Paweł Pieniążek - Greetings from Novorossiya - Eyewitness to the War in Ukraine

“Yes, we had to evacuate. Thank you, ‘volunteers,’ you are great.” A woman with a plastic bag in her hand is clearly exasperated. Like the others, she has taken only the most necessary items. They are all rushing to catch a marshrutka that will take them to a safe haven. For a while they will be living in the student dormitories in the city center.

A young fellow, Oleksij, is standing near one of the buildings. For now, he is not leaving. He believes all he needs is just to move in with some friends who live in a different neighborhood.

A huge cloud of black smoke hovers over the buildings. Just in front I see a billboard displaying a message with a little dove: “Peace to the world.” The fire is consuming the Tochmash plant that makes products for the mining and military industries. An armored personnel carrier with the flag of the “mass mobilization” is moving toward the factory. After a moment you can hear an engine roaring. A tank from battalion Vostok is advancing toward the train station. Vostok is a Ukrainian-Russian separatist unit responsible for capturing the airport in May. They suffered enormous losses.

I manage to get closer to the station. The neighborhood is practically dead. The only people you spot are those waiting for the evacuation marshrutkas or who flee on their own. Obviously, there are exceptions.

“This is my home and I won’t leave it,” an elderly man tells me at the bus stop. Another man tries to con me into giving him some money in return for super important information. In front of one building there are totally demolished cars. One of them is an old Lada, or rather, what is left of it. According to the witnesses, it was smashed by a car full of separatists who were in a big hurry.

A few militants, Western journalists, and some Donetsk residents sit in the street leading to the train station. The separatists have rifles and uncertain looks on their faces. They get animated when reinforcements pass by. Asphalt on the street has been furrowed by the treads of armored vehicles. Every now and then you can hear more explosions. After a while, a car with some militants pulls over.

“You will come with us. You will see what ‘they’ have done,” says a militant. “They” obviously means Ukrainians.

I return to the devastated Lada. The owner of the shoe shop nearby is taking his goods to the car. The militants standing next to the car don’t say a word. One of them separates from the rest and tells us to follow him. He walks us between the apartment buildings. I can see shattered windows. It is a crucial sign that the place has been shelled. Here a projectile hit a playground. What was left was a hole in the ground, shoes, sunglasses, and a pool of blood. Journalists who were standing there a little earlier claim that just a moment ago a woman’s body was taken away. According to the outraged residents who described the whole event to the journalists she didn’t even live there. She was probably going to work through the courtyards and had bad luck. Dead on the spot. A man who stood nearby was luckier. Shrapnel hit his leg. The residents dragged him to the stairwell and dressed his wound. The entire floor is covered with blood.

A group of residents stands at the playground and they curse the Ukrainians. “But the very first shell came from over there,” says one of them, pointing at the Donetsk center where separatist forces are located. Others start berating him.

“What are you talking about? What’s the difference where the first one came from, if this one obviously came from the north?”

On the other side of the street a projectile fell in front of a multistory building. A few meters from the stairwell you can see a formidable crater. Everything around has been hit by shrapnel. Two nearby cars are good for nothing. They are all perforated. A man is hanging out near a white Lanos. I ask him if the car is his.

“No. It is my daughter’s. It has been robbed,” he says. I notice an open glove compartment and a few things scattered around.

A few people have moved into the basement of the destroyed building. They have water, some food, cardboard boxes, and blankets. They are prepared to stay there a little longer. They don’t want to leave because they are afraid that belongings left in their apartments will share the fate of the white Lanos, that they will be plundered.

“As we know here, ‘What’s war for somebody is as good as it gets for somebody else,’” observes one of the women, recalling a popular Ukrainian saying.

At the Artem Street station I am pestered by an elderly drunken man. His speech is so muddled I can’t understand him. Finally he is interrupted by a man over thirty, who knows him and gets rid of him. His name is Sergey and he lives near the station.

“I had to go out because I ran out of cigarettes,” he says.

“But there was shooting just a while ago!”

The explosions stopped perhaps half an hour earlier, but the enormous cloud of black smoke is still hovering over the Tochmash factory.

“Addiction. What can I do?” He smiles. His voice is very pleasant and he looks like a decent person.

“It’s not only your problem,” I joke, pointing at the drunken man, who walks away and soon vanishes behind the apartment buildings.

“Today I have had a drink, too, but only one shot. To calm my nerves.”

There is a short pause, then Sergey turns to me.

“Paulie, it’s just a friendly invitation. Come to my place, we’ll have tea and we’ll talk. Just for half an hour.”

“OK. Let’s go, but I want to come back before it gets dark.”

Sergey lives about a hundred meters from the station. He works, as he claims, in “the supermarket for the rich.” He is a security guard. He was supposed to go to work, but he was awakened by the explosion.

“I heard the shell and I opened my eyes. I checked whether everything was all right,” he says. Everything was all right. His house didn’t suffer, but it was a close call. He lives about four hundred meters from the place where the woman going to work was killed.

“My friend from abroad,” he tells a neighbor standing before the building.

His apartment is very modest. A few closets, a bed, a small table, and a second room whose door is closed. “If you and your friends ever need lodging, here even three people can sleep,” he tries to persuade me. He has two cats who are the apple of his eye.

I notice a flyer from the Donetsk People’s Republic on the table. Sergey is its champion, but he doesn’t seem fanatical, as do many others I have met in cities with a separatist majority. We change the subject and start talking about jobs. There is less and less work because everything is closing down. People live on the last of the savings they have been squirreling away. “If this continues, people will open those closed shops themselves,” claims Sergey. He is planning to go to work tomorrow although he doesn’t know whether it will be peaceful. He says that you have to hold on to any job by hook or by crook because if you lose it, you won’t find another one.

For a few days I didn’t know what really happened in Donetsk. I found out quite accidentally when I met “Pastor” from battalion Donbas.

I left Donetsk on July 22, a day after the shelling of the train station. Leaving wasn’t easy. Due to the dangerous conditions one of the bus stations was shut down and the majority of trains were cancelled. Those that were running were significantly delayed. I hoped to leave Donetsk before noon, but in the end my train left in the evening. Before I reached Artemivsk and battalion Donbas I had to sleep over in Krasnoarmiysk. Traveling by car or by bus at night in those areas was unsafe. Skirmishes between Ukrainian forces and separatists were still going on.