Greetings from Novorossiya

Eyewitness to the War in Ukraine

Pawel Pieniazek, Malgorzata Markoff, John Markoff

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN:
  9780822983262
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: Eastern European History

Shortlist, 2022 Witold Pilecki International Book Award

Introduction by Timothy Snyder


Polish journalist Pawel Pieniazek was among the first journalists to enter the war-torn region of eastern Ukraine and Greetings from Novorossiya is his vivid firsthand account of the conflict. He was the first reporter to reach the scene when Russian troops in Ukraine accidentally shot down a civilian airliner, killing all 298 people aboard. Unlike Western journalists, his fluency in both Ukrainian and Russian granted him access and the ability to move among all sides in the conflict. With powerful color photos, telling interviews from the local population, and brilliant reportage, Pieniazek's account documents these dramatic events as they transpired.
This unique firsthand view of history in the making brings to life the tragedy of Ukraine for a Western audience. Historian Timothy Snyder provides wider context in his superb introduction and explores the significance of this ongoing conflict at the border of East and West.

1. CHEERFUL IN DONETSK

OCTOBER 2014, in the vicinity of the Donetsk airport. Artem lives less than a kilometer away. The village is totally devastated. You can hardly find even a few houses without shrapnel holes. Rockets are sticking out of the ground, and the asphalt around is completely furrowed from explosions. There are practically no people here, but there are many dogs that suddenly became homeless. Ironically, the village is called Vesele, which means “cheerful.”

The destruction is a result of more than a month of fighting for the Donetsk airport, controlled by the Ukrainian forces. The separatists want to retake it. Both sides are shooting at each other. Every now and then sounds of explosions alternate with the noise of rifles. Those residents who have decided to stay hardly even pay any attention.

“Oh, a rifle,” Artem announces impassively.

Not even for one moment does he lift up his bent neck. He is moving forward to show us “an interesting hole” created by one of the rockets. The hole is like any other hole. During the months spent in Donbas I saw a lot of them.

“Look inside.”

It is narrow, but at least a meter deep. Apparently the explosion was terribly loud and damaged a few buildings. The rockets keep going off around us, near and far away. Finally, one can hear a whoosh.

“Oh, now you can see,” Artem nods in the direction of the sound. In a split second we hear a roaring explosion. He didn’t even budge, but a photographer standing next to him cringed.

“Don’t be afraid, sir. It’s far away,” Artem laughs.

By now, Artem knows which whooshes should be feared. He regarded this one as innocuous. After all, you can’t do much when you hear a whoosh, because the rocket is already too close to its target.

A few hundred meters away a girl who was walking home was not so lucky. She died instantly, killed by shrapnel. She lies on the sidewalk, covered with a sheet. After a while an elderly woman lifts the sheet up.

“Oh, my God! Nastia!,” she begins to sob. It is her granddaughter.

Two meters from the girl I can see a bloodstain, some broken eggs, and a flat hat. Two pieces of shrapnel hit the man right in a lung. His relatives hid him in a shack. He is breathing, his entire shirt is covered with blood and he lies in a pool of blood. You can hardly expect an ambulance here because paramedics are afraid to come to neighborhoods under fire. Finally, two private cars show up. The wounded man is loaded into one of them. This is the only way to get him to the hospital on time.

I have never thought I would find myself in a war. Even less so that it would be Ukraine. Nevertheless, war has come here. And in an instant, full speed ahead.

According to the official data, by early October 2014 more than thirty-five hundred people had died in the Ukrainian conflict. Unofficial statistics are much higher, and as the conflict continued estimates later reached ten thousand. There is no indication that the conflict will end soon.

It all began in March. Initially, it looked like the usual sort of protests. However, with the passing of time, they turned more and more violent. In only a month and a half people were reaching for firearms. Armed units showed up, the first clashes took place. In May the fighting erupted for real.

I arrived for the first time in Donbas in April 2014, when the conflict was already going on. Although I have been going to Ukraine since 2008, only now for the first time did I experience its eastern part. I had known it before from articles, news reports, and essays. Since April I have traveled all over.

