In Isolation, page 20
January 6, 2017
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
Russian militant commander and officer of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service Igor Girkin (Strelkov) kisses an Orthodox icon after a news conference in Donetsk on July 10, 2014. Five days earlier, having been encircled by Ukrainian forces, Girkin was allowed to withdraw with his militants from Slov’iansk to Donetsk, using Ukrainian hostages as human shields.
How the Militants Prepare Children to Join Their Military Organizations
The DPR gang leaders have organized a powerful system of “military and patriotic” education for young people that raises children up in the ideals of russkii mir and in hatred for all things Ukrainian. This kind of work goes on at all levels of the educational process, but there is a set of institutions that directly address how to prepare new trainees for the DPR’s military and the front.
The Berehovyi Lyceum Boarding School for Intensive Military and Physical Training, one such institution, operates under the jurisdiction of the DPR “Ministry of Defense.” Youngsters join the lyceum after the ninth grade and are trained to replenish the ranks of illegal armed formations.
The DPR allocates considerable funding for this type of military education, even prioritizing it over the funding it provides to existing military units, where basic necessities are sometimes not available. The young students are fed, given a new uniform, and brought up in the “anti-fascist” spirit. Every once in a while, World War II veterans are invited to the lyceum; parallels are drawn between the Wehrmacht and the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
They even organize balls for the lyceeists, who dress in white uniforms, complete with belts in the colors of Saint George and a Soviet star on the buckles. In the fall of 2016, the lyceum was reorganized by merging it with another military institution, the Donetsk Higher General Military Command College, or DonVOKU.
DonVOKU is the next level in the ideological indoctrination of youth by the DPR. Recently, cadets from this college have been seen in large numbers all across Donetsk, and their numbers keep growing. This is hardly surprising, given that, for the locals, this institution is a bit like a Suvorov military school; 163 even young people from the LPR are trying to enroll at DonVOKU.
The DPR is training cadres for the future command staff in four general areas: intelligence, tank troops, infantry, and the political department. At this point, a cash allowance is being issued at the rate of around 1,500 Russian rubles, or 25 US dollars. Once they have completed their studies, graduates receive the rank of lieutenant. The ideological indoctrination here is already an order of magnitude higher because, after all, these are the young men who will later be training new recruits to fight the mythical “Ukrainian Nazism.”
Last but not least, one of the most exclusive institutions is the DPR’s Academy of the “Ministry of Internal Affairs,” which is located in an appropriated building of the former University of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence. Here, in addition to future prosecutors and police officers, personnel are trained for the DPR “Ministry of Internal Affairs.” Candidates study here under the patronage of those who already hold important posts in the DPR inner circle.
This academy not only prepares senior staff and managers for the police system, but also teaches methods to be used while interrogating people and getting information out of them. This guarantees that there is a pipeline of trainees ready to take the places of those who are now seventeen to twenty years old as they themselves move on. Some of these young people are already practicing at checkpoints on days designated as “high alert,” when the dons of the DPR are especially “ready” for an infiltration by saboteurs and spies from Ukraine. When this happens, the experienced Chekists are assisted by those who were children just yesterday.
January 10, 2017
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
Children attend a ceremony to unveil the “Book of Memory,” a monument to the DPR militants who died fighting against Ukrainian armed forces at Iasynuvata, north of Donetsk.
“I Fought in the War”: Life after Leaving the DPR Militia
For many locals who participated in the conflict in the Donbas in the ranks of illegal military formations, the end of 2016 also marked the end of their military careers. The majority of the “veterans of ‘Novorossiia,’” as many of them prefer to call themselves, have left the militias and returned to their civilian lives. Still, their reasons for donning civilian clothes again and taking up their former lives vary considerably.
In the summer of 2014, nearly all the men between the ages of twenty and forty in our apartment building in Makiїvka joined the ranks of the militants. Their reasons for doing so were not all the same. Some were at the very bottom of the social heap and had no income at all. Others believed in the idea of a “Novorossiia” stretching from Odesa to Kharkiv. Still others wanted the easy pickings that carrying a machine gun guaranteed at that time. Altogether, more than two dozen of my neighbors joined the militants back then and nearly all of them stayed in the ranks of the illegal units for more than a year.
But as 2015 drew to a close, many began to abandon the ranks of the separatists. Some of those who had survived the conflict’s hot spots like Donetsk Airport and Ilovaisk stated that the war had turned into a means of making money for those who made it to the very top, and they had no intention of fighting for the purpose of making Zakharchenko or Givi rich. Some were unhappy with the inability to take leave, the lousy pay, and pointless duty out in the cold. One way or another, of the two dozen or so from my apartment building who had joined up, only three remained among the militants by the beginning of 2017.
One of those three continues to serve in a tank battalion and has no intention of leaving, even after being seriously wounded. This man is one of the few who still believes in the idea of “the people’s lands.” The other two are currently in the ranks of the “republican guard,” which has turned into a kind of joke at this point: its members rarely show up at the front and mainly serve a decorative function at rallies and ceremonial events.
