In spite of announced truce, civil population of Donbas continues to suffer from fightings from the both sides of the front. Visited two occupied villages, volunteer of organization “Otvetstvennye grajdane” (Responsible people) Olga Kosse decided to tell the readers of informator.lg.ua about why people don’t leave from so dangerous places and why sometimes they come back there.
“Human Shield” of Spartak
Village Spartak of Yasinovataya district is located on the edge of uncontrolled territory. There is a few reasons why people can’t get out from there. They can’t move into Ukrainian side, because road goes through Donetsk Airport and Peski and they simply don’t get somewhere. As for the road through through the Donetsk and back it has no any transport connection. Those who want to leave this village go on foot for 10 kilometers to the end station of bus and go out from there. There is 81 people live there at this moment, among them is two children, two girls of 8 and 14 years. They haven’t been to school for a year, haven’t eaten any vegetables and still live in cellars. As far as we know, we keep in touch with one man in the village, they simply are not given to leave. According to opinion of this man they are the “Human Shield” for insurgents. But, also there is a people who are afraid of leaving. There were some cases of looting even between neighbors…
Volunteer groups can come into Spartak, but only accompanied by mercenaries. We brought medicines there twice, because, it’s understood, they don’t have any shops or pharmacies. Food supply is given to them by non-government organization “People In Need” and International Committee of the Red Cross. But all of this is accompanied by fighters of batallion “Vostok”. Settlers of village can’t speak openly near armed people. We can’t find out why they don’t leave. We offered them to remove children from there and to arrange them in boarding schools in Donetsk. They could get the education and get out from cellars. But parents without explanation of any reasons didn’t let them go, because armed people stayed beside them. It’s impossible to appeal to Human Rights organizations in such situation, because it’s the occupied territory. This people absolutely denied of freedom of movement, the right to work and the right of all human needs.
Dangerous help of Zelenyi Gui
But we have another situation. Petrovsky district of Donetsk. It also located on the occupied territory. The extreme point is the village Zelenyi Gui. It’s the line of crossing. The inhabitants of this village periodically see how one or another side of the conflict come and shoot in each other. The one difference from Spartak is that this region become one of the popular places to visit either for journalists, or international and Russian organizations, which provide humanitarian aid. If there is need to show how people awfully live, everyone goes into Petrovsky district and watches people in shelters. They really live there in shelters. There lives near 800 people. They have shops, the have possibility to buy medicine and to leave this place. The only one thing that prevent them to leave is constant coming of humanitarian aid there. It destabilized them and now they on the instinct level understand that “here in a cellar is safe and here you’re feeded”. We can’t pull them out somewhere. We even can’t make them to go out from shelters, because shell can begin again and they will hide there once again. We can’t settle them on more calm area of occupied territory, because we need to go on agreements with local representatives of authority about giving us buildings. There weren’t any evacuation from MES of Ukraine from the beginning of the conflict. People ought to leave themselves or to stay, that they in common did. Tendention for coming back to Donetsk began to appear now. It’s a pity, but it’s explainable, because people didn’t get any help in Ukraine and biggest part of IDPs will come back into occupation.
The material was prepared according to the results of the round table “Invisible cities and villages. Life in settlements, located on the frontline territories”, taken place on May 22 in Kyiv.
Written by Dennis Matsola for informator.lg.ua