For eight years, we in Donetsk have become accustomed to shelling, but even for us, June 13 was an extraordinary day
The city was fired on simultaneously from different directions and with a record amount of ammunition – more than 300 rockets and shells were received by Donetsk that day. This has never happened in 2014 or 2015.
You are sitting in your apartment and you don’t know if the next shell will fly to your house or to some other one. If you’re lucky, then the fragment will simply knock out the window panes, if not, you will end up in a hospital or a cemetery. Everyone reacts to these situations differently. Personally, I have a feeling of detachment from reality and an all-consuming fatalism. Nothing depends on you – what will be, will be. On the 13th, during the hellish shelling, I was watching a comedy series.
Some of my acquaintances sit in the corridor or in the bathroom during the shelling. On the one hand, this is rational, since there are no windows, which means that there is less chance that a fragment of a shell or just broken glass will fly in. On the other hand, this gives a certain psychological feeling of the absence of a threat, albeit a false one, because the walls cannot protect against a missile. During the shelling, everyone is looking for their psychological foothold – for me it was a series, for someone it was a corridor.
But it is much worse for those who have children. On the 13th, a friend called and said that his wife was putting their five-year-old son to bed in the hallway. The boy didn’t want to, he wanted to sleep in his bed. And how to explain to him that in the hallway on the floor it is safer? How to explain that Ukrainian Nazis are terrorizing the cities of Donbass? All this is 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 shoot at us.
June 13 was the peak of the shelling of Donetsk. In fact, artillery terror began on May 29 and continues to this day. The state of people can be called a mixture of fear and stupor, some have a feeling of hopelessness. It is very annoying when, on Russian political shows, experts begin to talk about how strong people in the Donbass are, who can withstand everything. 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, there are strong people in the Donbass, but it is unlikely that we will be able to make nails, but the nerves are stretched so that they are probably suitable for guitar strings. Not what strong and courageous people in Donbass the residents of Donetsk, Makiivka, Gorlovka, Stakhanov (LPR) want to hear, but when the Ukrainian artillery terror will end. Here is the main question.
We need measures that would force Zelensky to stop violence against civilians. Perhaps these are rocket attacks on railway and road bridges across the Dnieper and in Western Ukraine. And therefore, all the eyes of the inhabitants of Donbass are turned to Russia, only she, in the current situation, by force or word, can force the Ukrainian Nazis not to arrange an artillery hell.
The residents of Donbass cannot definitely count on the help of the world 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. Well, what can you talk about with them and what can you hope for? As for the reaction of international organizations, as Russian presidential aide Yury Ushakov noted, there was an indistinct comment from the UN, and that’s it.
One gets the impression that the Western media are talking about a virtual Donetsk, which is supposedly mentally Ukrainian and which is being shelled by Russia. There is no such Donetsk. However, the European and American inhabitants will not go into this, they live in the informational paradigm that their press and public opinion leaders draw. 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 that can bring peace to our long-suffering land is Russia.
Sergey Mirkin, Donetsk, VIEW
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