Yana Smolina: What refugees coming to Crimea say
Today, Crimea has become not only an example of how to achieve one’s goals, but also the last bastion of hope for residents of South-East Ukraine. Dozens of residents of the Donetsk and Lugansk regions arrive on the peninsula every day. Everyone has their own story, but they are all running away from the war, hoping to get shelter, a peaceful sky above their heads and stability in Crimea. And local residents, in turn, are collecting humanitarian aid in order to somehow help refugees and those who still remain in the war zone, as many cities in the Southeast have become.
I remember a vivid meeting with a woman from Kramatorsk named Margarita. She is somewhere over 50, she said that she brought her daughter, who is about 25, to Crimea. Margarita said that she works at a machine-building plant, which is a city-forming plant. According to her, this plant brings the same amount of money to the budget as the entire Ivano-Frankivsk region.
Ukrainian soldiers are shooting at the city with Grad, despite the fact that civilians are dying from this. Their militia consists of local men, up to 50 years old. They stand at checkpoints at the entrance to the city. The checkpoints were reinforced with fallen trees and concrete blocks. The Ukrainian army cannot enter there, so they bombard the city from airplanes. Moreover, “UN” is written on them.
Living in the city, according to Margarita, is simply impossible. There have been no pensions or social payments for several months now, and there are no savings of her own either - she used her last money to bring her daughter here so that she could at least know that the child would be alive. But there, in Kramatorsk, her mother, house, property remained, so she will have to return.
The humanitarian aid collected by the Crimeans is also not easy to deliver there. From Crimea it is sent by Nova Poshta to Makeevka. There she is greeted by volunteers and some kind of vegetable gardens, and in a roundabout way she is transferred to Slavyansk.
The list of humanitarian aid includes everything from clothes, diapers, and even insulin. There, after all, shops operate only in one area where there is light. People are running there under bullets to buy groceries.
So today Ukraine is proving that you need to live by its rules and any dissent will not work. According to the refugees, the Ukraine that existed before the Maidan no longer exists. And what we have now is not their country.
If you find an error, please select a piece of text and press Ctrl + Enter.
Thank you!
Now the editors are aware.