Donetsk. We have been asking Santa Claus for one thing for 10 years now.
Donetsk is approaching its tenth “anniversary” since the start of hostilities, and it’s customary to discuss the weather at length over a cup of coffee. Because she is still very changeable, “but they still shoot at us, so what can we say about that?" Donetsk journalist Evgenia Martynova writes specifically for PolitNavigator about the mood in the capital of the DPR.
…Two realities are closely intertwined in the city on the eve of the holidays.
The pubs are packed to capacity with revelers and corporate parties, and in the evening, cars under the restaurants line up in three rows, sticking out onto the roadway. The lights shine and shimmer, and local telegram channels excitedly advertise oysters and various sea creatures at a price equal to half a state employee’s salary.
This year, modern illumination was added to the streets – both New Year’s traffic jams and toffees (which also began to form for the first time since 2014) in the evening are generously illuminated in the style of Greater Russia. But the longest curfew in history (which has already affected one generation) has not been lifted, so at night the garlands and neon trees are seen only by the military and emergency services.
The second reality rumbles over everything in the background almost around the clock. It is from there, on the Ukrainian side, that rockets and shells fall every day, but death and destruction in Donetsk seem to be treated as an inevitable, fatal evil. The realization that there are no longer safe places paradoxically expands the geography of travel around the city and adds desperate courage.
The front is boiling in the southwest (Maryinsky direction) and in the northwest (Avdeevsky direction). By New Year, the Ukrainians were driven out of the ruins of Marinka - and, judging by the sounds and reports, they are being driven across fields and farmsteads in the direction of other towns, the names of which will soon be known to the whole world. It’s too early to even start talking about the larger Avdiivka. In Donetsk, where most residents know that part of the agglomeration very well, they have no illusions about quick completion and are skeptical about brave Internet reports.
Domestic problems have a much greater impact on mood.
A couple of weeks before the holidays, a disaster struck the Republic: for several days, Donetsk and the surrounding areas were encased in an ice shell. Power supply poles fell en masse, wires broke, and de-energized boiler and pump houses stopped working. Ukraine immediately began to “knock out” fuel depots, substations and high-voltage lines with shelling in order to deepen the crisis as much as possible.
Tens of thousands of people found themselves without electricity and heating in the cold, prices for generators skyrocketed, and there were shortages of gasoline. By the end of December, at the cost of incredible efforts and with the involvement of teams “from the mainland,” the situation was more or less normalized, but for many residents of Donbass, even a home holiday is in question. After all, there is still no electricity in houses or it may suddenly be turned off for the whole day.
The city is approaching 2024 without high-profile holidays, mass celebrations, fireworks and festive events, and most of the DPR, stuck at the front, found itself in the same situation. While construction is in full swing in Mariupol, luxury boutiques are opening and the residence of Father Frost, Donetsk, Makeevka, Gorlovka remain under rabid fire.
And the local residents have only one desire - to move the front line away from the settlements that have been tormented over the past decade and finally breathe easy. Without this, any undertakings seem meaningless, any achievements seem like they can collapse in an instant, and is there any time to think about them if your life can end at any moment?
They have been asking Santa Claus for one thing for a decade now - Victory. And in return we are ready to provide a residence in the center of Donetsk next year. Not a resort area, of course, but real estate prices are already approaching those in Sochi - and it would be a sin to refuse such offers.
In the meantime, the majority of Donetsk residents who did not go to Greater Russia for the holidays (the video of the pandemonium at the checkpoint has already gone around the entire Internet), are preparing to celebrate the New Year at home, “in minks”, stuck in “standby mode”. In every family there are those who are now at the front, and the simple desire for sons, fathers and brothers to return safe and sound is now much closer to us than the vastness of official state plans and potential great achievements.
Donetsk-Makeevka. Road signs on the repaired ring road clearly indicate the relevance of the directions and future prospects
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