I needed a reality check. I needed to get back to Donetsk and see what’s going on there. I wanted to see my loved ones and, despite the risks, it was time to go home.
That’s why I paid Hr 630 (about $20) for a ticket from Kyiv to Donetsk sold by a shady company that promised to guide me through checkpoints and get me to my destination in a 16-hour and 730 kilometer trip southeast.
The tickets were hard to come by ahead of Orthodox Easter on May 1 and Victory Day on May 9, but I got one. So on a Friday night I hopped on a bus with people of all sorts: young men and women, students and the elderly. The night’s journey passed smoothly.
We traveled through Poltava and Kharkiv. On the outskirts of Sloviansk, our bus passes damaged houses – the first evidence of war. It takes your breath in, and hurts in a brand new way – not the way it usually hurts when you see it on TV.
Sunrise on the Donetsk steppe is apocalyptic – a milky two-ply fog envelops the higher land and sinks into to lower areas, which are all in gray and dark green hues. We cross a river near Sloviansk via a pontoon bridge – the old one there is a damaged and twisted.
The bus is stopped multiple times on its way to Bakhmut and Zaitseve (about 13 kilometers apart) by the militarized traffic police that guard the roads. The police offices wear green uniforms, are armed and emerge from fortified checkpoints. They look around the bus and check the luggage. It’s 5 a.m., and all of the passengers are alert, but silent.
The last stop for this bus is the bus station in Bakhmut (a town only recently renamed from its Soviet-era name Artyomovsk). This is where our first guide, a short, middle-aged man, gives further instructions. Everyone in our 50-person group is given Hr 30 to pay for the next two buses, which transport people between checkpoints and across the “gray zone” between the opposing lines.
It’s 7 a.m. and all of us get on a second bus, operated by Bakhmut municipality. The bus has been waiting for us and is taking our group to the Ukrainian checkpoint in Zaitseve. It takes 10 minutes to get there.
The Zaitseve checkpoint is basically a piece of road surrounded by a concrete fence, in turn surrounded by a minefield. It’s about 50 meters long. There are “Danger, mines!” signs in English and Ukrainian everywhere. Inside the checkpoint, there are six white concrete rectangular kiosks on each side, equipped with cameras. They’re not parallel to the road but are set at a 45-degree angle. All of the soldiers’ faces are extremely young – this checkpoint is run by 20-25-year-olds.
At 7:10 a.m. there is a line of 150 people waiting to cross the border by foot.
Our group is supposed stand in that line, too, but instead Ukrainian soldiers take our bus to the furthest kiosk at the checkpoint. “We got really lucky,” says one of the passengers to me. “Last time we stood in that queue for four hours.”
Apparently, there’s an agreement between the soldiers and the carrier to allow its passengers to pass without waiting. As we stand in the dirt at the last kiosk, soldiers examine the contents of our luggage. Passports are checked inside the kiosk. It takes two minutes to go through the checks. Then we get on another bus to go through the gray zone – a bumpy and dirty rural road overlooking the Bakhmut plains.
On the approaches to Mayorsk, yet more buses take us across separatist border checkpoints on the way to Donetsk. A pretty young woman with short red hair and tidy makeup has a list of all passengers and sorts them into two mini-buses. The use of phones is prohibited in the presence of the militants. I had ruthlessly deleted all photos, messages, inboxes and social media applications from my smartphone. It’s around 9 a.m. I am tired and emotionally drained, but the most dangerous part is still ahead.
The checkpoint begins with a “Welcome Home” message painted on a mound of dirt. It is striking how civilized and well equipped the Ukrainian border control is in comparison to the separatist one. There are no checkpoint buildings, just pieces of concrete blocking the road, guarded by armed people.
The first step in the checks by the Kremlin-backed separatists is an interrogation by a pair of soldiers. They step into the bus and look for young men. We are tasty prey, as we are all from Kyiv. The armed militants interrogate all of the young men one by one, with questions like:
“Do you sympathize with the Ukrainian army?”
“Where do you work, and why aren’t you serving?”
“What’s the purpose of your travel to Donetsk?”
“Did you take part in the Maidan?”
“Did you plant parsley on the Maidan?”
“Do you have tattoos?”
The person who is talking the most is a tall man with military bearing. He has cold eyes and the professional, cynical voice of a corrupt policeman who is enjoying his unlimited powers.
He is hoping to see right through you.
