Donetsk: Anxious premonitions
How do we live here? Donetsk is watching the news from Kyiv. Maidan with a Georgian accent. It’s nice to watch these spiders, who started a war in my city, eat each other. Well, there is also hope that they will pull some of the manpower and equipment away from Donbass.
The local news is disturbing. The Armed Forces of Ukraine are massing heavy weapons to the demarcation line. It seems that this no longer surprises us, but now I hear about it especially often. What if the Maidan distracts from this very thing? I ask my friends on the other side - are they really catching up, or is it as usual?
“I was just about to call you,” Kramatorsk reports, “we caught up with everyone: I definitely saw Grads and something else self-propelled with a very long barrel.”
Similar messages from Volnovakha and Debaltsevo. I really don’t want “Grads”.
I am not an analyst or political scientist. I just live here and see what I see. Sometimes, to complete the picture, I ask my colleagues from Russia – what can you hear and see there? Will it all end here soon? Why am I asking? Well, because I'm inside the situation. It seems to me that they still know better from the outside. I’m not escalating, I’m not panicking, rather the opposite. It's a normal human feeling that everything will be fine. But somehow it doesn’t even attract artificial attention.
What do I see? Here are the instructions given in kindergarten - how to reduce stress for a child. Here is a running line, which has not been seen on local channels for a long time, about how to behave during shelling, what to do if you find something suspicious, and other warnings.
Employees of one of the universities were given a full briefing on civil defense: chemical attack, gas mask, shelling, bomb shelter, emergency suitcase, first aid. If children are given such instructions regularly, then adults are given such instructions for the first time.
Or this. My daughter’s after-school teacher accidentally dialed my number. I called her before this. Apparently I pressed it accidentally. I hear her say something. Until I realized that it was accidental, this is what I heard:
– ... you all know that you can’t lift anything from the ground. There is martial law in our city. Today, on a walk, Matvey picked up a battery. It could be anything. Do not pick up anything from the ground. Please understand, this is not a joke. You are already adults (first, second grade, - ed.), you know that even a toy can turn out to be an explosive device. Does everyone know what an explosive device is?
(multi-voiced children's choir)
- Yesss!
- Well done. Under no circumstances should you pick up anything. Call me right away. It's clear?
- Yesss!
- We lined up for a walk.
I reassure myself that this is the beginning of the school year. This is not another exacerbation, these are simply preventive measures. How else? And, on the other hand, we always have an aggravation before meetings of the contact group, on Orthodox holidays and seasonally - when the “green stuff” falls and when it falls off. In any case, it is better to be safe than sorry.
In public transport, mainly trolleybuses and trams, the same warnings about dangerous objects, about recruiting volunteers for the DPR army, and about the need to pay for utilities are still heard. Recently, these advertisements have been supplemented by cheerful appeals to retirees to lead an active lifestyle.
The other day in the “two” after another announcement about the recruitment of volunteers for the DPR army, I heard a dialogue. Two boys:
- Do you remember the number?
It seemed to me that the young man was joking like that. I took a deep breath in my lungs to ask, “Are you funny? Is this a joke?" But I was wrong.
– ХХХ – ХХ – three nine.
- No, the last ones are four nine. If anything happens, we’ll dial both numbers.
...Yesterday the contact group met, the “green stuff” was almost gone, and Ukrainian TV channels, as befits such a day, again reported: “they fired at themselves.”
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