In Isolation, page 8
I’m not saying that Donetsk does not have a few hundred people, myself included, who could go out on Lenin Square with blue-and-yellow flags. But the way things are today, this number is just a list of those who would fill a few rows at the local cemetery.
Let’s go back to the title of this essay. This question—What is Ukraine to me?—has long gone the rounds among those of my relatives who are at least partly familiar with my views. Recently, my sister asked me that question after getting her Russian citizenship in Crimea. She honestly doesn’t get why I still, as she puts it, “cling to Ukraine,” a year down the line, while living in an area where everyone around me has the completely opposite view.
“What is Ukraine to you?” she once asked me. “What exactly? Flags on buildings, people in Ukrainian embroidered shirts in Donetsk, Ukrainian pensions for old ladies? You can have something like that with the DPR, just in different colors, but the soil under your feet is going to be the same, the same Makiїvka. And that’s all without people knocking down Lenin monuments…”
I listened to her carefully and thought that she had a point. Indeed, it’s not the flag flying above Makiїvka City Hall or the anthem on the main square in Donetsk that makes this land Ukrainian, although those are probably its outer attributes. It’s also possible that they could perfectly well stop paying pensions in Odesa or Kyiv at some point, and Poroshenko and Iarosh would have hundreds of enemies protesting in front of the Rada building.59
In answer to my sister, someone who, until recently, had had the same passport with the blue-and-yellow flag in her pocket, I had to tell her that I didn’t really know what Ukraine was. What I knew for sure was how it had ceased to exist: people woke up one morning in Makiїvka and no longer knew who they were—Ukrainians, Russians, or the “residents of people’s republics.”
I added that nothing could guarantee that those who called themselves “Russians” in Crimea today would not say they are “Belarusians” tomorrow, or stand at attention under Turkish flags. We can’t run from one land to another all our lives, and we surely don’t have that right during war. The state needs to remain in our heads, first and foremost. We can always figure out what to do with the flag and the monuments.
June 10, 2015
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
Nadiia Savchenko, a military bomber and helicopter pilot, one of the most prominent Ukrainian hostages captured by the Russian military. She was abducted from Ukrainian territory and tried in Moscow, Russia, on the charge of “illegally crossing” the Russian border. Savchenko was exchanged in a prisoner swap in May 2016 and went on to become a controversial politician in the Ukrainian parliament espousing pro-authoritarian views.
A Letter to the Russians
Allow me to remind you that I am a resident of Makiїvka. I have spent most of my life here, although I was actually born in Donetsk. Lately, my mind, like the minds of millions in our country, has been preoccupied with just one question: How is it that hatred, which sometimes requires entire generations to materialize, has grown in our soil in just a year and entrenched itself so deeply that it won’t allow two unique peoples to move beyond the stereotypes that are being dictated by television today?
Of course, I don’t expect an answer to this question and could probably not provide a proper one myself, either. But burnt-down buildings and rocket shells sticking out of the asphalt don’t allow us to forego asking it at all. When you walk down a warm, sunny street and suddenly hear a mine explode and see dozens of people dead, after which quiet descends once more and the trams continue to run as before, it’s impossible not to see the absurdity of this war—a war in which bloodshed is sanctified by ideas that never went further than the gates of a university.
Moscow views Ukraine today as a platform for dollar-driven American interests and Western values advanced to Russia’s borders by ranks of missiles. And it sees supposed Nazism dominating our country. The Russian government sees in Ukraine not an original idea that is trying to find itself in the foggy aftermath of the Soviet era, but a threat to that same era, which was never erased in the Kremlin. Ice cream for nine kopeks and one-sixth of the Earth’s land surface 60—what more could one wish for in life, right?
But Nazism, the monster that is being used to terrify Russians so much, is typified largely by unity and blind worship of the one and only prophet who is supposed to lead the country to a grand dream. By contrast, where on earth can we find as diverse and varied opinions among citizens regarding their president as in Ukraine, where every new head of state is unlikely to do any better in terms of respect and success than his predecessors? And where in today’s Europe can we find as blind faith in a leader and almost pious fear of him as in Russia, where the leader’s hand is kissed by the clergy while the entire nation applauds any decision as though they were standing in a Soviet-style party hall the size of the entire country?
Dear Russians, when talking about Europe, it is you who say that the old gods have died and her new ones are not strong. You could be right, at that, if what you mean by “strong” is having strong moral values and goals. But then, what is so strong about Russia, which is trying to force us at the point of a gun to believe that the death of the Soviet Union never happened? Is dressing up Moscow, Tula, Tiumen, and Petersburg in Saint George’s ribbons and red Soviet flags anything more than paying homage to the past? Are you not just trying to resurrect that same thing whose death you mock in “rotting” Europe— a past that was unable to establish itself in sixty-nine years of existence?
By many socioeconomic parameters, Russia is doing better than Ukraine right now. While today the Russian nation is secure in its hard, protective shell of ideology, Ukraine has only a few delicate shoots of patriotism—albeit real patriotism—sprouting up from our soil. But if these signs of grassroots patriotism give you a reason to believe that forty million people have suddenly put on the Nazi swastika, I have to ask you: Who would want your version of prosperity, one that is based on endless delusion?
