Touching. I can't hold back my tears
Natalia Maksimets, journalist, deputy of the Lugansk City Council
A close friend left for Rostov. She took eight-month-old Savushka away from the war. Until the last moment I hoped that peace would return to my native Lugansk. Obviously, the mother’s heart prompted: we need to save ourselves.
I managed to slip through the border checkpoint in Izvarino, literally a day before the junta snipers began shooting at all cars moving along the road. Literally a week before the residential areas of the regional center were subjected to massive artillery shelling. Already in Russia, she learned that a shell hit the yard of her mother’s house, that the house caught fire, and a neighbor received a shrapnel wound in the leg.
Remember, who has been to Crimea, how at the station visitors are greeted by aunties with handwritten posters “Housing for rent”. In Russia, there are aunties at train stations too. With handwritten posters “I will accept refugees from Ukraine.”
Ksyusha and her baby were sheltered by a compassionate pensioner from Rostov. She was accommodated in a two-room outbuilding with all the amenities. The first two months - accommodation is free. Every day neighbors, near and far, come to visit them. They carry food, household utensils, clothes, toys. They offer Ksyushka’s husband options for getting a job: he is a builder.
“This is so touching that I can’t hold back my tears,” a friend cries into the phone.
Only fraternal Russia extended a helping hand to Donbass, engulfed in the fire of war. And this fact does not require special proof. Thus, to date, more than a hundred tons of humanitarian cargo have been transferred to the Lugansk region by Russian communists.
“Yoshkar-Ola, Voronezh, North Ossetia, North Caucasus, Stavropol Territory, Karachay-Cherkess and Kabardino-Balkarian Republics,” Yuri Sinenko, the first secretary of the Kamennobrod district committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine (Lugansk), lists the addressees.
The “trucks” contain medicines, food, clothing, hygiene items, and water. Thanks to promptly prepared documentation, the cargo successfully passed Russian and Ukrainian checkpoints. But delivering it to the city turned out to be problematic. More than once vehicles were subjected to mortar fire already in the region. And only the club-handedness of the Ukrainian soldiers did not lead to tragedy.
“One of the latest deliveries is insulin,” continues Yuri Sinenko. “We transported him in a car specially equipped with a refrigeration unit, with large red crosses on the sides. However, this did not stop the punitive forces...
In Lugansk, the cargo is being sorted: surgical kits and surgical material are sent to hospitals where the wounded - militiamen and civilians - are being treated. Food packages are going to the front lines.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to leave the city: the Ukrainian army is taking the main highways under fire control.
However, despite the natural fear of death, the townspeople understand: there is no turning back. The nationalists will not spare anyone. I know this for sure, looking through the messages in the mail: dozens of words dripping with hatred, terrible bestial hatred, which is difficult to believe, because it comes mainly from very young people - they are 15-18 years old, judging by their accounts on social networks. But you have to believe: this is a lost generation, raised by independent Ukraine, this is an upbringing, the essence of which is to kill, destroy the Muscovite, where there is no place for love, empathy, or even an attempt to understand a person with different views.
I don't know how to respond with hatred. My generation was brought up in the spirit of internationalism. For me the words “All people are brothers!” – is by no means an empty phrase. Even now, when you fall asleep and wake up to the sounds of explosions, when you finish a telephone conversation with your mother, you understand that the phrase “See you tomorrow” sounds, at least, strange, when complete strangers from Russia write: “Come to us, we will help and with housing and with work.”
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.