TORETSK, Ukraine – On the eve of President Petro Poroshenko’s July 5 visit to Sloviansk in Donetsk Oblast to mark the two years since the city’s liberation from Russian-backed separatists, an angry crowd confronted Ukrainian troops in the smaller city of Toretsk, located some 55 kilometers south.
About 100 protesters attempted to block the movement of Ukrainian troops around the front line city, with 35,000 residents nearly 700 kilometers southeast of Kyiv. They demanded that the soldiers leave. The protesters said the presence of the Ukrainian military was provoking shelling by Russian-separatist forces from the nearby Kremlin-controlled city of Horlivka.
The demonstrators were eventually dispersed, and eight were arrested. Two have already been sentenced to community work.
ZONE OF CONFLICT: A map showing the area of military operations in the Donbas. The area under the control of the Ukrainian government has remained virtually static since shortly after the Minsk II agreement was signed in February 2015. However, there have been several anti-government protests in areas held by Ukrainian forces, where people feel that the continued presence of the armed forces is fueling the conflict.
Vyacheslav Abroskin, Donetsk Oblast’s police chief, said many in the crowd were drunk and the ringleaders would be brought to account for the disorder. But this was not the first anti-Ukrainian rally in this coal-mining city in Donetsk Oblast.
Similar protests against Ukrainian troops were held in Toretsk in 2015, and earlier this year.
And in March 2015, anti-Ukrainian riots took place in the nearby town of Kostyantynivka after a Ukrainian armored vehicle hit and killed an eight-year old girl in a traffic accident. In early 2015, rallies against conscription were also held in the towns of Severodonetsk, Kramatorsk and Bakhmut.
Toretsk was held by Russian-separatist forces from May to July 2014. But almost two years after its liberation by Ukrainian troops, anti-government sentiment here festers, as its residents still live under constant shelling. They are also influenced by Russian TV propaganda, and dispirited by mass unemployment.
The mood is similar in other towns and cities in Ukrainian government-controlled Donbas.
“We were freed only from the armed groups, but this is not enough,” said Volodymyr Yelets, the head of a local patriotic non-government organization called Your New City, which was formed last summer.
Girls walk by the ruins of the town hall of Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast, on July 5. Fire gutted the building during fighting to liberate the town from occupation by Russian-backed armed groups in July 2014. (Anastasia Vlasova)
A change of names
The most significant change in the city is that it has been given a new name. Formerly called Dzerzhynsk – after Felix Dzerzhinsky, the first Soviet secret police chief – it is now named after a local river, the Kryviy Torets.
But apparently, many residents don’t like the new name.
The “Toretsk” road signs and banners reading “Toretsk is Ukraine” have been removed from the streets by persons unknown. Andriy Grudkin, an activist for Your New City, said he recently had an argument with a bus driver who placed a poster reading “This is Dzerzhynsk, not Toretsk” in his bus.
Yelets and Grudkin walk for a while through the central park, looking for a quiet bench where they can sit and talk without being overheard. They say the public events organized by their NGO, which now includes some 25 people, have often been disrupted. They blame Toretsk Mayor Volodymyr Sleptsov and members of the city council for this, saying the town officials are anti-Ukrainian.
A YouTube video dated April 14, 2014, shows Sleptsov on the city’s’s main square announcing a decision of the city council to hold a separatist referendum “to decide the future of the Donetsk Republic.” In an interview with news website LB.ua given in September 2015, Sleptsov said he was forced to make the announcement by armed men.
Mayor since 1998, Sleptsov kept his job because the authorities in Kyiv decided to cancel the local election in Toretsk and several other Donbas cities due to their proximity to the front line. The members of the city council also remained in place, and still belong to the factions of the Ukrainian Communist Party, which is now banned in Ukraine, and the Party of Regions of ousted former President Viktor Yanukovych, a party that is all but extinct nationally.
“We failed to hold local elections and hold to account any of those accused of separatism,” Grudkin said.
