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

Yesterday yet another ceasefire agreement was signed between the separatists and Kiev. I had no illusions that it would last, but I thought that fighting would start at least two days later. Yet it erupted the next day. The Press Service of the Donetsk People’s Republic announced on Twitter that “The Armed Forces of Novorossiya are capturing Mariupol.” There was no doubt who was behind the attack. There was a rumor that a large fleet of tanks and armored personnel carriers had crossed the Russian border heading toward Mariupol.

When we get closer to the battlefield, we realize that the situation is more serious than we thought. Heavy shelling is really close. It must be large caliber because the explosions are very powerful. We hide behind the last apartment building, only several hundred meters from the shelled Ukrainian checkpoint. It is a half kilometer or so from where the shells hit the ground. With each strike you can hear a terrible boom and the ground shudders slightly.

Instead of hiding in the basement the local residents stand outside the stairwell, in the middle of the square, and despair. A guardsman from Azov has arrived. He may be twenty and he is scared.

“So what that we have rifles if they have artillery?” he asks rhetorically.

I run downstairs and open the basement door. You can enter the basement not only from the stairwell but also from the main entrance.

“Please go to the basement. It is safer there,” I tell people who stand outside.

“And if the basement collapses, then what?” someone from the crowd asks me.

I don’t tell him, but maybe I should, that if the basement gives way in the explosion, not even shreds will be left of him standing there in the open space.

“If you don’t want to stay in the basement, at least don’t stand in the middle of the square, come closer to the walls.”

Some have listened to me, others are still outside because they think they know better. Even a young fellow in uniform can’t convince them. He keeps trying to get them to respect his military background.

“You journalists, you only talk and talk, but you do nothing,” a man suddenly snaps at me. Missiles explode around us, so a conversation about what it means to be a journalist seems to me a little inappropriate.

“And what is it you are doing?” I ask him.

“I’m standing here… I live here,” he responds, thrown off balance.

In the end he decides to hide in the stairwell.

After about two hours the situation calms down. We walk toward the checkpoint. Many journalists have come to the scene. The checkpoint itself was only slightly damaged. But a truck, some grass, a gas station, and a medical emergency building were completely incinerated.

Even a few days before the shelling Mariupol had already been living in fear. In Novoazovsk, forty kilometers from Mariupol and ten kilometers from the Russian border, at least thirty tanks appeared. They came from abroad and dislodged the remaining units of the National Guard from the city. The Ukrainian forces, which had been in no way equipped to defend the place, were taken by surprise. Apart from scattered units of the National Guard, only three volunteer battalions, Azov, Dnipro-1, and Shakhtarsk, are based in Mariupol. Almost every day the governor of the Donetsk region, Serhiy Taruta, affirmed that everything was all right and that the city was ready for defense. Hardly anyone, however, believed his words. In March he said the same about Donetsk, and soon after, he fled the city and moved the entire administration to Mariupol.

The hypothesis that the city has not been secured was confirmed by soldiers. “If these tanks attacked us, the city would be captured in an hour,” “Locha” from the battalion Dnipro-1 tells me. A lack of heavy equipment is a problem here. “We won’t defeat tanks with rifles,” claims one of the guardsmen. Then he adds that even the rocket-propelled grenades they have are too old to fight the modern tanks advancing on Novoazovsk.

Almost every pro-Ukrainian resident would say: “We need tanks.”

Others would add: “…and antitank weapons.”

In the next few days, artillery, tanks, and other military units were sent here to defend the city. They brought heavy equipment for building fortifications and digging antitank ditches.

Earlier, something unusual had happened in Mariupol. The city, rather passive and politically indifferent in the past, suddenly turned into a place with a strong movement of pro-Ukrainian resistance. When its residents heard that Mariupol might be attacked and return under separatist control, they started to organize.

On August 28 an antiwar and pro-Ukrainian demonstration was held, attended by at least five thousand people. This is a surprising number for Mariupol with its population of five hundred thousand, who are generally not willing to take to the streets, and many of whom still support the separatists. Although there were no tents and no one wanted to occupy the main square, the atmosphere resembled that of the early Maidan in Kiev.

“Glory to Ukraine!” someone shouts from the platform. “Glory to the heroes!” the crowd shouts back. The entire square is filled with Ukrainian flags and hand-painted posters. “I want to live in Ukraine.” A young man holds a piece of paper. He has climbed the pedestal where the Lenin statue used to stand. There is a girl with him of the same age, dressed in a T-shirt showing a trident and waving the Ukrainian flag. Somewhere else you can see a poster saying, “Down with Putin!” and next to it “PTN PNCH,” which is a subtle acronym of the less subtle slogan in Russian, “Putin, go fuck yourself.” The residents are demanding immediate measures that would improve the city’s defensibility. They are ready to protect it, too.

On the next day a group of volunteers went to the eastern checkpoint to assist with building fortifications. There were only several dozen persons, not as many as at the demonstration, but new people were joining in. After they got the appropriate permit from the guardsmen, they set to work. Armed with shovels, they dug for hours every day. No one doubted that thanks to their efforts the city would be defended.

“Our action is symbolic. We want to show to our defenders that they are not alone, that they are backed by the city residents,” says Roman who joined the action. In Mariupol I will hear a similar statement many times.

Another undertaking of Mariupol’s civilian defenders is a “human shield.” The residents formed a human chain in the eastern outskirts of the city and made a pledge to stand there until the tanks showed up. They will defend the city with their own bodies, and they believe that separatists and Russians will not fire at civilians. “Mariupol is Ukraine,” they shout. At a preset time they sing the Ukrainian anthem. Then they approach one of the checkpoints. They call the guardsmen “heroes.” They take pictures with them and thank them for defending Mariupol.

The Mariupol events were the first mobilization of this kind, and so far the only one. In other cities people prefer not to be involved because you never know who will rule the city next. Here, this fear has been partly conquered.

It was back in April, in Slovyansk, that I heard for the first time that the separatists wanted to create a second Transnistria on the territories they controlled. At the same time, Evgeny Gorbik, the leader of the green men, argued that integration with Russia didn’t have to mean becoming part of it.

“It didn’t happen in the cases of Abkhazia and South Ossetia,” he said. He added that, to him, Russia was good at making states, which didn’t mean that those states had to join Russia right away. To me, comparing Donbas to two parastates unrecognized by anybody but Russia sounded like a bad joke. Who would like to have the same standards of living as Abkhazians or Ossetians? With time I understood that it wasn’t a joke. A parastate in the post-Soviet style was also being built in Donbas.