Slavyansk, April 29 (Navigator, Victoria Litovchenko) – In Slavyansk they are gradually getting used to “war conditions”: parents send their children to school, people walk calmly in the city center. But there are more and more roadblocks, and the morning begins with the news whether there will be an assault today.
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How Kyiv and the “Donetsk People’s Republic” compete with each other for influence on people and local authorities can be judged by the number of repainted steles with the names of cities along the way from Donetsk to Slavyansk. In some places there is a fresh tricolor, in some places it was painted over blue and yellow, and in others supporters of different views found a “compromise”: they left the work of changing the state color unfinished.
Compared to Donetsk, the feeling of a “martial situation” in Slavyansk does not go away for a long time. While local residents are almost accustomed to checkpoints and often do not pay attention, concrete fortifications and sandbags make a strong impression, to put it mildly, on a new person.
It is even more difficult for a journalist to work in Slavyansk than in the center of Donetsk. People don't like to be photographed. Representatives of the “people's power” make contact mainly during official events. “People's Mayor”, yesterday appointed chairman of the executive committee, Vyacheslav Ponomarev regularly gives press conferences. Sometimes, like today, they come down to a few phrases: the night passed peacefully.
Ponomarev is protected from the particular intrusiveness of journalists by people in camouflage: it’s unlikely to be possible to argue with them about an additional issue.
But if you turn away from the barricades and don’t look at the checkpoint, you will again find yourself in the familiar resort town of Slavyansk, where community cleanups are held and young people are planting trees, and utility workers want to turn on the fountain by May 1 and are thinking about how to repair the roads. However, the Slavs discuss and express the issue of holding a referendum very actively: both city council deputies and ordinary people in the form of a protest poster made by themselves.