Dear Russians, right now, after a year of war in the Donbas, I’m absolutely certain that a person can wish for no worse enemy than history. No matter what we try to find in it, no matter what kind of episodes shape this mosaic of hatred, history itself is enough to leave a bad aftertaste of past offenses. There are some obvious things that we cannot ignore. Until you get it into your head that a Russian citizen has no right to come to a Ukrainian city, gather a group of mercenaries, and seize power and dig entrenchments; until you understand that the ethnic Russians in the Donbas are not those wretched cripples you see on TV, standing around their churches and wishing aloud for Russian Grads; until you accept the idea that the Ukraine of the past no longer exists (as I have had to realize myself); and finally, until you really hear the voice of those ethnic Russians in Ukraine who are not howling for help, but are crying for you not to help—until then all you will do is bring blood and suffering. Believe me, not one country in the world has been able to end blood and suffering through the violence of missiles.
We are still bargaining over the future. We are still shooting each other. Being in the very center of the Donbas and having neither a strong opinion about my present, nor a firm hope in my future, I just want to say that forgiveness is no less radical than war itself. If we manage to stop the war today, it is likely that we will find those who are able to forgive tomorrow. Therein lies my extremism, and I am calling on the Russians to make the same kind of radical choice.
July 26, 2015
Tyzhden
From left to right: Ukrainian pro-Russian politician Viktor Medvedchuk, whose daughter’s godfather is Vladimir Putin himself; Russian Orthodox Church Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia; DPR head Oleksandr Zakharchenko; and LPR head Leonid Pasichnyk talk to the media following their meeting in Moscow.
Who Lives off the Residents of Occupied Donbas?
A year after the occupation of parts of the Donetsk Oblast, a clear picture has emerged of all the social groups that not only survive in the DPR, but also feel quite at home here, in contrast to ordinary doctors, teachers, pensioners, and more vulnerable groups.
Strangely enough, at the top of this social pyramid are those who work in retail sales—mainly groceries. The non-food retail sector also has its privileged caste in the suppliers of niche products such as building materials or feed for livestock. In other words, those doing well are effectively monopolists in areas where, in the more competitive recent past, they struggled to make ends meet.
Whatever their social class, everyone needs to eat. Ukraine’s deepening blockade of the occupied areas has enormously expanded the room for financial machinations and price-hiking, so that goods imported from Russia de facto duty-free are sold at inflated prices, while Ukrainian alternatives aren’t available at all. Add to this the real cost of transporting goods from Rostov, Kursk, or even Moscow, which directly affects the final price. Meanwhile, the quality of food, especially sausages, is often dreadful, mainly due to certain schemes in use.
Russian suppliers are quite aware of the tight financial situation in the DPR and have a pretty accurate sense of the buying power of local consumers. High-quality food is an order of magnitude more expensive in Russia than products of similar quality in Ukraine, and transportation costs have to be added in. A simple calculation makes it clear that the price of a Russian sausage cannot be set several times higher than the average Ukrainian price, otherwise it wouldn’t sell. Thus the products supplied are often of poor quality, so that when transportation costs and the local retail mark-ups are added, they end up at a relatively familiar price point, although the quality is an order of magnitude lower than what locals once bought for the same money.
Next comes some understandable confusion over prices in Russian rubles and Ukrainian hryvnias. In fact, most produce at local markets is from nearby Ukrainian villages, so the sellers are reluctant to accept Russian rubles. Still, it has become common to see a Ukrainian price tag of 80 hryvnias and next to it a tag with 200 rubles, even though the official “republican” exchange rate is supposed to be 2 rubles per 1 hryvnia. Most buyers figure the sellers are shaking them down, but because of exchange rate differences between Ukraine and the DPR, sellers really do need to demand a rate of 2.5, not 2, if they are to earn anything. Because of complaints from consumers, the DPR recently hiked the Ukrainian price to match the Russian tag, changing a nominal price of 80 hryvnias into 100 hryvnias.
The situation in the non-food sector is even more complicated. The bulk of goods continues to come from Ukraine. When the usual corruption regimen at block posts is suspended because of fighting in Mar’їnka, for instance, serious shortages are common. At that point, buyers of livestock feed (to use the farming sector as an example) are willing to pay just about any price for the desired bag of compound feed. Naturally, as soon as this bag trickles into the Donbas ghetto, entrepreneurial types jack prices up sky-high until the situation stabilizes again, thus skimming the financial cream off the patriots of “the people’s lands” (narodnye zemli).
Another class of local tycoons operates various unofficial currency exchange points, not to mention “cardholders” (which will be explained below), money-changers, and basically anyone promising to help the unfortunate residents of the occupied territories leave the republics, withdraw money with their debit cards, and get an IDP (Internal Displaced Person) certificate, or obtain a pass to leave the ATO area. Let’s look at these schemes one by one.
