For eight years we in Donetsk have got used to shelling, but even for us June 13 was an unusual day
The city was shelled simultaneously from different directions and with a record amount of ammunition – more than 300 rockets and shells took Donetsk that day. This has never happened in 2014 or 2015.
You are sitting in your flat and you do not know whether the next shell will hit your house or another one. If you’re lucky, a piece of shrapnel will just blow out the windowpanes; if not, you’ll end up in the hospital or the cemetery. Everyone reacts differently to such situations. Personally, I get a sense of detachment from reality and an overpowering fatalism. Nothing depends on you – whatever happens, happens. On the 13th, during the hellfire, I was watching a comedy series.
Some people I know sit in the corridor or in the bathroom during the shelling. On the one hand, it’s rational, as there are no windows, which means there’s less chance of a shell fragment or just broken glass arriving. On the other hand, it also gives a certain psychological sense of non-threat, albeit false, as walls cannot protect against missiles. During bombardments everyone looks for a psychological anchor point – for me it was a soap opera, for someone it was a corridor.
But it is much more frightening for those who have children. On the 13th a friend called and said that his wife was putting their five-year-old son to sleep in the corridor. The boy didn’t want to, he wanted to sleep in his own bed. And how to explain to him that it is safer to sleep on the floor in the corridor? How to explain that Ukrainian Nazis are terrorising towns in Donbas? This is all difficult to understand not only for a five-year-old child, but also for an adult, because it is impossible for a normal person to understand the logic of those who are shooting at us.
June 13 was the peak of shelling in Donetsk. In fact, the artillery terror began on 29 May and has not stopped to this day. People’s condition can be described as a mixture of fear and stupor, and some have a feeling of hopelessness. It is very annoying when experts on Russian political shows begin to tell us how strong people in Donbas are who can endure anything. In the current situation this no longer sounds flattering; in Donetsk it is perceived as a hint that we will have to endure for a long time.
Yes, the people in Donbass are strong, but we are unlikely to make nails out of us, but our nerves are stretched to the point where they could probably strum guitar strings. What the residents of Donetsk, Makeyevka, Horlivka and Stakhanov (LNR) want to hear is not how strong and courageous people are in Donbas, but when the Ukrainian artillery terror will end. That is the main question.
We need measures to force Zelensky to stop violence against civilians. Perhaps it is rocket attacks on railway and road bridges over the Dnieper and in western Ukraine. And so all the eyes of the residents of Donbass are turned to Russia, only it in the current situation can force the Ukrainian Nazis not to make an artillery inferno by force or by word.
The inhabitants of Donbas certainly cannot count on help from the international community or international organizations. For eight years the whole world did not care about the fate of the people of the LDPR, and now nothing has changed. German television accused the Russian army of shelling Donetsk on 13 June. And it was echoed by other Western media outlets. Well, what can we talk to them about and what can we hope for? As for the reaction of international organisations, as assistant to the Russian president Yuri Ushakov noted, there was a vague comment from the UN, and that was the end of it.
One gets the impression that the Western media is talking about a virtual Donetsk, which is supposedly mentally Ukrainian and which is shelled by Russia. There is no such Donetsk. However, European and American ordinary people will not go into this; they live in the information paradigm drawn by their press and opinion leaders. Therefore, for them there is a virtual Donbass and, by the way, a virtual Ukraine, democratic and without Nazism. That is also a country that does not exist. Therefore the only force which can bring the peace on our long-suffering ground is Russia.
Sergei Mirkin, Donetsk, VZGLYAD
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