Adapting to civilian life for those who have returned has been far more painful. For instance, one of the guys I know, who was awarded a “medal” back when Bezler was in charge, now has to work as a simple loading dock worker and openly admits that, after operating a howitzer, loading trucks is really unbearable. What’s more, he is constantly blowing up at his parents, accusing them of not giving a damn that rockets were flying at him until not that long ago. The psychological readjustment to civilian life for people like him is often extremely painful.
Other former militants are not faring much better. As I’ve mentioned earlier, this includes those who resigned from the DPR army and moved to Russia to clean swimming pools, or got a job slinging hash at a local shashlyk joint, or lucked into a job with the “Ministry of Emergency Management.” But most continue to live an antisocial existence in their old neighborhoods, drinking away what money they manage to scrape together moonlighting on local construction sites.
January 13, 2017
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
Back in the USSR: Soviet Themes in Donetsk Eateries
The Soviet past is an extremely popular motif in the aesthetics of the DPR. It can be found everywhere—in the educational system, in propaganda, and in the designs of packaging. The service sector is no slouch at incorporating it, either. Some cafés and restaurants in Donetsk have taken to using Soviet themes to attract customers. Some are putting a spin on old Soviet slogans to draw clientele, like the signboards of Café Gourmand on Pushkin Boulevard that use a familiar formula: “Feeling down? Booze it up!”
Among the properly “Soviet” establishments is a café-bar by the unambiguous name of Nasha Rodina SSSR,164 located not far from the Pivdennyi Bus Station. Strangely, the interior of the café reflects nothing about the Soviet past; like its menu, the restaurant has nothing special other than its name and signboard.
But a café called Olivier-80,165 which is in a basement on Hurov Street, is something else. When you walk in, you are immediately immersed in the Soviet past. The waiters are dressed in the kind of shirts they wore in Soviet times, with the collar buttoned up to the top. Busts of Lenin, photographs of Soviet actors, Soviet-era diplomas, and even a portrait of Josef Stalin decorate the walls.
At one of the tables, there’s a telephone from the 1960s, together with a newspaper from the same period, with articles about a decree of Lenin’s. The table is called the “Table of the Party Worker,” and is decorated with several four-line poems dedicated to the Soviet era. The table itself is fashioned in the shape of a Soviet sewing machine.
Opposite the table, a pair of skates, an accordion, and a checkerboard with checkers glued to it hang on the wall. There’s also a shelf with a series of Soviet books and an assortment of black-and-white photographs. One of the most impressive elements in the decor of this café is a large burgundy banner with Lenin’s profile and the slogan “Moving toward the victory of communism under the banner of Marxism-Leninism and the leadership of the Communist Party!” The same style is maintained even in the bathroom, where the walls are covered in Soviet newspapers, and black-and-white photographs are fixed with clothespins to a rope hanging from the ceiling, as if the photos had just been developed.
The menu, on the other hand, is quite varied and lists only a few select Soviet-era items: Gold of Zhiguli vodka,166 a compote 167 based on cranberry pulp, cucumber lemonade, “Honeycake from the USSR,” and, of course, the ubiquitous Olivier salad, which is offered in all of six versions: smoked salmon, shrimp, chicken, and other options. The most expensive version is the “Olivier deluxe” with a salmon fillet; a small portion costs 3.80 US dollars, or a bit more than 100 hryvnias.
The music featured at Olivier-80 also departs from the Soviet theme. Mostly Western performers—Mylène Farmer is a favorite—are on the rotation. When I went there, the guests were anything but poor and the table next to me ordered several versions of the Olivier, along with a bottle of bubbly, which the waiter brought out in a pail of ice. In fact, the service was quite decent—that distinctively Soviet boorishness is something you won’t see here, any more than you will cafeteria-quality Soviet cuisine: the food at Olivier-80 is actually good.
January 25, 2017
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
Sausage on sale in Donetsk. Cheap, low-quality sausage often figures in the nostalgic imagery of the Soviet Union since its collapse in 1991, especially among the older population of the post-Soviet countries.
“Looking for a Tusk to Buy”: Ads in Occupied Donetsk
The war in the Donbas often coincides with business, even in advertising. A slew of brands has emerged from the concept of russkii mir that are now used both for propaganda and for commerce. The Blokpost 168 is one such store in one of the downtown districts of Donetsk. Blokpost not only applies military terms to the goods that it sells but has decorated its interior in military style; the entire shop is painted the colors of a camouflage net. Yet, as of this writing, what Blokpost sells—mostly food items and pet food—has little to do with the war.
The Soviet theme so popular in Donetsk is also used to promote an entire range of goods produced in the LPR using Soviet packaging designs on products such as milk, creamery butter, and ice cream. Not that long ago, sugar joined their ranks.
Narodnyi—”of the people”—is a modifier used in the occupied territories to brand not only politico-ideological organizations such as the DPR and LPR and local newspapers, but also grocery stores and even European-style vinyl replacement windows (“Narodnye okna”).
