KARLIVKA, Ukraine – Olga Proshko picks up debris of wood to the sound of artillery fire. It is all that remained of her once big house in the Donetsk Oblast village of Karlivka, located halfway between rebel-controlled Donetsk and Krasnoarmiysk, a stronghold of Ukrainian forces.
Proshko, 59, who
worked at the local water station before retiring, doesn’t know much about the
upcoming elections on Nov. 2 that Kremlin-backed insurgents plan to hold to
elect lawmakers to two separate self-proclaimed republics in Luhansk and
Donetsk oblasts in violation of Ukrainian legislation.
She equally is
clueless about Ukraine’s Oct. 26 parliamentary election. She could’ve voted
then and in two day, but is not interested. Her everyday troubles keep her too busy.
“We wake up at 5:30 a.m.
and go to bed at six in the evening. We have neither TV nor radio. We don’t
have much information about the elections,” she said.
Despite technically
living in an area controlled by Ukrainian troops, residents of Karlivka have no
contacts with authorities except for the postal carrier who delivers pension
payments, and the soldiers who check their documents and belongings at a checkpoint
at the entrance to the village.
Several kilometers to
the west of Karlivka there are border guards manning an “administrative” border
line that separates areas controlled by Ukraine from a 30-kilometer buffer zone
to the frontline –Karlivka is in this zone.
While politicians still
argue about the borders of the buffer zone that should be established according
to the Sept. 5 Minsk agreements between Ukraine, Russia and Russian-backed
separatists, residents of Karlivka say they already live in this “grey area.”
“We live here wanted
by none and forgotten by everyone,” said 69-year-old pensioner Lidiya Bila.
Authorities, a school
and hospital are located in another village seven kilometers from Karlivka.
Buses used to go to the village, but they don’t anymore.
According to Bila,
some time ago soldiers accidentally broke an electric pole by her house with
their armored vehicle. The electric company refused to come to the village to help
and the soldiers had to fix it themselves.
The Ukrainian army
came into Karlivka in July pushing out forces of self-proclaimed Donetsk
People’s Republic. Heavy fighting ensued, as well as shelling and destruction.
The nation first heard
of this village on May 23 when the volunteer Donbas Battalion, then a
quasi-military unit not yet recognized by the government, got ambushed by a
group of 150-200 Moscow-backed separatists. Five battalion fighters were killed
in action as a result.
Most of the houses in
Karlivka are pinned with bullet holes and some were burned down.
Proshko said she had
to get in a car wearing a bathrobe and slippers and drive to seek asylum from
war in her sister’s house in Zaporizhzhya. When she returned after several
months she found both her houses ruined by shelling and fire.
“I lost everything,
even forks,” she said crying.
Now Proshko takes
turns sleeping in the houses of her parents and her aunt. With the help of her
elderly father the woman puts the debris she collects at the sites of her ruined
housesin a small trolley. She plans to use it to rebuild a small part of one of
her houses and live in it through the winter.
Bila said she tried to
escape the war by first going to Donetsk, and then to Russian-annexed Crimea. In
the end of summer she decided to return home“to live on the land where she was
born and her parents and husband were buried.”
Bila has three sons. Two
of them left Donbas – one went to Russia, another to Crimea. Now the woman
lives with the family of her oldest son in a small damaged house.
“Every evening we have
a family meeting. We cry and try to decide how to live, where to run if
something happens,” she said.
Soldiers of the 93rd
Brigade based in Karlivka say that while many locals treat them well the
majority still support separatists.
Bila says that instead
of hitting separatists’ positions the Ukrainian artillery missed and destroyed
many houses in the village, including her own. She says that the rebels didn’t
harm the residents, but did commit massive looting. According to Bila, they even
stole women’s underwear.
Valery, 60, a retired
miner, who was afraid to give his last name, said the separatists stole his car
and drove to Donetsk.
“Now I ride a
bicycle,” he said with a bitter smile. “We are now like beggars here.”
While none of the
residents of Karlivka were killed by shelling, one young man in the village was
killed two weeks ago when he accidentally stepped on a landmine.
Many of the villagers say
they don’t care much under which authority they live. They are accustomed to
the sound of bombs and trembling of windows, and dream only about peace.
An ethnic Russian,
Bila said she attended a Ukrainian-language school and never faced a linguistic
problem. She never had any nationality-based arguments with western Ukrainians who
resettled in Karlivka during the Soviet times. She blames politicians for sparking
the conflict in Donbas.
Had she voted in the
parliamentary elections, Bila would have supported pro-Russian party Opposition
Bloc. Recently formed, it mostly includes former members of the Party of
Regions – the party of former President Viktor Yanukovych and his allies, whom
official Kyiv accuses of financing the military conflict in the country’s east,
and being responsible for the deaths of 100 EuroMaidan protesters.
Bila explains her
choice, saying she’d like to support a party that comes from Donbas. She believes
the post-Maidan authorities have little interest and understanding of her industrial
region.
“We don’t recognize
Donetsk People’s Republic. But it looks like these (Ukrainian) authorities
don’t care about us as well,” Bila said.
