Waiting in the cold
Trying to make sense of the past 48 hours and daring to make a few predictions
The past two day feel more like two years. It all started on Friday afternoon with videos (pre-recorded on Wednesday as we later learned) released by the respective leaders of the DNR and LNR ordering evacuation of elderly, women and children and announcing conscription of men aged 18-55. The official line was fighting has increased and the areas are in danger of attack from the Ukrainian side. The real reason was of course the Russian propaganda machine’s need to create images of Russian-speaking people having to flee their homes.
Russia is still looking for a pretext to intervene in whatever capacity in Ukraine. How far Russia really wants to go is of course a hotly debated topic. Later on Friday, an old Uazik jeep blew up in central Donetsk. It had the license plates of the Donetsk police chief, but his real jeep, a nicer, newer version, was spared — they blew up an old substitute instead. By Friday night, a small gas pipeline serving 95 homes in Luhansk was burning. The image of the orange fireball in the sky was widely shared online. Shelling was heard in Donetsk on Friday, but most commentators on TikTok noted it was the sound of outbound firing rather than incoming. Sirens were playing in Donestk and Luhansk by Saturday morning, but it didn’t look as if residents were in a hurry to leave.
Young people posted videos on TikTok with some dark humour, saying they didn’t plan to go anywhere, weren’t about to abandon their homes, pets, grandparents, parents, etc. Reports say something like 3,000 refugees from DNR/LNR are now in Rostov and Taganrog. Many didn’t sleep all night, were not given access to toilets or food, and arrived completely exhausted. On the Russian side, facilities were not set up on time, some were ordered to spend the night in tents. There was a distinct impression whoever was supposed to be on the receiving end did not get a heads up. 364 people are now being housed in this sport school gym, including 117 children. Those leaving DNR/LNR were promised 10,000 rubles each upon arrival; no evidence that has materialised either.
Here is the video mentioned in the tweet above, made by Maria and the TV Rain crew:
On Saturday, Ukrainian president Zelensky spoke in Munich with a very emotional and powerful speech. He essentially called out the western world’s lack of action, explained that what happens in Ukraine doesn’t stay in Ukraine, that not standing up to Russia’s aggression means you all could be next.
Zelensky is such an impressive character. The more I read and hear, the more I like him. Read this report by the BBC’s Sarah Rainsford for more:
Macron spent nearly two hours on the phone with Putin today, in what the French are saying was a “last-ditch effort to avert a Russian invasion of Ukraine”.
Yesterday, Lukashenko and Putin observed the testing of some weapons from the comfort of a medium-sized table:
Meanwhile, Belarus announced the Russian soldiers won’t be leaving the country anytime soon, even though the joint military exercises are officially over as of today. No surprise to anyone. Sometimes Captain Obvious is staring you in the face, no matter how much you would like it not to be true.
There are reports emerging out of Belarus (which doesn’t exactly have a free press so this in itself is remarkable) of terrible conditions and behaviour amongst the Russian soldiers — selling fuel and uniforms for cash, making homemade alcohol, drunken, disorderly conduct of poor guy stationed in pretty grim conditions for a while now.
The troubles with the troops living in tents in Belarus reminded me of what I was told on that wacky tour of Yanukovich’s former dacha a few weeks ago:
But what would an invasion of Ukraine look like? Some argue Putin could just annex DNR and LNR now and then pull back and not lose face. I don’t buy that argument. I think Putin has lost half his marbles and together with his five closest advisors (do read this excellent piece in the Economist by Alexander Gabuev on those who surround Putin if you haven’t already) and he wants real prizes.
Putin wants magical Kyiv and the seaside lore of Odesa. He wants the entire Black Sea coast. He might let a mini-Ukraine continue in Lviv (incidentally where US embassy and NATO have now moved their staff to) if he figures he would face too much resistance and not enough Russian-speakers for a pretext. My even bigger theoretical worst-case scenario worry is this spreads like a disease throughout the Balkans and all the other hot spots of unresolved ethnic conflict in Europe.
The Americans are already saying with certainty an attack will happen.
Kyiv remains stoic and calm but there are first signs of people asking questions, growing more nervous. The Chernobyl exclusion zone, which I visited on February 8 with a tour group, was ordered to close by the government. No one allowed in or out anymore.
In order to try and make sense of all this, I used the following logic: I’m frankly not interested in CNN or RT. I don’t want to consume helicopter journalism by global media machines nor Russian state propaganda. There are great reporters who speak Russian and Ukrainian and have been working in the region for years on the ground in both Ukraine and Russia. So I read and follow them. But in the DNR and LNR there is no one other than whatever propaganda teams are sent in from Russia. So I turned to social media and have been looking for information there, following young people who are in Donetsk and Luhansk now and say they aren’t leaving. One 25 year-old woman in Donetsk went live this morning. This is her story (click to read the thread):
TikToks from DNR and LNR are really moving and sad. They are made by young men and women who have been stuck in this no man’s land zone for eight years. They remember the 2014 war; many of them were just kids then. They remember what life was like in the before times, when Donetsk was a host city for the EURO 2012 soccer championship, when you could hop on a train or bus or even an airplane and visit the seaside for a holiday. For what I’m sure are a wide variety of reasons, perhaps simply having nowhere else to go, they stayed in the DNR and LNR. They went to school, grew up, got jobs, and try to make lives there. Now all of that is coming into question again. They are tired, stoic, a little bit scared, and most definitely jaded. They don’t want to talk politics. They don’t want to fight. They don’t want to evacuate to Russia on buses because someone recorded a video and promised 10,000 rubles. They just want peace and a normal life. They make dark jokes. They are brave and have probably all seen more in their young lives than most.
I can’t tell you what will happen next, but I am starting to fear the worst. I have been thinking a lot about the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, in fact subconsciously — memories that I must have pushed away are suddenly floating back. I see photos like these from the Ukraine-LNR border today and my mind goes immediately back thirty years. I hope it’s just my own personal stuff and there isn’t a rational reason to think this will all blow up. Some very smart people seem to still believe there is a hope for diplomacy. Hope dies last, of course, but I’m worried. Remember how no one was ever brave enough to kill Hitler?
If you have time for more weekend reading (all written by women! purely coincidental I didn’t make the edit on gender terms), this excellent report from near the front lines on the Ukrainian side by Nataliya Gumenyuk:
Reporting via Telegram with DNR/LNR (made me feel like my own TikTok exploring is justified if even the pros are resulting to Telegram chats):
Valerie Hopkins from the Ukrainian side of the front line last night:
That’s probably enough for now. Thank you for reading. I realised how important it is for me to write this near-daily little summary, it’s like a release, a letting go of information and energy, in what I hope is a somewhat orderly process, into the internet, and then I’m refreshed and ready to absorb more. Funny how that works.
In half and hour the young women from Donetsk TikTok is going to go online and share her impressions of what life is like there today after her walk in town. She observed this afternoon many people were stocking up on food. She said cynically that deliveries into the republic are of course controlled by the DNR authorities and there is fear they may use food supplies as a lever over the local population. As if sirens, evacuation orders, and mandatory conscription weren’t bad enough.