Due to a tacit ban by the DPR on the selling of hryvnias for rubles at the “Republican Bank” and a number of local unofficial exchange points, Ukrainian money can only be bought from private dealers at markets or on the streets. Obviously, they don’t do this at a 1 to 2 rate in accordance with DPR law. In reality, people are likely to pay 4.70–4.80 rubles or more for 1 hryvnia, depending on the amount needed. Of course, the hryvnias are all brought into the DPR from “mainland” Ukraine, which provides enormous income for the “financial tourists,” who earn their living by buying goods for rubles that were exchanged at unofficial rates as high as 1 hryvnia to 5.0 rubles.
A similar scheme plays out with the polite young women stationed in cramped little corners and kiosks in Makiїvka, Donetsk, and Khartsyzk, offering to cash out Ukrainian bank cards. When this business first started, the fee for cashing out was ten percent. As the sale of passes increased and more locals could get out of the “zone” on their own, this source of income shrank, so that by now the offer has gone down to zero percent for significant amounts (around 5,000 hryvnias). The catch is that you still get your cash in rubles at the official 1 to 2 rate: for 5,000 hryvnias, you’ll get 10,000 rubles. The fate of the hryvnias written off your account is easy to imagine: they end up on some account in Dnipro, where they miraculously convert into 11,000–12,000 rubles instead, depending on what the exchange rate is in a particular city in Ukraine and the difference with the rate in the DPR. The currency is converted once again. Less flush customers withdrawing small sums with their cards continue to pay high fees, but this is better than spending the same amount to try to travel out of the DPR and withdraw that same 1,500–2,000 hryvnias on your own.61
Getting a pass or an IDP certificate without leaving home is another goldmine in the “republics.” Pensioners who have not yet decided to go to non-occupied territory (the Donbas outside the LPR/DPR) to get their pensions are offered all the necessary services: pay 1,900 hryvnias and in just fifteen days you have become the happy owner of an actual residential address somewhere in Kramatorsk along with a Ukrainian pension—even if you have to cash it out as described above. All this without leaving your apartment.
But this scheme also has its nuances. After the DPR began to pay pension benefits relatively reliably, far fewer people wanted to receive an identical amount in Ukrainian currency using such a complicated, tricky procedure. So, the IDP certificates are sought only by those who want to receive both a DPR and a Ukrainian pension. These cases are infrequent, but back in April 2015, the general confusion at the DPR pension fund resulted in many pensioners receiving a “double” pension and believing that this pleasant surprise might continue indefinitely. Regardless, the services for issuing passes, including electronic ones, now constitute some of the most profitable business ventures in the “republic,” providing their owners with no less income and as good a niche as the retail trade.
Passenger transportation is also part of this war-time business. Monopolist carriers have jacked up prices for travel out of the ATO area, and drivers make even more money for carrying passengers without proper documents through Ukrainian checkpoints. Initially, people had to cross on foot, waiting in long lines in the heat, but quickly crossing the contact line was “streamlined,” and you could negotiate with a driver who would take you whatever route you needed without any documents and “leave” part of that amount at the Ukrainian checkpoint. This business has branched out into private carriers and taxis, which are mushrooming and taking advantage of the bureaucratic mistakes of the new Ukrainian government.
Few analysts covering occupied Donbas have focused on this aspect of life in the republics, yet the DPR is not only a haven for speculators and smugglers, but a mecca for fugitives and criminals, who can join the ranks of the DPR or simply lie low without fear that the Ukrainian courts will reach them. Quite often, these individuals join the ranks of the militias or engage in protection rackets, thanks to their links to local criminal groups. Anyone with debt or tax issues with Ukrainian banks, companies, or government agencies can also flee here to the DPR for a more comfortable life without fear of being handed over to the “enemy state.”
Another social group enjoying a cut of the spoils of happy life in the “republics” is the clergy serving the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate. Russian Orthodoxy has long been the de facto official religion in the DPR and an inspiration for military feats “for the glory of the Fatherland” among the fighters of the militias. This confession is now in great demand in the occupied territory. After Zakharchenko’s announcement that there are only four officially tolerated religions in the DPR—Orthodoxy represented by the Moscow Patriarchate, Roman Catholicism, Islam, and Judaism—the smaller communities of other confessions are likely to leave the “marketplace” in the face of an increasingly rampant Muscovite Church and its clergy.
Wrapping up the list of the “republic’s most fortunate” are the “militiamen” and anyone somehow linked to the DPR official entities. There’s not much to say about the privileges these people enjoy, especially when ordinary residents—and even more so pro-Ukrainian patriots—remain at the bottom of social heap in the “people’s republics.”
July 6, 2015
Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)
Russian mercenary Arsen Pavlov (“Motorola”) at his marriage ceremony in Donetsk with Olena Kolenkina of Slov’iansk, which was attended by DPR leaders Igor Girkin (Strelkov) and Pavlo Hubariev. The wedding received a great deal of attention in the media. Motorola was assassinated in his own apartment building in October 2016.
The “Esperanto” of Vladimir Putin
The war in the Donbas, with its thousands of victims and dozens of destroyed cities, has embodied in practice the theories of russkii mir. Since the outbreak of the war, diplomats have worked ceaselessly to find a way out of the stalemate that the two sides of the conflict have driven themselves into.