The phrase iskonno russkii—”originally, primordially Russian”—can be found in snack bars and cafés like Rasseia and Teremok, with decor replete with Russian samovars and pliushki.169 Similarly, russkii mir finds religious expression on the verge of “entrepreneurship” and ideology: the icon of Christ with the inscription “God is with us” that I’ve mentioned several times already is still nailed to a pole at the site of an old militant checkpoint in Makiїvka, where guards used to earn their keep extorting goods from transiting vehicles. The same image can be seen on the banner of the Berkut Union of Veterans of the Donbas, hanging near the building of the former Donetsk Oblast State Administration. Incidentally, the administration building itself is still adorned with the word “Russia,” and beside it is a street sign, to which the separatists added an arrow reading “Kyiv 777 km”—much like the signs that pointed to Berlin during World War II. Still, just a bit further down, at the Covered Market, the religious theme becomes commercialized. Here, they sell a huge quantity of imperial Russian flags with the inscription “We are Russians. God is with us.”
The Soviet past has returned to Donetsk with the restoration of the erstwhile Moskva Grocery. Prior to the seizure of the city by separatists, the store had been a shop selling imported clothing.
Paraphernalia for cars has a special place, starting with bumper stickers that say “Thanks for the victory, grandpa,” 170 as well as orange-and-black Saint George’s ribbons, DPR flag decals, and a slogan that became popular not long ago: “Get to work, brothers.” 171 This phrase was first uttered by a Russian policeman named Magomed Nurbagandov, who died at the hands of Islamic State militants. In the DPR, it has been turned into an expression of resistance to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. “Motorola” even managed to photograph himself with this inscription before he was killed, and now you can find it on the rear windows of Donetsk taxis.
DPR propaganda uses every possible surface to promote its ideas. You will often see the phrase “Here there are no Nazis who feel like they are the masters of the country” on billboards.172 Propaganda is disseminated even at bus stops. For instance, the Hanzivka stop at the border between Makiїvka and Donetsk is decorated with the Russian tricolor and the inscriptions “The Donetsk Republic” and “The Young Republic.”
Another form of branding in the retail sector is the “quality seal” from the “People’s Control” initiative, whose members check the quality of goods in DPR retail chains, shops, and markets. I have to say that “People’s Control” is possibly the only organization in the occupied areas that really does a good job, because they pay no attention to the strict chain-of-command of the occupation or to the connections the owners of retail outlets might have. Many stores and markets in Makiїvka and Donetsk have found themselves facing repeated strict inspections from the “people’s overseers.” As a result, they have lost customers and some even have closed altogether. Incidentally, the markets in the DPR have long been nationalized and turned into subsidiaries of the “Markets of Donbas State Enterprise.”
Finally, last week, even the outlying districts of Makiїvka and Donetsk were papered over with a single solicitation; in some places, you encountered it every ten yards. Given the general situation under the occupation, it came across as a joke: someone was ready to pay a decent price for a saiga horn, a mammoth tusk, a walrus tusk, or a rhino horn. Where local residents might possibly get any of these items is hard to fathom. Still, given the scale of the campaign, the advertiser clearly expects to succeed.
January 26, 2017
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, one of the most prominent Ukrainian political prisoners in Russia. Sentsov was abducted from his native Crimea in May 2014, following Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. He was tried in Rostov-on-Don, Russia, and sentenced to 20 years for “terrorism.” In September 2019, he was released in a prisoner swap.
Following the Path of Crimea?
“They expelled us from their society, so we made our own, a more durable one—and it works,” says one of the heroes in the popular movie District 13: Ultimatum.173 The film at times resembles to a remarkable degree what the DPR has become today: a place where field commanders are incinerated by a Shmel,174 where grenade-launchers can be shot into a building in broad daylight, where you can find yourself without any rights when confronted by the highway patrol, and where sporadic machine-gun fire is heard during curfew. Add some large-caliber guns and checkpoints into the mix and you get a real-life Ukrainian version of the film. Welcome to Hell, indeed. But more importantly, as in the motion picture, a majority of the people in the LPR/DPR are pleased that they are drifting further and further away from the legitimate center of their country, Ukraine.
In 2017, many pro-Ukrainian patriots in the occupied territories pinned greater hopes on the possibility that the situation with the LPR/DPR would be resolved. After Oleksandr Turchynov’s announcement of a “ 2017 turning point,” it looked like the Ukrainian government would finally adopt a firm position and not only stop giving up Ukrainian soil, but also make up its mind to take back what had been taken away. Where exactly this breakthrough was supposed to take place, on the battlefield or at Minsk, was hard to say. But people expected it, and groundless hopes have a way of taking the upper hand over fundamental impasses. Yet hardly a month had passed before everything had turned upside down for the pro-Ukrainian cause. Now, the reclamation of Ukrainian territory disappeared from the agenda. Instead, everyone who had anything to say at all started talking about the supposed integration of the LPR/DPR into the Russian Federation. And, on top of that, another topic related to the war appeared out of the blue: the legal definition of what the hell this all was.