He makes all young men take off their shirts to prove they don’t have tattoos. The questioning lasts for 30 minutes or more. When nobody cracks, the soldier bursts out: “If no one was at the Maidan, then why is there such chaos in the country?”
He finally lets us go, wishing us happy holidays.
The next step is a passport control near a damaged gas station and a shop. There are a lot of people and cars here, and a lot of business going on.
A sturdy soldier gets into a bus and starts collecting all passports, his quick hands deftly going through all of the pages. He also questions the young men.
One guy says he works at the video production studio in Kyiv and as a result he gets taken away by the separatists, along with all of our passports.
After an hour, he comes back. The bus driver talks to the soldiers, joking and smoking with them. It feels like torture – like they want to make us feel small and humiliated.
The pretty woman who put us on this bus goes around and talks to people, too. Someone calls the trip organizers on their phone and asks them to talk to the border guards. Soon, the driver returns with all passports, and the trip continues.
The route winds on through Horlivka, shelled parts of Yasynuvata and Makiivka, where it feels like the Soviet Union froze in time.
The city of Donetsk is almost the same as it was two years ago.
But there are differences.
It seems like there are 10 times fewer people and cars. Most shops are closed. The ones that are working are embellished with separatist flags. Most billboards are bare, except for advertising that praises the self-proclaimed “republic,” whose leaders congratulate “heroes of war,” promise to build a fair society, and invite citizens to join in May 9 Victory Day festivities. “Thank you, Moscow!” “Love, Russia!”
Business is done in rubles for the mostly Russian food products on sale in Donetsk. Prices are comparable to the ones in Kyiv – meaning they are higher than the average in Ukraine. The selection of products is poor but can satisfy basic needs.
Just two years ago Donetsk was a vibrant and dynamic city, but now most businesses left. Young people, like me, left too, older generation stayed, trying to make ends meet on two government pensions – in rubles and hryvnias.
There’s a damaged tree by my house not far away from railway station, where a girl was killed by a piece of shell. Neighbors say, no way the small shell could come from the Ukrainian side, it was mistakenly fired by separatists from the inside the city. They say my old school yard became a polygon during the time of heaviest shelling. Now, there are children playing there, careless and happy.
In Donetsk, the life from the outskirts moved downtown.
On May 1, Kuibysheva Street is deserted; a rare marshrutka drives by.
Downtown, by contrast, is full of people and cars. Kalmius embankment area is a popular place to be during the holiday – there are children, young couples with baby carriages and old ladies sunbathing near the water. Guys wearing green uniform jog around the water reservoir.
In Donetsk, if you’re male, younger than 40 and not wearing uniform or a St. George’s Ribbon, you look suspicious to the local police. No business is working without a separatist tricolor flag, including supermarkets and beauty salons.
Jobs in the private sector are rare. Businesses have to balance between Ukraine and the Kremlin-backed separatist state.
On my way back to Kyiv, while standing at the checkpoint near Maryinka, I talk to an old lady who works as an accountant and prepares double-entry books for one of the Ukrainian companies that had to stay in Donetsk. She travels back and forth between Kyiv in Donetsk and receives two pensions. “My pension got increased by Hr 64! We should celebrate!” she speaks ironically to someone on her phone.
Most of my friends, neighbors and former classmates, who stayed in Donetsk, turned to the separatists’ side. For regular people, this is how you continue supporting your family and stay sane. If you’re completely broke, for 4,000 rubles a month, you can get a state-funded job and clean streets. Downtown Donetsk is so clean, as it never was before. Homeless people and dogs and cats disappeared from the streets.
Merchandise of the Donetsk People’s Repubic — including flags, icons and stickers — is sold at every corner. A week into this trip, I stop noticing it and it doesn’t bother me anymore.
Despite this, it feels awkward to be in Donetsk and know that everyone here lives in the world of lies.
On my way back, I spend almost three hours standing in a line near a Ukrainian checkpoint in Mariyinka. Ukrainian soldiers cook something near their tent, as we wait in a metal fencing as a herd of innocuous cattle.
White OSCE cars slowly drive near us multiple times as we continue to wait for our buses. The process is slow and ineffective, harassing and dangerous – a crowd of harmless people can be an easy target for pro-Russian militants. I got my reality check.
Meanwhile in Donetsk, separatists are far from replacing all Ukrainian government signboards, most of them are partially covered by separatists’ stickers. Remove these stickers, replace rubles with hryvnia, bring Ukrainian TV channels back and close down checkpoints – and Donetsk is going to be Ukrainian again.