A woman walks with a stroller past graffiti reading “Glory to Ukraine” daubbed on a building wall in Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast on July 5.
Twenty percent support
The mayor’s office is now located in a kindergarten, as the town hall was burned down during the fierce fighting for control of the city. Empty plinths stand were once there were monuments to Dzerzhynsky and Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin.
There’s still a mosaic of Moscow’s Kremlin on the wall of the town’s non-functioning central department store, but Soviet stars on the steeples of the Kremlin towers have been covered with blue paint, and a small Ukrainian flag has been painted below the picture.
On the other side of the building there is a large painted slogan “Glory to Ukraine.” But scratched next to it in small letters is “Glory to the DNR” – the name the Russian-backed armed groups have given to the part of Donetsk Oblast where they have seized control from the government.
Yelets believes that no more than 20 percent of the residents of Toretsk support Ukraine. He said this was due to the absence of an independent local press and the lack of Ukrainian TV broadcasts.
Ukrainian TV is available only via satellite and cable. The separatist-controlled terrestrial broadcasting tower in the region, from which the majority of the cash-strapped people of Toretsk receive TV signals, transmits only Russian and separatist TV channels.
The lack of access to Ukrainian TV is a common problem for all frontline cities, as the regional TV transmission tower near Kramatorsk was destroyed in fighting back in 2014. On July 5, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko promised to build a new tower in no more than two months.
Poroshenko didn’t mention, however, that a TV tower actually was constructed earlier this year to replace the destroyed Kramatorsk tower. The project was overseen by Information Minister Yury Stets, an ally of Poroshenko. However, the new tower has a low-power transmitter with a range of no more than 30 kilometers. Toretsk is more than 40 kilometers away from it.
“So we’ve lived for two years under information occupation,” Grudkin said.
A boy jumps in a trampoline in the central square of Toretsk, Donetsk Oblast on July 5. (Anastasia Vlasova)
Strangers in town
Watching her grandson ride a bicycle on the main square of Toretsk, Iryna, 50, said she only watches Ukrainian TV, by cable. She refused to give her last name, saying she feared for her safety. While a supporter of Ukraine, she is in no mood to celebrate the second anniversary of the liberation of the city, on July 21.
Indeed, the war is still going on, and not far away from here.
“Children wake up every night and cry,” Iryna said, describing the artillery shelling, which intensified in the last month.
Just 17 kilometers to the west of the separatist-controlled town of Horlivka, Toretsk is often hit by shelling. The last big attack, on July 4, seriously damaged a local prison. About 30 locals in Toretsk have been killed by shells since the war started in 2014.
Another big problem is unemployment. Most town residents work at one of the four nearby coalmines, which are now operating at only about 30 percent of their capacity. The layoffs started long before the war broke out, but have intensified since. Iryna’s 35-year-old daughter, Maryna, worked at one of the mines but is now on unpaid leave.
“There is a war, there are no salaries, everything is closed in the city,” said Iryna. “Some call us separatists, but those who supported the separatists left for Horlivka long ago, and we stayed here.”
Later on July 5, the pro-Ukrainian activists of Toretsk went to the neighboring town of Kramatorsk city to watch a free show by Jamala, the Ukrainian winner of this year’s Eurovision Song Contest. A big crowd formed on Kramatorsk’s main square for what was a rare cultural event in the area.
A much smaller crowd came to see the head of state, President Poroshenko, in the neighboring town of Sloviansk. The president presented medals to soldiers who liberated the area two years ago, but Poroshenko and the authorities he leads seem like strangers in this region.
And as celebrations to mark the liberation of city in the area are held, locals remember that as Ukrainian troops liberated Sloviansk and Kramatorsk, the Russian-backed fighters withdrew to the regional center, the much larger city of Donetsk.
The Russian-backed armed gangs are in control of it to this day, and there is little prospect of it being liberated any time soon.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oleg Sukhov contributed to this report.
