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

After a few days spent in Artemivsk, I went with battalion Donbas to their bases in Kurakhove and Krasnoarmiysk. That’s where I met Pastor. He was accompanying us on a bus going from one base to another. I found out who was shelling Donetsk. Pastor’s battalion and other units, whose main force, according to him, was Right Sector, tried to take up positions close to the city. This means the shelling was done by Ukrainian artillery. They always reinforce the infantry. No serious action can be successful without them. However, the reinforcements were insufficient, and they had to withdraw. That’s when the artillery fire ceased.

Pastor has been a sniper, but not for very long.

“When they asked me at the recruitment commission what nickname I wanted to choose, I responded: ‘Pastor.’ They stared at me wide-eyed and asked: ‘Why?’ And I really am a pastor,” he laughs. Now he is the unofficial chaplain of his unit. He comes from the Kiev region, but the majority of his battalion, as its name indicates, are people from Donbas. They don’t like separatists and they want to live in Ukraine. They decided to reach for weapons and put up armed resistance against them.

The first time I met battalion Donbas was in Artemivsk, about one hundred kilometers north of Donetsk. They came in the evening to pick me up along with other journalists. It was already dark when two cars pulled over. One was a Mercedes covered with blue-and-yellow stickers saying “United Ukraine,” the other was an SUV. Both cars have logos on them: “Independent Special Battalion Donbas.” There are uniformed men with guns inside.

“Get in,” says a driver. We are going to a boarding school dormitory that serves as battalion base. It is only the next morning that I have a chance to look at other vehicles. Several cars show traces of fighting. One of them, a silver sedan, is missing a grille and a headlamp. You can see a hole in the windshield, right at head level and another, a little lower, at chest level. Supposedly, the car was seized from the separatists. When it was seized, it was full of blood.

All vehicles commencing a military action are covered with yellow adhesive tape, and so are the soldiers. It is the trademark of the antiterrorist forces. The tape is supposed to protect the units from friendly fire.

They walk us through the dark corridors and they don’t even let us turn on our cell phone lights. “Snipers can be over there.”

A guardsman, “Boost,” points to the window. Battalion commander Semen Semenchenko waits for us inside. He is in uniform but without a balaclava. When the photographers want to take his picture, he puts it on.

For a long time Semenchenko hasn’t shown his face and he has never revealed his true name. He has done this for the same reason as many people from Donbas. His family (he has four children) could be in danger. He took his balaclava off only when Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko decorated him with the Order of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, third class. It is awarded for “exceptional service in defense of state security.” By that time his family was already in a safe place. Hiding under the balaclava didn’t guarantee his anonymity. Forty-year-old Semenchenko was one of the organizers of the Euromaidan in Donetsk. He was active in a party called Self-Reliance, so there was a good chance that someone would recognize him. If you googled “Semen Semechenko” you could find scattered photos of a man one might suspect was him. They say that before the conflict he had worked in the field of monitoring and security. He has a diploma in filmmaking and he gained his military experience in the Soviet and then Ukrainian armies. As he tells me the day after I arrived, it was the Maidan that stopped him from leaving Ukraine.

“I hadn’t believed that anything would ever change. Those who went out to protest made it possible to believe in this country again,” he declares. When the separatists reached for weapons, he realized that he should do the same. For the insurgents he became enemy number one.

But Semenchenko has no illusions that everything changed after the Maidan. Chaos, corruption, lies, and shady dealings have remained untouched. Ukraine can’t be transformed if these problems are not faced. And displaying Ukrainian flags in the cities occupied by separatists won’t help.

“If you act like a toy soldier, follow orders respectfully, and if you don’t ask questions, everything is terrific. Well, unless you are hit by shrapnel. But if you talk about what you see, and you want to defend your home, then you meet with resistance,” he says. In principle, very little has changed. According to him, the Maidan was only the first successful battle against the system that is now counterattacking. That’s why Semenchenko decided to bet not only on military force but also on politics. Thanks to the popularity enjoyed by his battalion he intends to carry out his program. For example, in late June he organized a rally whose purpose was to make Kiev’s attitude toward the separatists more belligerent. Several thousand Kiev residents showed up.

Although Semenchenko gave contradictory answers when asked about his involvement in politics, in the end he took his chances in the elections. He claims that his people in Parliament will have an impact on the army’s structure and operations in eastern Ukraine. The main political objectives of Donbas are a little murky. They include fighting corruption, effecting modernization of the army, and providing support for “patriotic attitudes.”

Many Donbas residents were sold on Ukraine only when they realized what the separatists’ rule was like. Some decided to join volunteer battalions fighting for Ukraine, and most of those joined Donbas. Although the battalion was formed in April, it was given legal status only in May and was integrated into the National Guard of Ukraine.

In the battalion I meet many people connected to the region. One of them is fifty-year-old “Iron Man” from Slovyansk who had been fighting on the Maidan and had been shot by a sniper. He arrived in the unit from Vienna where he had received a titanium implant thanks to international aid. Others, like Pastor, didn’t go to the Maidan, nor did they consistently support it. But once they are in the battalion, they have no doubts which side to take. Another guardsman fled Donetsk after someone wrote his apartment number in the stairwell. He was harassed several times by people with guns. He sent his family away, left Donetsk, and joined the battalion. “I have no place to go back to,” he says quietly, ending the phone conversation. His house has just been shelled.

The difference between volunteer battalions and regular forces is that people are better motivated in the former. After all, it was their decision to reach for weapons. They were not forced to do so by draft boards. Very often their enthusiasm transcends their skills. They haven’t all had military experience, but many have had a spell in the army or police.

Apart from residents of Donbas, you can meet all of Ukraine in the battalion. Some men are from the west—for example, a twenty-something from Lviv. Some are from Crimea. They had to flee the areas occupied by the Russians.

When I sit on the steps in front of the dorm-turned-base, I am approached by “Asker,” which in the Crimean Tatar language simply means a soldier. He sits next to me and he wants to check his email. He plays for me his favorite music, songs of the Crimean Tatars. As I found out much later from another Donbaser from Crimea, Asker was wounded when his battalion was seizing Popasna, a town in the Luhansk region, several dozen kilometers away. He was taken to the hospital and then disappeared. He just vanished into thin air. Men in battalion Donbas suspect that he was kidnapped by separatists.