What did I want to see there? Initially, everything indicated that it would be a grotesque and more brutal copy of the protests on the Maidan in Kiev. However, when in April I came to Slovyansk, it turned out that what came into play were not only protests, or even machine guns, but also armored vehicles.

I realize that a report from an ongoing war is a risky business. Especially because I wrote this in a hurry and its ending is just my prediction of future events and may turn out to be wrong.

This book is not meant to be a detailed chronology of the war or a geopolitical analysis. Mainly, I try to present events that I have witnessed myself, my impressions, and impressions of the people on both sides of the conflict, even if in the future they will turn out to be illusory.

2. DISINTEGRATION

ALTHOUGH UKRAINE HAS always been troubled by internal conflicts, it was Yanukovych who brought the country to the verge of real disintegration. First of all, he and his entourage relinquished their monopoly over violence.

In Ukraine hiring protesters is a common practice. Occasionally, one can spot the same person on opposite sides of the barricades—the authorities’ and the opposition’s. That’s why people can hardly believe that it is even possible for there to be a protest that doesn’t have some interested person behind it.

The first protests in Donetsk begin quite innocuously. On March 1, 2014, during a demonstration in Lenin Square, the few thousand people gathered there declare a vote of no confidence against the regional authorities. The demonstrators choose a previously unknown resident of Donetsk, Pavel Gubarev, as the “people’s governor.” Additionally, he proclaims himself leader of the Donbas People’s Militia. “I will stay with you till the end,” he says, right after he has introduced himself to a cheering crowd waving Russian flags. He moves from his biography to his political program. He is well known within the milieu of pro-Russian groups that organize protests in Donetsk (Russian Bloc, Donetsk Republic, and Progressive Socialist Party of Ukraine), but for the last six years he has been a student and running his own business. “I am married, I have three children, and I am 30. I have three university degrees: in history, law and public administration. I had no intention of going into politics before this ‘wonderful’ crisis started. I just wanted to live in peace, be a breadwinner and feed my children. But the new situation didn’t let me stay impartial, my conscience didn’t allow it.” “Hero!” shouts the crowd. Gubarev explains to them that something like southeastern Ukraine doesn’t exist. There is only Novorossiya. “In reality it is a Russian land and Ukraine has never existed,” he declares. “Yeeesss!” chants the crowd. He names the politicians who are close to his heart: the president of Belarus, Alexander Lukashenko; Nursultan Nazarbayev from Kazakhstan; the deceased Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez; the former Cuban head of state Fidel Castro; and finally, Vladimir Putin. After the last name is mentioned the crowd is screaming with all its might: “Yeeesss!” When the authorities are “elected,” the crowd walks from Lenin Square to the Regional Administration Building. After several speeches the Ukrainian flag is replaced by the Russian flag. The building itself cannot be taken because riot police are blocking its entrance and all the windows are barred. The demonstrators are furious and smash the glass.

They are able to enter the building two days later. (In the course of a month, the building’s “owner” will change a few times. Either it is seized by the activists from the emerging separatist movement or it is recaptured by the police. In the end, the separatist movement will prevail and settle there for good. It will become their headquarters.) By ignoring the assault, the passive police only made this easier. Home Ministry forces were standing there with their shields ready but they didn’t even budge. Gubarev stormed the assembly room of the Regional Council and once again proclaimed himself the “people’s governor.” The demonstrators forced the local assembly to announce an independence referendum for the Donetsk and Luhansk regions.

At the beginning of April they eventually take total control of the Regional Administration Building. The regional authorities have to leave. The freshly named governor, and businessman, Serhiy Taruta was not able to hold off the militants. Instead of clearly describing his position, he was evasive and tried to mix water with fire. What is more, he simply ignored the “Russian Spring,” as the demonstrators call it. Step by step, the Russian Spring spreads to more cities and towns, but in the media Taruta keeps repeating that the integrity of Ukraine is not threatened. He was the only one among the official Ukrainian representatives who insisted on calling for a referendum, but in a different form. It was supposed to be held later, and the citizens were to answer questions regarding decentralization and the status of the Russian language. For the supporters of a united Ukraine it was an excessive bow before the self-proclaimed authorities. For the separatists the bow was not enough. In the end none of the parties trusts him. Those in power are completely losing their authority.

