SLOVIANSK, Ukraine -- For the past four months, 28-year old Viktoria Tarsukova hasn't been able to afford to buy any clothes for her two kids.
Last year, she was able to go to the local market in her hometown of Slovyansk every weekend to shop in the company of her girlfriends. She misses this time of prosperity.
“I earned Hr 1,000 a week, and I could spend this money and be sure that I’ll earn more next week,” she recalls.
For her and thousands more in the eastern Ukrainian city of Slovyansk, one of the latest flash points in the Ukraine crisis, this comfort ended soon after the beginning of the EuroMaidan protests in Kyiv last November.
Many of the city’s 125,000 people work in ceramic production. The local ceramics market numbers some 300 booths, each selling pottery from a different firm. First the political unrest, and then the crisis with Russia have scared away Russian retailers who regularly purchased the ceramics from local firms. Retailers from western Ukraine have turned away from Slovyansk ceramics businesses in the last months, too, says Tarsukova.
“Our peak season used to be New Year and the time before March 8 (International Women’s Day). This year, it was dead time for us,” says Vitaliy, 40, an owner of one of the pottery firms.
Vitaliy doesn’t want to give his last name for fear of reprisals from Ukrainian authorities, since he openly supports the separatists who besieged Slovyansk a week ago.
The separatists, many armed, oppose the central government in Kyiv and are demanding a referendum to secede from Ukraine and join Russia. They took hold of the local city council, police station and the office of State Security Service over the past week.
Groups of men in camouflage, some of them carrying machine guns, fully control the city now and even plan to patrol the streets with local police. But they could not have achieved this feat without the help of civilians.
“The way Slovyansk citizens support us makes me really happy,” says Vyacheslav Ponomaryov, a leader of separatists in Slovyansk, sitting in a seized city council building.
Citizens deliver food and old furniture for barricades to the protesters. But most importantly, they provide them with a wall of protection – a human shield.
At the barricade next to the occupied police station, one of several in the city center, there are always several civilians standing out front. Tarsukova and her colleagues from the ceramics market take shifts to stay here. Should the Ukrainian army or any other pro-Kyiv force attack the barricade, the pottery sellers will stand in front of it, without arms, to defend it, they say.
“A human shield is what we can give to our guys who are standing here,” says Torsukova.
When there is no threat of attack, the supporters spend time sitting on makeshift benches next to the barricade and chatting. On one table here sits a modest array of sandwiches and biscuits, also brought by the locals. People here are used to being frugal.
Since the beginning of the political crisis and the fall of the hryvnya – Ukraine’s currency – Tarsukova’s life has changed significantly. The woman avoids driving her car – buying gas at Hr 15 per liter is too expensive for her. She remembers the grocery prices perfectly well, and is outraged at bananas rising in price by Hr 4 in the last two days.
Shopping at the local market, where Chinese jeans cost Hr 250, is also too extravagant now, so the woman was happy to find jeans at just Hr 200 in a store that sells confiscated goods.
Tarsukova’s monthly income of Hr 4,000 very high for Slovyansk, according to another local supporter of the separatists, Oleksiy Sholokhov.
Sholokhov, 35, doesn’t work and gets a Hr 1,100 monthly pension, due to a physical disability. Many in Slovyansk get the same in pensions and salaries, he says. Most of it is spent on utilities, which take around Hr 800 in winter.
Sholokhov hopes that independence from Kyiv will give businesses in Sloviansk a boost that will result in more jobs and better salaries. Joining Russia, he says, is needed only for protection. Like many in Slovyansk, he expresses concern at the rise of nationalists in the Ukrainian government – most of all, those from the Svoboda party – and the radical forces that participated in EuroMaidan.
“People are very pissed-off with this country,” Sholokhov says.
He remembers Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk’s recent visit to Donetsk with discontent.
“He spends just two hours at a meeting with the governor and the mayors, and thinks he understands what’s going on in the region,” the man says, grimacing in disgust.
A recent poll, conducted in April by the Kyiv Sociology Institute, showed that some 70 percent of people of Donetsk Oblast consider Yatsenyuk and his government illegitimate. Some 75 percent listed either Ukraine’s bad economics or small salaries as the things that concern them the most now, while only nine percent cared about the legal status of the Russian language.
Neither Sholokhov nor Tarsukova feel threatened by the masked protesters who carry machine guns in Slovyansk’s streets.
“They are here to protect us,” both say confidently.
Both also say they don’t believe in the presence of Russian forces in the city, adding that all the men in camouflage are civilians who purchased the uniforms.
Compiling a separatist look turns out to be affordable even in depressive Slovyansk. Next to the city’s central square, a shop sells two-piece costumes similar to those seen on armed protesters for as little as Hr 210.
Kyiv Post editor Olga Rudenko can be reached at [email protected], and on Twitter at @Olya_Rudenko.
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from the project www.mymedia.org.ua, financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action.The content in this article may not necessarily reflect the views of the Danish government, NIRAS and BBC Action Media
