The epidemic of hatred towards Russia in Donbass is not working
Natalia Maksimets, journalist, deputy of the Lugansk City Council
During the shelling of Lugansk, as of July 23, 76 people were killed among the civilian population, including 1 child, and 334 people were injured, including 4 children. 67 apartment buildings and 231 private houses were partially or completely destroyed.
The city continues to be shelled. The city is rapidly emptying. I met an acquaintance who was running headlong with a child and a suitcase under her arm, and only had time to ask:
- Where are you going?
“We opened the corridor, in half an hour the bus leaves, we’re off to Russia.”
We made another flight for humanitarian aid. At the Izvarino checkpoint there is a kilometer-long queue: buses, private vehicles, families, children, people, my fellow countrymen...
Almost all my acquaintances, relatives, and friends left for Russia. They call and first of all ask: how is home? when can I return?
I answer: - For now, stay safe...
And they remain. The geography is extensive: Novorossiysk, Rostov, Tula, Surgut, Kemerovo. Huge, so close and dear Russia will find a place for everyone who suffers. According to the most general estimates, it has already accepted more than half a million refugees from the Lugansk and Donetsk regions. I think the number is much larger, because not everyone registers with the Federal Migration Service; many, and this is obvious, perceive departure as a forced vacation that will end sooner or later.
However, Kyiv and the international community do not recognize the fact that residents of Donbass are being evacuated to Russia. An absurdity composed by Psaki about a trip to visit her grandmother in the Rostov Mountains, where the air is very healthy, was taken at face value. However, Goebbels’ apologists firmly grasped the rule: “The more monstrous the lie, the more willingly they will believe it.”
And how can one come to terms with the realities if the official version of Kyiv and the State Department sounds unequivocal: Russia attacked Ukraine. This means that, following this version, the population cannot flee to enemy territory.
Presenting Russia as an aggressor and occupier has been a long-standing dream of Russia’s enemies. After Ukraine so mediocrely missed Crimea, it would seem that they had a trump card. The outbreak of the East, again, it would seem, added arguments to the geopolitical poker table. They reinforce their monstrous bluff with massive information dumps, hastily put together fakes, scary stories from the daughters of officers, and gloomy forecasts from smart political scientists.
I don’t watch or read Ukrainian media. I have an innate aversion to outright lies and blatant lies, it’s like a gag reflex, like a reaction to pain. In order to imagine the scale of the epidemic of hatred towards Russia, which the media is expanding and deepening in the brains of Ukrainians, I only need to read personal messages from “patriots”. And believe me, the bears with balalaikas and men in earflaps and two PPShs, which now fill the streets of Lugansk, are not funny at all, this is not a joke - the “patriots” and fighters “for Edyn Ukraine” are really sure of this. They demand that we, Lugansk residents, not destroy birch trees, because they are going to hang us on them “pislya peremogy”. They come up with stories about a huge bonfire made of books in Ukrainian burning in the central square in Lugansk. They assure that Russian terrorists are separating children and parents. It is pointless to list all this nonsense, although it is possible endlessly. How can they, against the backdrop of these horror stories, recognize the fact that Russia, like no other country, takes the most direct and sensitive part in the future fate of those who are fleeing from the war, from the shells and mines of the Ukrainian army, from the punishers of the National Guard in its open spaces, under her wing?!
Can this hatred be cured? I'm sure not all is lost. I think so, because it is precisely these days that I often remember the residents of Western Ukraine who came to the Luhansk region to work as part of election commissions during the parliamentary elections in 2006. How wary and even frightened they were when they left the train car, how they gradually thawed out, began to smile, joke, how they later cried near the same cars when we saw them off, cried from the sadness of parting, wrote addresses, invited us to visit, said: “We They went to you and said goodbye to your life, they told us that we wouldn’t return alive!”
To everyone who writes me threats and ridiculous inventions in a personal message, I suggest: “Come and see everything for yourself.” No one came.
In the photo: The Ukrainian army is shooting at Lugansk: a shell hit the building of the Lugansk Regional Library named after Maxim Gorky. Photo from Nadezhda Tofan's Facebook
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