According to Gubarev, both the authorities and the opposition are at fault. Actually, all the sympathizers of the separatists share this view, but they are not alone. It is the lack of hope that the Ukrainian opposition can change anything that makes it easier for the separatists to take over more cities. After all, nobody is willing to defend rotten authorities and a nonfunctioning state, even if there is a risk that they will be replaced by something more atrocious.

If . . .

There was only one person who could stabilize the situation or at least halt the state’s disintegration in Donbas. It was Rinat Akhmetov, the wealthiest Ukrainian and, among other things, the owner of the most expensive apartment in London. As in the majority of such cases in post-Soviet territory, nobody really knows where his money comes from. The first information about his legal business appeared in 1995 when he founded Donetsk City Bank. When Kiev realized that in the eastern regions businesspeople enjoy the highest respect, Akhmetov was offered a position as governor. Leaks about this offer appeared just a few hours after the crowd had stormed the Donetsk regional administration. Another oligarch, Igor Kolomoyskiy, was chosen as governor in the Dnipropetrovsk region, for similar reasons. Almost every passerby in Dnipropetrovsk asserts that if it weren’t for him things would take a different turn. “He’s our boy,” explains Iryna, a middle-aged resident of Dnipropetrovsk. However, in the Dnipropetrovsk region, unlike in Donbas, public opinion is in favor of Kiev.

Unlike Kolomoyskiy, Akhmetov rejected the offer to become governor and decided to continue his ambiguous game. “If the police attack people, I will take their side,” maintained the oligarch at the beginning of the demonstrations in Donetsk. It was his first really courageous declaration. Somehow, during the protests on the Maidan, Akhmetov was not bothered by the fact that police attacked people many times. This time the police are very consistent and do nothing, even during a demonstration on March 13 in Donetsk when the first victim of the Russian Spring dies.

Almost everybody in Donbas identifies oligarchy, thieving, and corruption as the most infuriating of vices. It is a paradox that hardly anybody in Donbas attributes these traits to Akhmetov.

“The whole thing is the fault of these oligarchs. They appropriated everything for themselves,” says Volodymyr, a retiree.

“So Akhmetov is guilty, too?” I provoke him.

“He’s different. Maybe Akhmetov is fabulously wealthy, but he shares some of his fortune. His wealth trickles down to us, too. He is creating new jobs and making investments in the cities. He isn’t cheap like the others.”

Volodymyr is not convinced by the argument that, if Akhmetov paid into the state budget as much as he owed, much more would “trickle” to the local population.

The fact that the oligarch didn’t decide to stabilize the situation in the Donetsk region made the authorities fall even faster. He was supposedly supporting the separatist movement from the time of its difficult beginning. Akhmetov hoped that his business would thrive and Donbas would turn into his private ranch. Nevertheless, the separatists escaped his control and were mostly taken over by Russia.

What is this oligarch’s role in the separatist movement? Nobody knows. Back in May Gubarev claimed that two-thirds of the pro-Russian activists were funded by Akhmetov.

The building that houses his company DTEK rises in the center of Donetsk, right next to the occupied building of the regional administration. Nobody has ever tried to take it over, destroy it, or even spray anything on the walls as the separatists like to do. At the same time Ukrainian forces are stationed in the many offices of his company. Nevertheless, it is he who loses most in the war—his factories are not functioning and they are occasionally shelled. From organizer and master of the situation he turns more and more into its victim. When the situation escapes his control, conditions in Donbas deteriorate. Local demonstrators don’t walk the streets with baseball bats any more. Soon knives show up and finally firearms. Uniformed people with automatic weapons and grenade launchers become commonplace and no one is astonished. More buildings are taken over. The police, so passive in the past, side with the separatists. Now it is the militants who administer “justice.” People don’t mock them any longer. It is too late to stop them without fig...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction
• 1. Cheerful in Donetsk
• 2. Disintegration
• 3. In Novorossiya, or Where?
• 4. The Separatists’ First Capital
• 5. Kiev Is Powerless
• 6. Disaster Comes
• 7. The Fallen City
• 8. War Comes to Donetsk
• 9. The Story of a Missile
• 10. Transnistria on the Don
• Acknowledgments
• Illustration Captions
• Index