TREATED LIKE DIRT

 Kiev’s crimes against the Donbas

By Vladislav Ugolny

The Ukrainian regime has long treated the people of the Donbas as sub-humans. The military conflict in Ukraine that began on 24th February was preceded by a much older conflict. Over the course of eight years, it claimed the lives of at least 14,200 people, over 37,000 were wounded, hundreds of thousands became refugees or had their homes destroyed. A de-escalation was achieved in February 2015, as both sides realised that a bad peace was better than a good war and attempted to find a political resolution on the basis of the Minsk agreements. That, however, failed to bring peace to Donbas, which instead faced eight long years of economic and legal blockade, compounded by chaotic shelling of areas near the front-lines.
    They were eight hard years, which involved rebuilding bombed schools, hospitals and houses, a rather humiliating dependence of formerly well-to-do people on humanitarian aid, an economic slump due to the economic blockade imposed by the Ukrainian government, restricted access to pensions, and the risk of being wounded or killed for those who lived in urbanised front-line areas. People who voted for the independence of the Donetsk and Lugansk People’s Republics in the referendum in May 2014 could never have imagined living in this endless terror.
    They were forced to wait for that terror to stop until February 2022, when Russia recognised the independence of the Donbas and then deployed its military to, amongst other things, protect it and liberate territory occupied by Ukrainian forces since 2014. It hasn’t exactly been a walk in the park, but the people of Donbass now know that war will soon be over for them. The people’s militias of both republics are doing everything in their power to achieve victory as soon as possible.
    It may seem to an outside observer that some citizens of Ukraine backed by the Russian military are fighting other citizens of Ukraine backed by NATO. This description, however, would satisfy neither side of the conflict. Donbas residents no longer consider themselves citizens of Ukraine, whilst the Ukrainian government and society at large deny their sovereignty and dismiss them as collaborators and mercenaries for Russia. Both are wrong.
    In reality, it was precisely this denial of sovereignty that led Donbas to renounce everything having to do with Ukraine, and it started way before 2014. Let me add here that what was said above applies to the whole southeastern region of Ukraine, also known as Novorossiya; however, the case of Donbas was the most dramatic and revealing manifestation.
    It all began with dehumanisation. After gaining independence in 1991, Ukraine was too big to be uniform. The enthusiasm of Galicia in the west to build a nation-state was mixed with depression in the southeast over the loss of a shared economic space with Russia. Machine building in Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov and Zaporozhye declined, Odessa’s Black Sea shipping operations were shut down. The country survived thanks to metallurgy and coal mining. Both industries were centred around Donbas.
    Whilst almost a million people poured into the streets throughout Galicia for the funeral of Ukrainian politician and Soviet-era dissident Vyacheslav Chornovol, Donbas workers were toiling in the mines. Whilst Ukrainians travelled to western Europe as labour immigrants, miners in Donbas were dying on the job because of poor safety standards (profits ranked higher than lives during those lean years).
    ‘Let those miners die. They don’t see the Ukrainian sky anyway’ – that was the reasoning of some Ukrainians back then. The citizens of Donbass weren’t doing much reasoning – they were too busy mining coal and melting steel. The most aggressively ambitious of them were not happy with that setup though, so they chose the path of crime and raider attacks. The 1990s were times of rampant crime in Ukraine, and the so-called ‘Donetsk gangs’ were among the most adept at it. Donbas was now perceived as a breeding ground for criminals, which further tarnished its image. At the same time, Ukrainians turned a blind eye to similar financial groups with criminal ties in the nearby city of Dnepropetrovsk.
    Partially preserved industry (objectively speaking, metallurgy is easier to maintain than, say, rocket construction) and the concentration of capital in the hands of a narrow group of oligarchs made Donbas the vehicle for the Party of Regions, which was known as ‘pro-Russian’. In fact, there was little ‘pro-Russian’ about it – other than the fact that its leaders used the desire of people in the south-east to continue using Russian and keep their economic ties with Russia as a way to energise their base. This was the last step towards the dehumanisation of Donbass, which was now perceived as non-Ukrainian. Instead of encouraging inter-ethnic dialogue, it only led to Ukrainian nationalists’ promises to make Donbas more Ukrainised. It was just like what they had said about Crimea before – that it would either be Ukrainian or de-populated.
    A caricature of the typical denizen of Donbas emerged – a foul-mouthed alcoholic, a lowbrow menial worker who dreams of turning Ukraine over to the Kremlin. People in Donbas took offence, talked about their complex industry that required sophisticated skills, and called Ukrainians freeloaders. The divide within the country kept growing.
    This was followed by the first wave of Maidan protests, which dismissed the southeast under the political leadership of Donbas as an entity that does not deserve a political voice. The presidential elections split the country into two halves, with one side accusing the other of falsifying the results. People in central and western Ukraine considered the residents of the south-east to be low-lifes with a slavish mentality who are incapable of fighting for freedom. They staged protests at the Maidan, demanding another run-off vote. Politicians leaning towards the south-east made some clumsy attempts at stirring up similar protests and convened a congress in Severodonetsk, which was later labelled by Ukrainians as ‘separatist’. Later on, however, they backed down for fear of upsetting the country’s newfound fragile stability. Donbas and the rest of the south-east retreated, waiting for a chance to take revenge.
