The Ukrainians Trapped in Between
By Alisa Sopova, June 25, 2022 , WSJ
Once known as the vibrant “city of a million roses,” Donetsk has over the past 8 years turned into a showcase for what Russia has in store for the Ukrainian territories it occupies. Major infrastructure—notably, the international airport—was
destroyed in fighting, and years of neglect and plunder have taken a toll. Visiting my family every summer, I have seen the progressive deterioration: uncollected garbage piles, disappearing public transportation, dim or absent street lighting.
Back in 2014, many of my middle-class friends underestimated the threat that the separatists posed, assuming that they were too marginal to cause real change or that the police would deal with them. Last time I visited Donetsk in 2021, a friend who is an
accountant in her 30s shared her regrets with me: “If only I realized what was coming back then, I would have trained to fight them off, physically if need be.”
Even those who were initially indifferent or ambivalent toward the new order quickly became disillusioned as the city stagnated, growing lawless and isolated, with the overall atmosphere of a terror enclave run by warlords. People gradually moved away in
search of better and safer lives. Those who stayed were often stigmatized as traitors and collaborators in Ukrainian public discourse, even though many remained to tend to elderly or disabled family members.
Perhaps more people would have left if they had felt welcome elsewhere. Not a single country opened its doors to Ukrainians from Donetsk, Luhansk and Crimea in 2014, as they have done in 2022. In Ukraine itself, citizens with residence records in the
occupied territories were often discriminated against. Some rental ads openly specified “People from Donetsk and Luhansk need not apply,” and displaced citizens struggled to obtain mortgages or compensation for their destroyed homes. Since 2014,
organizations such as UNHCR, OSCE and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative have published numerous reports calling attention to the human rights of civilians fleeing from the occupied territories. They document that many of the internally displaced have
difficulty moving around Ukraine and face unequal access to jobs, grueling procedures of document verification, surprise home visits from the authorities and hostile attitudes in their new communities.
Civilians from the occupied territories were still Ukrainian citizens, but to their countrymen outside of Donbas, they had become scapegoats for the boiling rage over Russian aggression. Because the residents of the Russian-controlled parts of Donetsk
and Luhansk lived under occupation and spoke Russian, the story went, they likely had pro-Russian sentiments, which made them a fifth column. Hundreds of thousands of Russophones currently fighting for Ukraine against Russian invasion are living
testimony to the falsehood of these claims.
With the onset of the larger invasion this winter, the situation inside occupied Donbas has deteriorated further. Separatist authorities round up for military conscription every man on the street who doesn’t look old or disabled. Untrained and ill-
equipped, these men are deployed to the front lines as cannon fodder. Many who surrender to Ukrainian government troops end up prosecuted for treason. This month one of them, 26-year-old Nikita Baenko, was sentenced to 15 years imprisonment. The
Ukrainian prosecutor explained: “Nikita says he had no choice, he was forced to [join the separatist forces]. But it’s easy to refute. He is a person who has been living for 8 years in the so-called ‘Donetsk People’s Republic’—the occupied
territory of Ukraine—while seeing perfectly well what was going on there.”
Those who managed to avoid conscription did so by not leaving their homes for months, not opening doors, not picking up the phone, hiding even from neighbors and relatives, entirely dependent on trusted females for survival. The result has been a
peculiar all-female public space. Traditionally male jobs such as moving furniture or driving taxis are now done exclusively by women or not at all.
Inside Donetsk, a city of a million people, water has all but stopped running because the front line has cut the water supply route. Some neighborhoods have tap water rationed for two hours every other day, others have none at all. A resident of downtown
Donetsk told me that, during recent shelling near her apartment building, she had to choose between taking cover or taking a shower while the water was still running (she showered). To do laundry, she and her girlfriends have shared tips on manually
pouring water into their washing machines. Such tricks might not be enough, however, to maintain hygiene in the coming summer heat.
Russia cited the suffering of Donbas’s people over the past eight years as the reason for its February aggression. What the Kremlin forgot to mention was that Russia itself was the primary cause of this suffering and that the invasion would only
aggravate it. By using people from Donbas as a pretext for the invasion (without ever asking their opinion), Russia made them complicit, disqualifying their voices and their suffering. As a result, I dare not even mention that my family lives under
rocket attacks and lacks access to water for fear of sounding like Russian propaganda.
Populations living under occupation are often seen as dangerously ambiguous. Are they hostages or collaborators? Will they turn into a Trojan horse once reintegrated? For Ukraine, these questions are only becoming more vexed, as the size of the occupied
territories has rapidly increased during the current phase of the invasion, and millions more Ukrainians now find themselves living with that terrible ambiguity. These people must not be branded as traitors or enemies from within. As Ukraine aspires to
regain control over its occupied territories, it should plan to reintegrate their populations with dignity. Unlike Russia’s autocracy, Ukraine’s democracy should embrace diversity as its greatest strength.
Ms. Sopova is an independent journalist and a Ph.D. candidate in anthropology at Princeton University. Her reporting and research focus on civilian experiences of the war in Ukraine.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-ukrainians-trapped-in-between-11656129660
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