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

They are able to enter the building two days later. (In the course of a month, the building’s “owner” will change a few times. Either it is seized by the activists from the emerging separatist movement or it is recaptured by the police. In the end, the separatist movement will prevail and settle there for good. It will become their headquarters.) By ignoring the assault, the passive police only made this easier. Home Ministry forces were standing there with their shields ready but they didn’t even budge. Gubarev stormed the assembly room of the Regional Council and once again proclaimed himself the “people’s governor.” The demonstrators forced the local assembly to announce an independence referendum for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

At the beginning of April they eventually take total control of the Regional Administration Building. The regional authorities have to leave. The freshly named governor, and businessman, Serhiy Taruta was not able to hold off the militants. Instead of clearly describing his position, he was evasive and tried to mix water with fire. What is more, he simply ignored the “Russian Spring,” as the demonstrators call it. Step by step, the Russian Spring spreads to more cities and towns, but in the media Taruta keeps repeating that the integrity of Ukraine is not threatened. He was the only one among the official Ukrainian representatives who insisted on calling for a referendum, but in a different form. It was supposed to be held later, and the citizens were to answer questions regarding decentralization and the status of the Russian language. For the supporters of a united Ukraine it was an excessive bow before the self-proclaimed authorities. For the separatists the bow was not enough. In the end none of the parties trusts him. Those in power are completely losing their authority.

According to Gubarev, both the authorities and the opposition are at fault. Actually, all the sympathizers of the separatists share this view, but they are not alone. It is the lack of hope that the Ukrainian opposition can change anything that makes it easier for the separatists to take over more cities. After all, nobody is willing to defend rotten authorities and a nonfunctioning state, even if there is a risk that they will be replaced by something more atrocious.

There was only one person who could stabilize the situation or at least halt the state’s disintegration in Donbas. It was Rinat Akhmetov, the wealthiest Ukrainian and, among other things, the owner of the most expensive apartment in London. As in the majority of such cases in post-Soviet territory, nobody really knows where his money comes from. The first information about his legal business appeared in 1995 when he founded Donetsk City Bank. When Kiev realized that in the eastern regions businesspeople enjoy the highest respect, Akhmetov was offered a position as governor. Leaks about this offer appeared just a few hours after the crowd had stormed the Donetsk regional administration. Another oligarch, Igor Kolomoyskiy, was chosen as governor in the Dnipropetrovsk region, for similar reasons. Almost every passerby in Dnipropetrovsk asserts that if it weren’t for him things would take a different turn. “He’s our boy,” explains Iryna, a middle-aged resident of Dnipropetrovsk. However, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, unlike in Donbas, public opinion is in favor of Kiev.

Unlike Kolomoyskiy, Akhmetov rejected the offer to become governor and decided to continue his ambiguous game. “If the police attack people, I will take their side,” maintained the oligarch at the beginning of the demonstrations in Donetsk. It was his first really courageous declaration. Somehow, during the protests on the Maidan, Akhmetov was not bothered by the fact that police attacked people many times. This time the police are very consistent and do nothing, even during a demonstration on March 13 in Donetsk when the first victim of the Russian Spring dies.

Almost everybody in Donbas identifies oligarchy, thieving, and corruption as the most infuriating of vices. It is a paradox that hardly anybody in Donbas attributes these traits to Akhmetov.

“The whole thing is the fault of these oligarchs. They appropriated everything for themselves,” says Volodymyr, a retiree.

“So Akhmetov is guilty, too?” I provoke him.

“He’s different. Maybe Akhmetov is fabulously wealthy, but he shares some of his fortune. His wealth trickles down to us, too. He is creating new jobs and making investments in the cities. He isn’t cheap like the others.”

Volodymyr is not convinced by the argument that, if Akhmetov paid into the state budget as much as he owed, much more would “trickle” to the local population.

The fact that the oligarch didn’t decide to stabilize the situation in the Donetsk region made the authorities fall even faster. He was supposedly supporting the separatist movement from the time of its difficult beginning. Akhmetov hoped that his business would thrive and Donbas would turn into his private ranch. Nevertheless, the separatists escaped his control and were mostly taken over by Russia.

What is this oligarch’s role in the separatist movement? Nobody knows. Back in May Gubarev claimed that two-thirds of the pro-Russian activists were funded by Akhmetov.

The building that houses his company DTEK rises in the center of Donetsk, right next to the occupied building of the regional administration. Nobody has ever tried to take it over, destroy it, or even spray anything on the walls as the separatists like to do. At the same time Ukrainian forces are stationed in the many offices of his company. Nevertheless, it is he who loses most in the war—his factories are not functioning and they are occasionally shelled. From organizer and master of the situation he turns more and more into its victim. When the situation escapes his control, conditions in Donbas deteriorate. Local demonstrators don’t walk the streets with baseball bats any more. Soon knives show up and finally firearms. Uniformed people with automatic weapons and grenade launchers become commonplace and no one is astonished. More buildings are taken over. The police, so passive in the past, side with the separatists. Now it is the militants who administer “justice.” People don’t mock them any longer. It is too late to stop them without fighting.

“Had the state been functioning and its officials following orders, everything could have been suppressed by the police and without the special forces,” states Semen Semenchenko from Donbas, the commander of the volunteer battalion Donbas. “I have witnessed the entire process with my own eyes,” he adds. It is true that, at the beginning of the conflict, pro-Russian separatists couldn’t brag about their efficiency or numbers. The police would have dealt with them without bringing reinforcements from other cities.

In April the pro-Ukrainian movement in Donetsk is still easily able to organize demonstrations with more people than the separatists are. But the largest group of people are the “indifferent” types, who don’t care what is happening around them. We simply want to make money in order to live quietly, they say. To them pro-Russian demonstrators are objects of ridicule. “Look, it’s a madhouse,” a man on a bus turns to me. He points to the occupied Regional State Administration, surrounded by dozens of people and several tents. If I were not interested in current events, I wouldn’t even notice the Russian Spring in Donetsk.

“We are here to defend Donbas from the Kiev junta, who despise the Russian-speaking population.” That’s what I hear in the tent of the Communist Party of Ukraine. Other separatists often add that Donbas returns too much tax money to Kiev. In fact, Donbas receives two times more than it pays in. This is not a secret and many people in Donetsk know it. They also know that Russian speakers have never been discriminated against in Ukraine, particularly in the capital of Donbas, where it’s fairly rare that you hear Ukrainian. That’s why pro-Russian separatists can hardly fire up the crowds. Their rhetoric and demands are completely incomprehensible in this city of almost one million residents. “Nobody is discriminating against us,” says Andrij, visibly surprised.