DONETSK, Ukraine – The beautiful spring weather in Russian-separatist controlled Donetsk shouldn't fool anybody.
In the protected central part of the city with a pre-war population of one million people, families gather in Pushkinska Park for a Slavic literature and music festival. They stroll through nice parks. Restaurants are full. Teenagers strum their guitars to Pink Floyd tunes.
Russia’s war against Ukraine seems far away.
But outside the center, the destruction of war is more visible. Drunks and drug addicts are easy to stop.
“They’ve made the center look nicer than the outskirts, because only the rich come there. They don’t care about the outskirts where the poorer people live, some even still in bomb shelters,” a woman told the Kyiv Post.
She, like everyone else interviewed for the story, did not want to be identified because of fear of reprisals from the Kremlin-backed separatists who, according to many residents, have turned Donetsk into a lawless mafia zone.
The rich “don’t represent the real situation in Donetsk, but rather the huge inequality,” this woman said. “It’s inevitable they all have close ties to the DNR (Kremlin-separatist) government and probably even work for them. The situation for much of the population has worsened, but the people you see here only care about their new phones and cars. Authorities here created this artificial reality. They want the outside world to know that the so-called ‘republic’ tries to function as a whole, but instead it has become like a mafia state.”
An office building where humanitarian aid is distributed on billionaire Rinat Akhmetov’s behalf is almost people.
An administration, a young woman, is reluctant to identify herself as anyone other than Nataliya.
“Most people come in during the morning or go the Donbas Arena as there’s more aid available there,” she explained, refusing to allow pictures inside.
Two brothers who picked up aid display the contents of their plastic bag: pasta, milk, eggs, oil, flower and drinks. The youngest, Maksym, 22, is a university student studying to be an architect.
“The chances of finding a job in architecture here are slim. I don’t know if my diploma would even be recognized outside Donetsk, but I’ve always dreamt of becoming an architect. Since I was little I’ve been drawing buildings,” he said.
Maksym, like many young people here, has no vision for the future beyond: “The war has to stop, that’s what I care about the most.”
Outside the office building, a man in camouflage clothes and Nike sneakers studies the humanitarian aid. He identifies himself as a Russian-trained soldier named Konstantin. He is 33 years old.
He goes to receive painkillers for his war wounds.
“I’ve been wounded in Shryrokyne,” he said, pointing to his hips. “Shrapnel got through my legs, and also through my head,’ he added. He shows some of the stitches on his head.
Despite the severe wounds and an ongoing war, Konstantin cannot imagine living anywhere else than Donetsk.
“It’s a beautiful city. There are no traffic jams. There’s no smog. It’s better than Moscow, and the people are happier,” he said. He has no plans to return to Moscow either.
He doesn’t have any money. So he spends his time on the street and stays with other separatists. “If I need money, my friends here in Donetsk will help me,” he said confidently.
Just a few blocks away, the former Ozhad Bank is open for older people to pick up their pensions.
A woman sits waiting on a small bench in front of the bank. She introduces herself as Svetlana, 69, but doesn’t want to talk about the mechanisms for collecting her pension from the separatist side.
“Yes, we’re receiving it, which is good. If you convert it into hryvnias, it’s a little bit more than what we used to receive. Some of us haven’t received a pension in over 10 months!”
The authorities in Donetsk are trying to keep the economy functioning. Some factories are still working.
The Donetsk Metallurgical Plant operates, but operating at only 10 percent capacity, a guard said.
The gap in incomes becomes more apparent all the time in Donetsk. A burgeoning shadow economy may be alleviating some of the inequality, rendering official statistics meaningless and making street life one of the best indicators of the state of residents.
