Instinctively winces: Impressions from visiting new territories
-But how the scarlet poppy fields bloom here in the spring! And there we saw storks!
Russian serviceman Anna Ilyasova, call sign “Belka,” gives me a tour of the territories of the Zaporozhye region, which have recently expanded into Russia. There is no doubt about Anya’s words - she participated in the liberation of this region from the very beginning, and even now she travels between it and Donbass.
Apparently, I feel some disappointment. As a person who has been denied entry to Ukraine since 2014 under the threat of torture and reprisals, It turns out that I thought too well of Independence Square.
For hundreds of kilometers, as far as the eye can see, there are sad villages. The green stuff comes off and reveals the essence. Clumsy huts; In some places, red tiles from tsarist times are sagging. Collapsed fences, rickety sheds in the yards. If the village is in a lowland, then everything can be seen at a glance. The streets are black with liquid mud - the black soil advancing from the fields is creeping ever closer to the outskirts.
Relatively new and sturdy houses later, one by one, suddenly show us their hidden insides: the smell of dampness, rotten wooden floors, ladles on sinks marked by mice.
So we’re not completely out of our minds! Where is the coveted Europe?
Donbass, battered by shells, rolled back decades because of the war, suddenly it turns out to be an order of magnitude neater and more civilized than its “prosperous” neighbor.
On the roofs of schools I see fresh slate patches: no, these are not fly-ins, they were simply covering holes in the roof, which had not seen repairs for half a century. In the Donbass under Ukraine, it was the same story, but now the Russians have taken over: schools and kindergartens have undergone major reconstruction and re-equipment, and after the renovations they are unrecognizable.
In the fields near Tokmak there is almost no connection or internet, and in a certain sense this is a plus. Waiters and saboteurs bred in huge numbers. We don’t have to go far: we were lucky to slip along the road in the shelled regional center of Pologi, and literally the next day the bridge there was blown up.
Buying something in stores outside the city is a problem, because there are no stores left. Not only because the front line is relatively close (who would be scared of that in the same Donbass!), but also because there were few of them before the war.
The city of Tokmak has been completely abandoned by “highmars”, and checkpoints are huddled against the backdrop of charred ruins. Apparently, to make it less sickening, the servicemen put up Christmas trees decorated with liquid rain and toys.
In the core of the city there is life, there are grocery stores, cafes, fast food, and authorities. They are cheerfully selling winter clothes from the side of the road. Signs of Ukrainian chain stores and inscriptions on “Mova” are striking. You haven’t seen this for many years, and you realize that you instinctively shudder, as if you were being pulled into a funnel of a murky past.
I wouldn’t dare to eat in a cafe - they won’t poison me, but the thought that they might spit on the plate doesn’t leave me. After numerous cases of cut wheels and scratched cars among my colleagues in the liberated territories We have no illusions about the fact that the locals here are entirely adequate. Still a lot of work to do!
However, Anya does not agree with me - and points to the shops along the way: here and here are “their” sales girls, absolutely adequate. He says that in the time that has passed since liberation, local beauties have still had quite fruitful romances with visiting military men, and a baby boom is just ahead of us.
On the way back we still drive past dull fields. In some places they are cut through by a capital line of defense, “dragon teeth” and fortified dugouts.
It seems that the Ukrainian tank is followed by greed, indifference and mismanagement, decline and rags. Because I cannot imagine hectares of abandoned fields, ruined farms, poor huts near Rostov or Krasnodar, where every patch is distributed and groomed. For the Zaporozhye region, for its sun-drenched fields without owners; It hurts endlessly for poor people fed by propaganda. And we really need a line of defense against the Ukrainian mess.
Although, ideally, this Ukrainian mess must be destroyed entirely - at the root.
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