Pro-Russian separatists first took up arms in Slaviansk in 2014 with the support of part of the population. Today many are still in conflict
The sign welcoming the city of Svaliansk is riddled with bullet holes. From a distance they look like red flowers drawn on the colors of the Ukrainian flag. But up close you can see that all they have done is paint a flower with each projectile impact. At the bottom of the sign, a date stands out: April 12, 2014.
Viktor Ivanovitch Butko waits leaning against a nearby wall. It snows and is quite windy in the heart of Donbass. Viktor wears a thick jacket and a hat with woolen earflaps. He is 74 years old, has 5 children, 7 grandchildren and 3 great-grandchildren. He has plenty of energy. He continues to work as an editor on his small press. But what he wants to talk about is something else. The first thing he does is point to a dilapidated building about 200 meters away. It is an old health center. “The Russian fascists established their base of operations there. We bombed them until they were gone,” he explains.
Two young men from Svaliansk coming out of a café have heard Viktor, who is not exactly speaking softly. One of them didn’t like what he heard at all. He approaches her and says several things to her, visibly angry. They argue. In Russian. Here, in the Donbass, everyone speaks Russian. The young man tells him that the “only fascists here are the Ukrainians.” They continue arguing for a couple of minutes until the boy gets in the car and drives away.
Almost 8 years have passed since the bullets hit that billboard. But the wounds are still very open in Svaliansk.
This Ukrainian steppe city, located about 200 kilometers from the Russian border and full of Soviet-style housing, is the ‘ground zero’ of the Donbass war. It was here that, on July 12, 2014, pro-Russian separatists first took up arms and took control of the city. The Ukrainian government, still in shock from the recent Russian occupation of Crimea, needed almost three months to regain control of the municipality after heavy battles. The insurgents fled the city and headed towards Donetsk, the capital of Donbass.
What seemed like a great success was not so much. There, in Donetsk, the Ukrainian army was not so successful. That area – and 30% of Donbass – is still in the hands of the separatists today. And, furthermore, to add pressure to a territory that in the last 8 years has seen more than 14,000 people die in combat, Vladimir Putin has deployed some 100,000 Russian soldiers to the border in recent weeks, ready to act as soon as they receive the order. .
Viktor, at 74, is clear that if Putin invades Ukraine he will volunteer to fight again. He says he is prepared and has “official weapons” at home. He would do it for the hundreds of people who died in his city, for his homeland and for his daughter, who fled to Poland at the beginning of the war and whom he has never seen again.
Russian involvement
For Viktor, the events of that July 12 would not have been possible without previous preparation and the support of Russia. It has numerous “proofs.” For example, after the uprising they discovered that Russian secret service agents had been working in the city for months. They also learned that the insurgents had weapons already stored in a local Russian church.
Volodimir Rudaklin, 44, adds another fact that supports this thesis: the Police surrendered without offering any resistance to the group of assailants, which initially consisted of only 50 soldiers who crossed the Russian border.
Volodimir was an orphanage teacher when the first bullets were fired in Donbass. Remember that the separatists occupied the City Hall and were offering weapons to all the neighbors. Openly pro-Ukrainians were killed, tortured or imprisoned until someone paid for their release. The rest were told that the best thing they could do was take a machine gun because the “Maidan revolt fascists” were going to kill everyone who spoke Russian. “Many believed them because it was what we had been hearing on Russian television channels (today censored in Ukraine) in recent months,” he explains.
Many citizens took up arms. There is one piece of information that is revealing. 50 individuals arrived in Svaliansk. When the insurgents fled from there on July 5, the group numbered about 2,000 people.
Months later, the Government allowed the return to the city of all those who had fled and had not killed anyone. About 200 people returned, who were able to return to their lives with a series of restrictions. Viktor is fine with it because “we need to forgive” and move on. He believes that an occupation of Svaliansk by Russia could take place again, but he is convinced that this time the neighbors who gave him support would not do so.
Volodomir also believes that coexistence has improved in the city. “We greeted each other on the street and that in 2014 was impossible.”
– But are you friends?
– Not that. That is even more impossible.
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