“Are you from Donetsk? We don't want any problems, sorry."
“Ukraine is a united country,” we hear from the screens. Why are those who left their homes because of the war returning to Donetsk, where volleys are still thundering?
There are troops near Donetsk, shortages of food and medicine, idle shops, the roar of gunfire on the outskirts, but there are more and more people in the city. People return with whole families, despite the danger and the peaceful life that has not yet been established. Of course, the Motherland is not such an abstract concept. Many simply missed home and their native places.
The second reason is financial. People simply ran out of money. A large number of Donetsk residents fled from shelling in Ukrainian cities, mainly Kharkov, Odessa and Kyiv. And almost all the savings were spent on moving, renting housing, and living in a new place.
And then the Donetsk team faced an unexpected problem. Being practically refugees, most people felt like strangers, and this was not a matter of longing for their native places. The Donetsk people were often openly made clear that they were not needed here, they were a burden. Ukrainian TV channels showed touching care for refugees: they are sent to boarding houses and hotels, fed three times a day, brought tons of clothes, and given employment.
In fact, everything turned out to be somewhat different. It was impossible to find a job because people with Donetsk registration were simply not hired. They said to my face: “You have Donetsk registration, we don’t need trouble.” There are hundreds of such facts.
Many said that even in Kharkov they could not rent an apartment: realtors and apartment owners refuse to rent out housing to Donetsk residents. In other cities, it is impossible to enroll a child in kindergarten without a kickback of 2-3 thousand hryvnia.
Now let’s imagine the state of the people: in Donetsk they are being bombed, shooting up residential buildings almost at direct fire, while the Kyiv media are showing “concern”, calling on people to save themselves and run away from the fighting. Donetsk residents leave, and then they are told to their faces that these are unnecessary and problematic visitors.
In fact, Kyiv simply does not care about the hundreds of thousands who have been turned into internally displaced persons. They were driven from their homes and then left to their fate.
The most surprising thing is that after all the humiliation to which innocent people are subjected, many politicians talk about a united people.
For many months now, residents of Donbass have been made to understand that they are second-class and can be treated as you please. An indirect confirmation of this is the situation that arose with the onset of cold weather. Hundreds of multi-storey buildings are left without windows, entire neighborhoods are without electricity and gas. Terrible destruction in the private sector. And the Kiev government has already stated that there can be no talk of restoring Donetsk. They say, if you want independence, get it, but we wash our hands of it.
That is, of course, you should remain part of Ukraine, but in terms of financing, you have complete independence, you will not receive a penny.
This expresses the attitude towards the Donetsk people: you can bomb, you can wipe out entire villages from the face of the earth, and then just leave, pretending that nothing happened. And most importantly, not a single attempt to start a dialogue: after all, all the talk about a truce was the result of catastrophic failures on the battlefield.
However, we will have to come to an agreement, and the sooner this is understood in Kyiv, the better. The ideal start to such a dialogue would be the restoration of the destroyed cities of Donbass and compensation to the affected residents. But for this it is necessary for Kyiv to stop considering people only as “its own” and “foreign” electorate.
Kyiv politicians are interested in ratings and victory in elections. They work for their voters, and in this situation the only way out is to fuel hatred towards the “enemy”, that is, towards their recent fellow citizens from Donbass. How can such a “cycle of hatred” end peacefully?
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