pensioner survived the winter thanks to care packages from Akhmetov’s “humanitarian fund,” in contrast to the “love” and “care” offered them by the official government’s blockade, things don’t seem quite so obvious, and the money siphoned from industrial wells goes toward bullets as often as toward rice.
Here, they hate Poroshenko and respect Akhmetov to the same degree. Here, you can find armchair generals who know all the pathways to victory, and ordinary people who silently send a few dollars from Donetsk to support the Ukrainian army. Despite the blockade, Ukrainian producers manage supply lines pretty well here: back in 2015, you could still find fresh Roshen candies on local shelves.
While only the select few suppliers found their way through the frontline in 2015, now, towards the end of 2016, they are managing to move cheese, juice, chocolates, ketchup, and other goods through Ukrainian checkpoints by the ton, delivering them to the DPR quite easily. In Donetsk’s Amstor supermarkets, you can find huge quantities of Sadochok and Sandora juice marked with the address of their Ukrainian producer: Mykolaїv Oblast, Zhovtnevyi Raion, village Mykolaїvske. The one thing about the juice that is not Ukrainian, though, is the hiked-up price: a quart of Sadochok starts at 1.15 US dollars, and a quart of Sandora is almost two dollars at the local exchange rate. Ukrainian chocolate isn’t far behind. You can generally find the Korona and Milka brands at Donetsk supermarkets. The production facility address on the Korona chocolate says Trostianets, Sumy Oblast. The price of a one-ounce bar of plain milk chocolate is around 75 US cents, which is unheard of, though it is among the most “economical” selections. In fact, chocolates are one thing that few here can afford, since Ukrainian chocolates with fillings such as nuts or raisins will cost them as much as two dollars a bar.
If you walk around Donetsk Amstor stores, you will see several types of Ukrainian cheeses, among them Pyriatyn, Dobriana, and Shostka. Next to the price, in brackets, is the country of origin: Ukraine. But the barcodes on them are not Ukrainian. In other words, theoretically you are buying a Ukrainian product, but it is being treated as though it were not from Ukraine. In the case of sausage, sometimes there is a Ukrainian barcode, and all the information on the label is in Ukrainian only. But 90 percent of the producers are from the occupied territory.
The most lucrative kind of Ukrainian contraband under occupation is jewelry. What’s more, every piece of jewelry sells with two tags: one says “Made in Ukraine” and the other sports a two-headed eagle marked “Ministry of Finance, DPR.”
In short, the war in the Donbas seems a kind of happenstance, a cover under which business dealings that connect the occupied region with the “mainland” continue as before.
However, if local “princelings” and underhanded Ukrainian politicians are interested in the war as a source of petty privileges and bribes, the constant stretching of the “Minsk elastic” at top echelons can’t help but remind us about the convenience of a fragile peace for Bankova.143 Understanding that it won’t be possible to raise the question of Crimea seriously until the “Lord of the Kremlin” has died, and that Russia will not leave the Donbas but will, in fact, continue to control it, the Ukrainian president and his entourage keep telling us about the inevitable benefits of the worthless scraps of paper that are the Minsk accords. In the DPR itself, they alternate between calling them “legal acts of a foreign state” and announcing their own interpretations of them.
The thing is that, when a society is aware of an external enemy, consolidation frequently takes place precisely around hatred toward that enemy, transferring aggression from internal problems and their sources to the external irritant. However paradoxical it might sound, if this kind of “external enemy” does not take an “all or nothing” approach, but rather maintains a slightly open wound, its presence inside the state can be completely justified by the ruling elite. When this happens, it’s always easy enough to nod in the direction of the frontline, tossing into the trenches high utility rates, bad roads, the ever-climbing exchange rate, and even corruption, which after the Maidan had come to be perceived as an immediate, personal injury, a reminder of hundreds of deaths. But psychologically, the war outweighs everything: despite all their dissatisfaction with the current powers that be, even the lips of the far right can be heard to whisper, “Now is not the time to open a second front.”
