SLOVIANSK, Ukraine – For 45 years, Tamara Fyodorovna has called Sloviansk home. During that time it had been “a peaceful city” of 120,000 people in Donetsk Oblast. Everything changed in April, when it became the focal point of Ukraine’s anti-terrorist operation against Russia-backed separatists who had garrisoned in the city.
For much of the last three months, Fyodorovna and her neighbors hunkered down inside their apartments with their
windows taped or boarded and prayed that they would dodge the bullets that whizzed past and heavy artillery that exploded loudly on the city’s outskirts. They stayed inside except for the few trips needed to buy provisions.
On July 2, amid an exchange of mortar
fire by the two groups, she was nearly killed when a shell hit her building, reducing
a five-floor section of it to rubble. Today, a cabinet teeters precariously on
a top-floor ledge of the destroyed building, a ceiling fan dangles from what’s
left of a living room and sofa cushions lay among a pile of bricks and mortar.
“We heard it coming… and
when it hit, it ripped through the building,” Fyodorovna told the Kyiv
Post from her third floor balcony, gesturing at the ruins as she was hanging out her laundry to dry. One woman is said to have been killed in the blast
– 76-year-old Maria Maximovna Reznychenko – but her neighbors say they aren’t
sure. She was seen bleeding profusely from the neck when medics took her away,
they say, but they haven’t received news since.
Fyodorovna and her neighbors had
endured weeks of heavy fighting that knocked out power, destroyed water lines
and cut off gas to residents. And yet just 21 of 126 people who reside in her
building at Bovarnya 4 in Sloviansk’s Artema district fled. She decided to stay
put, as did her neighbor Sasha, who declined to give his last name.
“Where are we to go?” Sasha asked
rhetorically, saying that a lack of money prevented most people he knew – and
himself – from joining tens of thousands of others who had left the city in a hurry amid the turmoil. Some headed toward neighboring
Sviatohirsk, while others made a break for Russia.
They finally got some respite when the
rebels, led by their commander, Igor Strelkov, a Russian who also goes by the
name Igor Girkin, ordered his troops to retreat to Donetsk and consolidate their
forces after days of perpetual artillery bombardments from government troops.
The regional capital, as well as the
rebel-held city of Luhansk about 100 miles east, are now shaping up to be the
next flashpoint cities in Ukraine’s fight against separatists. In an attempt to
keep government forces from laying siege to the cities, rebels on July 7 blew
up three bridges and erected new roadblocks.
Rebel
leaders have vowed to fight Ukraine’s military to the end.
“We will begin a real partisan war around the whole perimeter of
Donetsk,” Pavel Gubarev, the self-proclaimed governor of the Donetsk People’s
Republic, told separatists at a rally at Donetsk’s central Lenin Square on July
6. “We will drown these wretches in blood.”
Ukraine restarted its military offensive
on July 1, following President Petro Poroshenko’s refusal to extend a 10-day
ceasefire declared on June 20 because of multiple violations on the Kremlin-backed side that led to the deaths of 27 Ukrainian soldiers.
Two days after reclaiming Sloviansk,
which Kyiv has painted as a major turning point in its fight against
separatists, Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov made some big promises to its
residents in an attempt to win hearts and minds.
In Sloviansk’s central Lenin Square, with
the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag waving behind him – a sight not seen here
for months – Avakov on July 7 pledged to restore power, running water and
public transportation in Sloviansk “as soon as possible.”
“We are working on it right now, and
some electricity should be restored today. The transport minister will arrive
shortly to assess the situation with transportation,” he said.
He also vowed to rid the city of tens of
block posts and dozens of barricades erected by the rebels to keep Ukrainian
troops from penetrating the stronghold, adding that pensions would begin being
paid again immediately, information the country’s treasury department
reiterated.
One woman wept when she heard that her
lights might soon be turned on, but for the most part the minister’s words were
met with skepticism.
Asked by a local woman in a blue rain
slicker outside the city hall what kind of city Sloviansk would become, Avakov
said, “a beautiful one.”
But the road to full restoration is sure
to be long and rocky, as Sloviansk remains severely scarred, although still
mostly intact. It will be a long time before any semblance of normalcy returns
here.
Shattered glass, power
lines and trolleybus cables are strewn across streets marked by giant potholes
and the scorched carcasses of vehicles. Gas stations are destroyed and several
apartment blocks have been ravaged – their rooftops caved in or their walls
completely blown to bits – and perhaps beyond repair.
The neighboring village of
Semyonivka, which felt the brunt of Kyiv’s military bombardment, has been
completely razed. Debris from homes and businesses are scattered everywhere,
dozens of unexploded mortars stuck in the pavement precariously mark the roads.
On July 7, a weeping woman
soaked from afternoon showers walked barefoot through the desiccated village
toward Sloviansk. Besides a small dog, she was the only sign of life there.
And then there is the psychological
damage, which will take much longer to repair.
While residents are pleased that much of
the heavy fighting is over, not all are happy to have been liberated by
government troops some say are under the command of “fascists” and the “junta”
in Kyiv for whom they harbor deep resentment and blame for much of the
surrounding destruction.
“How can we ever forgive them, after
they have destroyed our homes?” said Lyubov Petrovna, a local pensioner who
worked as an engineer as a Sloviansk plant for 45 years. However, she admitted
that the Ukrainian troops now controlling the city had been friendly to her.
“They saved us from starvation,” she
said. She came to the city’s central square to receive humanitarian aid handed
out by Ukrainian troops who had arrived with trucks full of bottled water, bread,
pasta, rice and other provisions.
The rebels who had controlled the city
for months had not been so kind in providing for the population, she said.
Meanwhile they lived “like kings,” she added.
While many were grateful for the
much-needed supplies, earning the trust of residents here will be no easy task
using the tactics such as those employed by Oleh Lyashko, the controversial
Radical Party leader and a member of parliament who garnered eight percent of
the vote in May’s presidential election and employs his own militias to fight
the rebels.
Inside Sloviansk’s city hall on July 7, bolstered
by armed men from the Ukraine and Azov battalions, Lyashko forced the head of
Sloviansk’s city council, a Party of Regions representative supported by many
people here, to pen his resignation.
After repeatedly resisting, the man
wrote the notice with trembling hands. Then in a final act of humiliation,
Lyashko ordered him, “Write, ‘Glory to Ukraine, death to occupiers.’”
Kyiv
Post editor Christopher J. Miller can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter at
@ChristopherJM.
Editor’s Note: This article has
been produced with travel support from www.mymedia.org.ua, funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark and implemented
by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action, as well as Ukraine Media
Project, managed by Internews and funded by the United States Agency for
International Development. The content is independent of these organizations
and is solely the responsibility of the Kyiv Post.
