“Dig in for the long haul.”
That’s the message civil society activists and non-governmental organizations in Ukraine are sending society, warning that the war in the country’s eastern Donbas region with Russian-backed forces will continue for many years to come.
Larysa Artiugina, a project leader at the New Donbas humanitarian organization, told the Kyiv Post that despite two-and-a-half years of war, life in the front-line zone should continue as normally as possible.
“It’s a fact of life, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Artiugina said. “We’re prepared for the fact that this conflict could continue for five, 10 or 15 years.”
Artiugina and her colleagues work in schools located in front-line areas of eastern Ukraine controlled by the Ukrainian government. Many of the teachers and children they come into contact with have been traumatized by the war. New Donbas says it does not come with any fixed ideology, but simply seeks to help in any way possible. Its mission, above all, is to impress on teachers and students that in spite of the war, life can, and should, continue as normal.
“We try to show the children that although it is likely the war will last a long time, this doesn’t mean life should stop,” Artiugina said.
“We try to help them find ways to still do everything they want to do: study, have a family and a career. Many children tell us they love where they live and they don’t want to leave. We have to defend their right to live where they want to. Our organization can’t defend them from grad rockets, but we can help them feel if not happy, then at least at peace within themselves.”
Frozen or unresolved?
The war in eastern Ukraine, which erupted following pro-democracy protests in the capital Kyiv over the winter of 2013-2014, may have left the international headlines, but grinds on. Several rounds of high-level peace talks involving the leaders of Ukraine, Russia, France and Germany have failed to bring an end to the fighting. The appearance in the Donbas of the Kremlin-backed separatists was preceded by the Kremlin’s seizure of Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula.
According to Taras Kuzio, a senior fellow at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, the two Russian-occupied zones of Ukraine, Crimea and the Donbas, represent two different challenges.
“We have to be very careful with the terms we use,” Kuzio said. “The Crimea is a frozen conflict because one side won the battle and froze it in its interests. The same is true of separatist regions in Moldova, Georgia and Azerbaijan where the central governments of those countries lost to Russian proxies
But, in the Kremlin-backed separatist areas of the Donbas, “there is an unresolved conflict, not a frozen conflict, because neither side has won the battle. Ukraine has not defeated the separatists and retaken the territory, while Russia has not defeated Ukrainian forces and conquered the entire Donbas and even, as it planned in 2014, taken control of the so-called ‘New Russia.’”
Kuzio says the longer the battle goes on the more dangerous it is for Ukraine, and not only because it acts as a drain on the state’s financial resources. He argues that with dissatisfaction running high over the lack of progress since the EuroMaidan Revolution, conditions are ripe for further upheaval.
“The large numbers of weapons in Ukraine and disgruntled soldiers and war veterans can create the conditions for political instability. During two visits to the front line this year, I did not meet a single soldier who has anything positive to say about their commander-in-chief. A third revolution in Ukraine will be more violent than the two that have taken place.”
Territorial integrity
The Ukrainian government, for its part, is not saying when it expects Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts to come fully back under its control. It is adamant, however, that this will one day happen. And when it does, the fallout from the conflict will cast a long shadow over society, Olesya Tsybulko, an adviser at the Ministry for Temporarily Occupied Territories, told the Kyiv Post.
“When the territory comes back, the government will need to regulate the relationships between people, it will need to punish those who are guilty and to identify the victims,” Tsybulko said. “The experience of other countries proves this is a difficult process that takes a great deal of time. You can’t change the situation in a moment.”
But in spite of such public statements, some are skeptical of the Ukrainian government when it says it is committed to re-integrating separatist-held regions with Ukraine.
Dmytro Tkachenko, executive director at the Donbas think tank, says many now in power would be happy to let the areas go.
“Within the government now we have many ‘isolationists,’ who want simply to cut off the Donbas and forget about it. But actually that’s impossible in a world like ours, which is so tightly connected,” he said.
“It might have been possible in the 19th century but in the 21st century it isn’t. We cannot just say that we don’t see these three million people, and carry on living as we did in the past.”
Time to adapt
Like Tkachenko, many believe the war is here to stay and that society must adapt accordingly. Igor Kabanenko, a retired admiral and former deputy defense minister, says the hybrid nature of the confrontation with Russia and the Kremlin’s use of both overt and covert operations means unprecedented demands are being made on every Ukrainian to defend their homeland. Although impressed by the response from civil society, he argues that more and better communication is needed from the top.
“We need to build synergy,” Kabanenko said. “Not only inside government structures but between government and society. This is the mentality of the former Soviet Union. On the one hand is the state and everything that belongs to the state, and on the other hand is the private sector and the people. And sometimes it looks like there is a wall between them.”
After the most recent round of talks over the war in the Donbas last month, the leaders of France, Germany, Ukraine and Russia said they had agreed on a roadmap to revive the stalled peace process. But after nearly three years of conflict and 10,000 deaths, few remain optimistic the negotiations will lead to a solution. Civil groups say now is the time for a new approach – one takes into account the long-term nature of the confrontation with Russia.
“Many of us are basically already used to living in a state of war,” Tkachenko said. “Many people understand that this will be a long process, that things won’t go back to the way they were.”
“We’re running a marathon. We’ve been running it for almost three years. And we need to be geared toward the fact that we could be running it for several more.”
