In Isolation by Stanislav Aseyev

Author:Stanislav Aseyev [Aseyev, Stanislav]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Published: 2022-02-15T18:46:40+00:00

DPR militants vote at a polling station in Kramatorsk during the unrecognized referendum on DPR’s independence from Ukraine.

Chaos in Their Heads: How the War Is Perceived in the Occupied Zone

The territory under DPR control is about to hold “primaries,” a word you could be shot for. Why shot? Because anything linked to the West in any way is dismissed and rejected here. Here’s one example of this: on Donetsk Day, when a Western hit was being performed, a group of young guys began to demand that the petite girl running around the stage with a microphone sing in Russian. I can’t imagine how Freddie Mercury might sound in translation, but that’s what these skinheads were demanding.

As the so-called primaries approach, posters have been plastered all over Donetsk announcing that something “grand” is coming, once again. In the DPR, they’re especially sentimental about this word. Everything here is grand (torzhestvenno): grand events, grand balls, grand concerts, and grand ceremonial greetings—even the Greek food and culture fair is grand.

All these ceremonies, the propaganda, and the atmosphere in general, generate a certain way of thinking in people. Let me tell you about this one fan of separatism I know. In some sense, he’s a symbol of the turmoil and chaos that has been churning in people’s minds for two and a half years now. First of all, he’s a former militant. He started with Bezler, then switched to the “official” military. He later managed to safely resign from his illegal military unit and is now working loading trucks. I know him like the back of my hand and have known him for as long as we’ve both been alive, so we have a pretty trusting relationship. When I meet him in the street, I often try to talk him into acknowledging what is really going on and what has been for a while now. Yet every time I see him, this man tries to justify why he’s still on the other side—even as he drifts further and further away from the separatist narrative.

I have to say that the former militants among young locals have a serious problem: their Ukrainian passports have expired because they never updated their photo after turning twenty-five, so now they can’t even go to Russia. They’re locked inside a prison of their own making: the DPR. Many are at the bottom of the social heap, and the man I’m talking about is in no better position. But every time I talk to him—I did so just the other day—he repeats the same mantra: “Russia is my country.” When I ask him what is so awful about Ukraine after two-and-a-half years of outright criminals occupying Donetsk (a criticism with which, by the way, he agrees), with the Russian flag still not waving over the territory, and when people like him are tossed onto the slagheap of history, he mumbles something vague about the Nazis who would have killed all Russians here if people like him hadn’t taken up arms. This

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.