    That revenge came in 2010, when their candidate won the election. A derogatory chant was coined: “Thanks, Donbas, for the president who is an ass.” Tensions in the country grew, not assuaged even by the 2012 UEFA European Football Championship, hosted jointly by Ukraine and Poland. South-easterners got to enjoy their favourite sport whilst Westerners tried their hand at organising a European-level event. Everyone seemed happy and yet western Ukrainian intellectuals, anticipating a forthcoming association with the European Union, were smirking about how they had duped ‘the miners’ by enticing them with their beloved sport.
    Nobody asked ordinary Ukrainians whether they thought an alliance with Europe or with Russia would be better for their future. Those who wanted closer ties with Russia thought the choice was obvious, since their presidential candidate had won. Their opponents reasoned that Ukraine, since it became independent in 1991, only had the option of going down the European path. Any proposals to hold a referendum were dismissed. But when the signing of the European Union Association Agreement was put on hold, people in central and western Ukraine revolted.
    Once again, they resorted to street politics, which Donbas despised. People in Donbas were used to working hard, earning enough to be more than comfortable, and delegating politics to politicians, expecting to receive competent leadership and the protection of Russian speakers’ rights in return. They wanted stability for a country recovering from the 2008 financial crisis and were pleading with their opponents not to incite a civil war.
    Maidan activists took that as a sign of weakness and decided they could defeat these people that they considered ‘red-necks’, now referring to them as ‘titushky’ thugs, ‘Donbas criminals’ that they accused of beating up Maidan protesters. South-eastern politicians had enough power to disperse the protesters but chose to wait instead and kept pulling back the relatively small units of the Berkut special forces. This is how they were defeated and left the south-east on their own to face the new government, and even worse, the mobs and their lust for revenge over ‘the blood of the Maidan martyrs’. The first decision of the new regime was to repeal the regional status of Russian.
    It was a move people in Donbas, Crimea, Kharkov, Odessa and Zaporozhye could not forgive. People who used to prefer hard work to political activism were up in arms. Crimea, which enjoyed the status of autonomous republic and was the base of Russia’s Black Sea Fleet, was lucky to have Russia’s support. Odessa wasn’t so lucky. On 2nd May, Ukrainian Nazis and ‘ultras’ from across the country descended upon the city, dispersed pro-Russian fighters, and proceeded to Kulikovo Pole, where they burned down a tent city and the Trade Union House, killing pensioners, women and other ordinary people who had barricaded themselves inside the building.
    The people of Donbas decided to wait it out, hoping that “after all, they couldn’t possibly…” – they couldn’t possibly use the army against their own citizens, they couldn’t possibly use armoured weaponry against their own citizens, they couldn’t possibly use the air force against their own citizens, they couldn’t possibly use tactical missile systems against their own citizens…
    No Ukrainian politicians were saints, and neither were the people of Donbass – not that anyone had asked them to be, though. The fact of the matter is that every escalation of violence was aimed at them. It was the Ukrainians who kept upping the ante, and nobody cared. The miners have always died, you know. Why should anyone feel sorry for them? They’re ‘dumb slaves’, they wear no balaclavas.
    Back then, in 2014, balaclavas were seen as a symbol of superior people, whilst the ‘stupid miners’ from Donbas (led by Valery Bolotov) and their volunteer supporters from Russia (led by Igor Strelkov) deliberately spurned them. The lives of the residents of impoverished mining towns cost less than the lives of those living in prosperous towns near the Carpathian Mountains. The air in Donbas stinks of soot and is full of coal dust and industrial emissions, so people die of cancer there, whereas the mountain air in Galicia is fresh and fragrant, and the wind of freedom blows in from Poland.
    Children were killed in Donbas. Nobody gave a damn, except Russia and the repressed Russians in the rest of Ukraine. It was rather amusing for the other side – people scraping their dead children off the asphalt and saying: ‘We’re being bombed, we’re scared, our children are dying!” Ukrainians thought it was funny, a just punishment for those dehumanised earth-diggers. They called their children “Colorado beetle larvae” because the stripes of the Colorado potato beetle resemble the St George’s ribbon, which became the symbol of the uprising in Novorossiya.
    All of this convinced Donbas it had the moral high ground, which allowed it to stand tall and weather eight years of incredible hardship. The Ukrainians were granted the chance to reach a political settlement with the Minsk agreements, if they agreed to treat Donbas as a sovereign region within Ukraine. Had they done this, Donbas would have lost interest in politics, returned to its industrial roots, and left policymaking in the hands of western Ukraine again in a few years’ time. But they wouldn’t do this, even for the sake of stopping the war. Recognising the sovereignty of Donbas was a red line for Ukraine, and so was dialogue with Donbas.
    The Ukrainian leadership stuck to those red lines even after Russia said it was going to put an end to the ongoing slaughter at its doorstep. So, what we now have is a new season of war, which has been going on for Donbas since 2014. The two people’s republics’ armies are storming Ukrainian fortifications as the Ukrainian military continues to bomb residential areas in Donetsk. People in Donbas stopped wondering “what they are capable of”. Now they know that the Ukrainian army and government are capable of anything – bombing cities, torturing people, and trying to pass off Donetsk people that they killed for Kiev residents supposedly killed by Russian missile strikes. The only thing they can’t do is admit that the citizens of Donbas are people just like them, people who have their own interests and are prepared to fight for them until they win or die in battle.