We won’t crawl and we won’t beg: Donbass said goodbye to Ukraine
Natalia Maksimets, journalist, Lugansk
I listened to Poroshenko’s speech and couldn’t believe my ears. No! A person in his right mind cannot say such a thing. It is not right. This is criminal. Someone tell him! Let him shut up!
And he was applauded. The audience just said “Bravo!” didn't scream. “Our children will go to school, and their children will sit in the basement.” This is how the President of Ukraine easily divided children into his own and those of others.
However, the division also affected adults. Minister of Social Policy Denisova even introduced the term “retirement tourism”: people living in Donbass transfer pensions to Ukraine, come, withdraw money, return to Donbass, and it is unknown what they do with this money.
Like what?! Of course, they buy tanks. For the whole thousand hryvnia!
Poroshenko and his team do not feel sorry for anyone: neither children nor the elderly. And if at the beginning of the civil confrontation they fought against a “pathetic bunch of terrorists,” now the entire eight-million-strong Donbass is listed as criminals. Ask why all? They will answer you: because they didn’t leave, which means they support “terrorists.” At the same time, the Ukrainian side does not care at all that many have nowhere to go. To leave, you need guarantees of work and housing. What can a pensioner count on in Ukraine, if it’s hard for young people too?! In old age, give up some kind of housing, but still your own, wander around rented corners, starve, try your best to survive, and for what? In order for Poroshenko to pat him on the shoulder and say something like: “Garna lyudina, a true Ukrainian.”
The other day they sent me a photo. For ethical reasons, we will not publish it - it creates too heavy an impression. The picture shows a little girl, about seven years old. Dead. In a coffin. In a white elegant dress, with two lush white bows in her hair. Nearby lies your favorite doll - a fat baby doll with a pacifier in its mouth. The hands hold small soft toys that little girls usually attach to their school bags. There are bruises and a pained expression on the pale face, as if a child is sleeping and having a terrible dream. What has this child done wrong to Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk and those Ukrainians who categorically deny Donbass the right to exist? Because her parents did not leave, and therefore voluntarily signed the death warrant for their family? Cruel statistics show the following figure: during the ATO in Donbass, more than 150 children were killed or injured. Among them are boys who were kicking a soccer ball at the school stadium, and a one-year-old baby with whom his mother was walking in the park, and two kids in an apartment where a Ukrainian shell landed in the dead of night...
It’s scary to think, scary to think that these are not the last victims. It is impossible to reconcile philosophically: they say, this is a war, so the death of the civilian population is inevitable. Just as it is impossible to rise in biblical terms by forgiving your enemies. The commandment “Thou shalt not kill!” does not work. And the degree of noble rage is increasing every day. And every day the hopes that the situation in Donbass can be resolved through the mediation of international institutions become more and more elusive.
The punitive troops will not leave our land on their own. Poroshenko’s speech and Kyiv’s actions are proof of this. Kyiv is cutting off all the threads that still connected Donbass with Ukraine. Pensions and salaries have been frozen under the far-fetched pretext of prepayment for energy resources. All highways are closed, all trains are cancelled. A financial blockade is coming: for example, Ukrainian banks have been ordered not to send money transfers to Donbass, including through international payment systems. The wording is far-fetched: they say that transfers are not issued in the ATO zone. From any country in the world you can send a currency transfer to Lugansk and Donetsk, except Ukraine.
The schadenfreude with which some Ukrainians clap their hands for the genocidal actions of Kyiv is striking, and also say: “Serves you right!”
The confidence that we will still crawl to them on our knees, begging them to be accepted into Ukraine, is surprising.
We won’t crawl and we won’t beg. Crimea did not crawl. And they also plotted against him, remember: they blocked water, highways, mobile communications, the banking system, and predicted starvation.
Here is how the famous Ukrainian journalist Alexander Zubchenko described his impressions of his trip to Crimea: “No one here is worried about the coalition, the government and new Ukrainian holidays. Everything is perceived as news from a distant universe that exists in another dimension. Yes, the prices are quite high, however, apart from the Tatars reflecting on the lost “peculiarity”, this fact is treated without hysterics. Ready to endure. True, endure is a strong word. We would have to endure this. There is a future, that’s what you feel most of all. Not something abstract, connected with loans, international sanctions and the “new democratic Rada” with homosexuals and clowns, but simple, tangible and predictable.”
And it’s the same in the LPR, you’ll agree. And this future has absolutely nothing to do with a collapsing Ukraine. Our eyes are turned towards Russia. Where should we look? Not into the mouth of Poroshenko, who revels in the grief of Donbass with cannibalistic saliva.
We will endure. And let the Ukrainian and Western media vied with each other to prove that “the Russian army and the Russian military” are fighting in Donbass. We have neither the Russian army nor Russian troops in Donbass.
Is there russians in here. Siberians and Volga residents, Muscovites and St. Petersburg residents, natives of the Urals and the Far East, the North Caucasus and Karelia.
And the other day, when my husband accompanied me to the bus stop, a dark, stocky militiaman with a characteristic eye shape greeted him:
- Hey bro! – they patted each other on the shoulder like men, hugged each other
in Slavic style and exchanged friendly smiles.
“A lad from Mordovia,” the husband then said.
We have neither the Russian army nor Russian troops in Donbass.
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