Being free from junta, fascists, and everything human Part 3

Being free from junta, fascists, and everything human Part 1

Being free from junta, fascists, and everything human Part 2

There is an investigation conducted in “lpr' now, an investigation which is appalling and petrifying. A number of cossack, orthodox, “novoross” local units of self-defense and volunteer battalions which “our local guys” from Luhansk and Donetsk served in, those who belonged to the russian orthodox church, not “Banderovtsy”,  'junta”, “The Right Sector”. These “our local guys” mutilated and dismembered people who were alive at that time,  buried them alive,  tortured them, raped them, and burned them alive. The list of the crimes and how they were executed shock with cynicism and … I do not have words to describe them; words fail me. Is it inhumane; is it atrocity? Animals are more humane, much more!

Who were killed by them? Women, old people, businesspeople, just strangers, and even their comrades-in-arms.

“Novorissian” social networks are full of information about women, children, men who have disappeared ...

Every day corpses surface; burial grounds and burnt bones are found.

Where? On the “liberated” territory.

“You know I hated you. You wrote bad things about self-defense, about our volunteer battalion militants, about russians. But they defended us. We believed them, we fed them, we prayed for them”, as my compatriot from the town of Chervonopartizansk wrote to me. “Yes, there were rumours in the town that they take away cars. But I had no car and I did not believe it. They said it was “Ukry” (Ukrainians) who did it. I did not asked myself the question how “Ukry” could appear in our town. There were rumours that people disappeared. But, maybe, they had run away to “Ukropiya” (Ukraine), maybe, to lovers; maybe, they had been kidnapped by Ukrainian militaries. It was easy to invent some justifications. Here, “terrorists” from Ukrainian Armed Forces are accused of everything. It is easy this way. I justified everything and did not believe anything – it was not my business. Pensions are not paid – Ukraine is to blame. No drugs – Ukraine is to blame as it has not delivered by them. It is only now that I understand that Ukraine had no chance to pay out the money and to deliver drugs as the banks were robbed and we were against Ukraine, and there is the front where Ukrainians are killed. How come that now I am aware of that and understand. No, it was not your stories. I argued with you and considered them to be your propaganda; something that offended our “defenders”. Then my niece disappeared. She went to a kindergarten to take her kid home. She is 23. She is fragile, beautiful, slim; as a ray of light. I don't write “was”. We are still waiting for her o come back. We don't believe that … you understand what. We are searching for her. It is painful to hear when people say that “she may have run away to “Ukropiya” or to a lover”. And she can't have been kidnapped by Ukrainian Armed Forces militants. There are no Ukrainian Armed Forces in Chervonopartizansk, only russian troops, “lpr” commandant's office, and “our good guys”” ...

Very few people in the Donbas live, so to say, within the country, the town, the society.  They live within their own, closed world where they have television and fear. This is the result of their life in close groups of people and dark mines with the master, mother, father, and God.

I don't know why it is like that. Why some people care about the whole Donbas and the whole Ukraine, and others do not care about the car of their neighbour which is parked on the lawn, about bribes given to someone, about a cigarette butt which was not thrown into a trashcan. 

Maybe, because some people are creating the country while others are living in an illusory world, built by them, and they perish when they are in touch with reality.

There have been no Ukraine on the “liberated” areas for a long time. “Free” citizens are living there. Each of them is “free” in their own way.

Crimes against civilians are shocking because of their enormity and cruelty. But it is we, “junta”, Banderovtsy, living in Ukraine who notice them. We feel compassion, and cry. We are in pain!

Crimes against civilians, violence against women, children, old people there, in the zone, are not noticed and investigated.

Some people do not notice because they themselves commit them. Others – because the crimes are not personally against them or they try to justify the criminals blaming the victims.

“He may be the aimer,” neighbours whisper casting glances at the man shot in Horlivka.

Olena Stepova Glavpost

New service "Explain Ukraine". This is a daily mailout of three articles which were written about the situation in the Donbas by Donbas journalists and translated into English. Honest vision of people who work in the field is unbiased and fresh which is crucial in the world which is full of desinformation and propaganda. We try to share this vision in out daily mailout.  You can subscribe here.