‘These are Ukrainian lands’: people in Donetsk pour scorn on Putin’s territorial demands | Ukraine
In a branch of the Ukrainian coffee chain Lviv Krovasans in the front city of Kramitch, there is a grade board in which people leave colorful post-it grades with simple hand-drawn messages. One says only “Kramatorsk ,, the red hearts below and a yellow and blue semi -circular fan above, the colors of Ukraine.
Among the notes of the 26 -year -old Bohdan, who has been working in the army for the last three years. The soldier, who is now in the logistics, chose to spend a day in Kramatorsk with his dog Arnold for a city where he dates back to 18 months.
“I have a past with this place, or he says. “This is part of my destiny and puzzle.”
Kramatorsk is the core of 30% of Donetsk Oblast of Ukraine. This week, the region was the subject of what seemed to be a failed negotiation between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. Together with Luhansk Oblast, the Russian President asked all Donetsk, who formed the Donbas region, as part of a peace agreement, a proposal that Trump rejected Ukraine, but he seemed briefly approved.
Russia’s arguments are changing, but in Putin’s eyes, Donetsk, a Russian -speaking industrial zone in the east of Ukraine, is culturally closer to Moscow than Kiev. But the people living there have a very different view. They are not interested in the abandonment of Donetsk territory; After all, their land.
A few minutes ago, Bohdan photographed the nearby region of a Russian bombardment in the center of the city on July 31, and took the image of a damaged tree in front of a ruined apartment block. The plan is to turn the image into a tattoo: “The tree is symbolic; like Ukraine, it continues despite the strike.”
This is not his first body art. In the left calf of the soldier, there is a list of all Russian air strikes that cause more than 15 civilian wounded anywhere in Ukraine. Bohdan did it four months ago while changing the units. “I was mostly living a civilian life. It was very easy to forget what was going on,” he says.
The façade is about 12 miles away from the nearest point, but Kramatorsk remains relatively alive in the August sun. Although the air strike alarm is regularly extinguishing, it is for the missiles, the locals say; When an attack comes to the city, they add ominously, there is no warning.
Approximately quarter million Ukrainian civilians live in the rest of Kramatorsk and Donetsk, eighth of the pre -eighth levels. Many windows are on the thousand, but the city is not significantly damaged. Behind the bench of Katerynna SELEDSOVA, some shops and cafes like Bakery of Temerynna SELEDSOVA, which have a series of fruit cakes, eclairs and other creamy -looking offers, are still open.
The change in the population of Kramatorsk – has become more and more men because of the arrival of soldiers to the region – means that SELEDTSOVA has improved the menu. “Men love simpler foods,” says Layer Napoleon Cake or Trubochki, announced that he has changed French -style pastry for the intensified Waffle tubes. Whatever he cooks, he added, sells daily, demand.
To give the rest of Donetsk to SELEDSOVA, “Stupid as a stupidity. Men are digging trench here. For all these fortifications? For nothing? I don’t believe it will happen, just stupid.” Baker’s life is here: SELEDSOVA, Kramatorsk, the city of his father and eight -year -old son, and the idea of being forced to take action, so hard to take it seriously, it is very difficult to think in the best way.
Perhaps for NATO membership, can there be a price worth giving up the land in Ukraine where he lives? It only sees practical complications: “There are already many problems with evacuation.
The displacement programs say they are not attractive because the presented residence cannot be compared. Müsters As far as I know, many people who escapes live in kindergartens. They don’t even have money to buy things like appropriate drugs ”and wonder how a program of the Ukrainian state can work with limited resources.
How about staying under Russia? “I never work under those bitch children. Of course no, no,” and the power of his feeling.
Valentyna and Yelena in Sloviansk in the north of Kramatorsk are with their grandchildren in the well -intentioned Central Park of the city. Children play in small electric cars, but Babusyas (grandmother) angry. “You’re a journalist, you can make some effort for peace, we need to yell for peace, Vale says Valentyna. Valentyna, who was suppressed by the believe that the soil can be abandoned and accepted, will say, uz We want the war to stop ”.
If they have to give up Ukraine Donetsk, if they run away, Valentyna says, “Children have problems with their mental health. They are shaking throughout the nights.” As the trust situation deteriorated, the face -to -face classes, which lasted four hours a day, were stopped again. “We were on a playground and we saw a very low flying drone drone three days ago, just above our heads – and there were only 10 children who played there.”
In Sloviansk Market, local people sell more products than their gardens, some of the best agricultural lands in the world. A woman, also called Valentyna, offers a grape weight for 80 hryvnia (£ 1.44). “Like ancient times, they talk about human trade as a lord and serfs,” he says, selling 2kg from red and white grapes on his desk. “We must continue to continue and fight for our lands. These are Ukrainian lands; there are well -known borders.”
Donetsk province, especially around Pokrovsk, 35 miles southwest of Kramatorsk, is the heaviest fighting on the long façade. Regional officials prove that the moment was reluctant to interviews because of the political sensitivity, but Dongesk Governor Vadym Filashkin reported that he had been released 26 times on Friday and 3,649 people were killed in Kostyantinivka on Friday.
The results of the stagnant war can be seen in a near Pavlohrad, in the west, in a neighboring region. A refugee center has been operating in the city to take people who have no place in the city for about a year. However, as the Russian attack intensified, the number of refugees on the site, according to the team leader Katerynna Makarova, rose to 350 to 450 people a day for the last two weeks ”. It is compared with 200 two months ago with 200 and 100 in winter.
The conditions in the field, which is an old cultural center, are cramped. In a auditorium, the beds are placed side by side for those who cannot be rearranged immediately. An emergency dormitory shelter is being built in a tent to upgrade one night from 100 to 200, but this is not an open solution when it turns. Another reception center opens in Makarova, Dnipro.
News reports show that Trump’s peace efforts do not go anywhere. Very little is surprised in and around Donetsk. Planning in Ukraine continues to cope with Russia’s gradual progress, and attacks that do not show signs of stopping. Netting is being built along the safest supply path to Kramatorsk before Russia is targeted by a more effective drone teams, but the conquest of Donetsk in existing advance rates will probably take years and the cost of 30,000 Russian wounded per month.
However, it is cautious to plan the worst. Makarova, “We are trying to understand the algorithm about how to work when we’re going to evacuate,” Makarova says. “There are many people living in Kramatorsk, Slovansk and other towns, and if there will be a evacuation there, too many people will come. In this case, we must understand how to act.”
Serhii and Nadiya, a married couple for 46 years, sit in a plastic bag up to a dozen of their lives in the early hours of the evening. They are not even from Donetsk, but the Mezhova, which is 10 miles to Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, is the victims of the metastasm of the war where Russia spreads beyond the limits of all the interest given to Donetsk. Serhii admits, “We never thought that the war would come to our village,” Drone strikes will come to our village until two months ago.
Although Serhii agrees to take some governors to help, the couple hopes to join one of his daughters when a surprisingly calm and voluntary can drive them from the refugee center. Tonight, they stay in the refugee center and come to say goodbye when he leaves Nadiya.
“Them [the Russians] They say we were brothers, but if I had such a brother, I would have changed my surname and my father’s name, Ser says Serhii. “ I don’t need this kind of brother. “
