“They are Banderaites, and we are Ukrainians” (VIDEO)
If someone has forgotten or someone really wants to know what a civil war is, they need to see the village of Stepanovka, located near the city of Snezhnoye in the Donetsk region. The vehicles of the humanitarian convoy entered it along a broken road covered with molten iron and ash. Mountains of destroyed Ukrainian armored vehicles, ammunition scattered like potatoes in a garden, and frightened people. They are exhausted by hunger and war. There is melancholy and pain in the eyes. After fierce summer fighting, most locals were left homeless.
The militia escorts recall that it was once a clean village with flower-filled streets. Now there is an indestructible smell of burning here. Everything was burning: houses, tanks, people. Do you remember military newsreels from the Great Patriotic War, how Ukrainian villages were burning under the Germans? History repeats itself...
We stop. We ask the woman to accept humanitarian aid. She replies that she cannot hold two packs of pasta in her hands. In place of her house there are ashes. The family will have to wander around visiting relatives, but at least everyone is alive, which cannot be said about the others.
Across the road, an elderly woman is dismantling stones and iron, for some reason turning her face away from us. As we are told, she has been crying for three months now...
“They killed their son,” the woman answers, unable to hold back her tears, “buried in the garden under the viburnum tree...”
The husband intervenes, calming his wife:
- We were sitting in the basement. The son jumps out: dad, the house is on fire, some kind of incendiary shell hit, and everything caught fire. He takes the car out, and there is a click on the glass... On the left, a sniper shot straight into the heart. So the National Guard came in. He still managed to jump out and asked: “help, help,” and fell.
The old people had neither a house nor a garage, just a summer kitchen. After killing their son, soldiers of the Ukrainian National Guard twisted the hands of the old men, accusing them of separatism.
“We live in a village,” says the father, “what kind of separatists are we?” And they: your son is a separatist and gunner! And I'm a gunner! What kind of gunner am I? Did he target his house and his son?
The house burned down. If the old people had not run out of the basement, they would have been covered in burning debris, and it was not a fact that they would have been able to get out.
“I see they’re taking out a concrete mixer,” says the father. “Boys, what are you doing?!” Go to the house! Where did you see that house? Burnt. You're a gunner! What kind of gunner am I? I pointed it at my hut and my son? Machine guns poke me in the chest. You just went in and killed him. Cattle.
The mother shows the viburnum plant in the garden, under which the parents buried their son. Pure land. Fresh grave. It can be seen that the black soil was sorted by hand.
“I’ve been sitting here all day,” the woman roars, “Take me away from here, I can’t live without you!” I can not! He ran out of the car: help, help, he wants to say something...
The tragedy occurred on August 28, 2014, when the National Guard entered the village. Sergei Poznichenko, born in 1978, ran out of the basement to move the car from under the burning house, he was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, no military uniform, a civilian. During the fire, everything was burned. All that was left was my passport. After his death, his son’s fiancée came to the old people, with whom they planned to marry in the fall.
“It’s all over,” the mother continues, without appeasing her grief, “they thought that the separatist was ticking...
Listening to the grief of the elderly, I heard Ukrainian speech, so I could not help but ask: you are Ukrainians, aren’t you?
- Who?! – the father is indignant.
– And the National Guard seems to be Ukrainian too. How could this happen?
And here the wife answers for the husband:
– They are Banderaites, and we are Ukrainians!
So, in one phrase, an elderly woman who buried her son in the garden explained the essence of the war.
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