Telegraph about Knowledge Day in Dzerzhinsk: “We are simple people and we want peace”
Report by Jack Losh in the Telegraph publication about the First of September in the front-line Ukrainian Dzerzhinsk describes the peaceful hopes of ordinary people. “It was quiet last night. For me, this is a pretty good start,” said Irina Shaskova, the mother of a teenager from School No. 9, located several kilometers from the line of fire.
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“On Thursday, shortly after the midnight ceasefire, from 7 a.m. in the main courtyard of School No. 9, students began to gather for the First Bell, accompanied by proud parents and grandparents.”
“The celebrations were a poignant and inescapably bitter reminder of the Soviet history of the country, joint with Russia, Ukraine’s neighbor and now enemy.” – the reporter shares his impression.
“It gives me great pleasure to see how our children celebrate the Day of Knowledge,” says sixty-seven-year-old Mikhail Mutilin, looking at his grandchildren, aged eight and eleven. It has only been a few months since he fled the nearby village of Zaitsevo. “It is very important that ordinary life continues.”
Expressing strong doubts that the truce, like last year's, would last, he added: “We are ordinary people. We cannot change the situation, which depends on politicians. The powers that be make money from war, but we only want peace.”
“We are afraid that something will happen to our children while we leave them at school,” says the mother of a sixteen-year-old student, Tatyana Papaikina. “We want to live, and we want to return to normal life. We don't know what will happen tomorrow. We are tired of this war.”
There is no hope for a long truce among the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers either. “We'll be back at war within weeks, if not days,” says Roman, a thirty-five-year-old sniper with a large forelock and a flamboyant Zaporozhye mustache, the totem of, as Jack Losch puts it, nationalist Ukrainians. “No matter what our leaders say, it's just empty words. There is simply no will to achieve peace.”
The reporter draws attention to the fact that many students suffered psychological trauma after witnessing the fighting. There is a serious danger that, due to interruptions in the educational process, a whole lost generation will appear in the Donbass.
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