- Lostconfused
- Oct 1, 2008
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https://readovka.news/news/121929
The black and white photos really feel like they're to make this more "dramatic", which seems a bit unnecessary.
quote:
"It's Stalingrad here" - how the residents of the village of Toshkovka live after reunification with Russia
Readovka's correspondent visited the village and gave a first-person account of how people's lives have changed since the fighting and terror by the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
The first cold morning in Donetsk in many months. Cobblestone in the street are covered in brittle, fluffy frost. Frozen puddles crunch under the boots of casual passersby wrapped in windbreakers. Everyone in the young Republic knew the cold weather was coming, but no one expected it to come so quickly.
The bar is temporarily out of service
It's 7:00 in the morning. I'm standing, in a bulletproof vest and a helmet, at the basement entrance with a sign "The bar is temporarily out of service". Behind this door the so-called Limonovs - members of the "Interbrigades" movement gather - (the movement was organized by the unregistered Russian political party "Other Russia", whose leader for a long time was the writer and politician Eduard Limonov - editor's note).
I am met by a tall man with dark hair - his name is Andrei, the coordinator of the movement, and a nazbol, a member of Other Russia. We're going to the Luhansk region together. He's going to distribute basic necessities to the locals, and I'm going to write a report about the people left behind in the border settlements.
Andrew loads my things into the car, and then the two of us go into the basement. Andrei calls this place a bunker.
The bunker is warm. Also stuffy and cramped. There are several people bustling about in the room. They are volunteers, haphazardly gathering basic necessities for the journey.
- Tea? - One of the volunteers asks me sharply.
- Yes," I answer.
I continue to look over the premises. Part of the bunker is filled with cardboard boxes. On them is written: "Russia everything, rest nothing". To the left of the boxes is a small bookshelf, a copy of "Catch-22" by the American writer Joseph Heller catches my eye. Under the bookshelf is a guitar, and to the right is a poster, "There is far more freedom in war than in peace". Sometimes freedom can be horrible.
- Karin, what happened with Krisiewicz, do you know? - Andrei asks me, at the same time packing medicine.
- No.
- That's our Pavlensky "on the cheap". Friendly with the party. He made a cool performance. He went out to Red Square, read a summary of the ideology and shot himself in the temple with a blank pistol. Simulated suicide.
- What's happening with him now?
- They got him on Hooliganism - added a volunteer. - They nailed him for a full five years.
- In light of recent events it looks strange. Especially compared to what's going on in Moscow. Some pro-Ukrainian videos are playing in cafes. And nothing happens to them, - says another volunteer picking out new crutches lying next to the humanitarian cargo.
He takes them out of the bunker and puts them in the interior of the car.
- In case they're useful for civies - he says.
The man has a patch on his sleeve: "Be calm and wait for Russians"
I get in the backseat of the car, half of it crammed with humanitarian aid. We drive. Leaning against my bulletproof vest, I look out the window into the disappearing fields of Donetsk. We are on our way to another republic, LNR.
We quickly skip past the first checkpoints on the way out of town. Countless marshes and small wooden houses fly through the car window. Sun is shining brightly, the sky is clear, no clouds, only in the distance the blue canvas is stained with streaks from working air defenses.
In the middle of the road we stop at a ruined mine shaft, only a digger remains. We smoke. I turn around to look at the hulking ruins. In the middle of the pile of stones looms a monument to Lenin. It looks like he's holding the sun on his huge stone hand. It's amusing to look at such monuments, knowing that the leader was about one and a half meters tall.
- And you still ask why Lenin is cool, - says one of the nazbols to me, smiling.
I didn't ask anything, by the way. We drove on, rushing along the track past fields of golden autumn grass. Sometimes there are black gaps in the grass - shell craters.
- We're going to visit one village now, see how it's going. Then we'll go to two more,- Andrei explains.
There are signs on the side of the road: a skull and bones and one word "Mines". Farther ahead is the territory that until recently was controlled by Ukraine. Now it is Russia.
Sometimes one, some the other.
We drive into Zolote, an urban-type settlement near Lisichansk. It was taken at the end of June. We are on our way to the central square of the city. There should be people there. We come across old khrushchevkas and, surprisingly, a couple of open stores.
Several people are standing in a half-ruined square. They take turns filling plastic canisters with water from a large tank. We stop, and get out of the car.
Opposite me is the local cultural center. Only the facade is left of it. Later the locals would tell me that the walls of the building took the hit of the shell and protected the nearby houses, where people still live today.
- Hello, we are here with humanitarian aid. Can you tell us how things are here with you?
- How? - The woman answers, fetching water. - We'll have winter soon, no gas for half a year. And water for eight years. No one wants to pay attention to us.
Another woman comes up to me and says irritably: "People's roofs are broken. What about the snow, the rain? How will we live in winter?" I remain silent. A volunteer hands her a bag of groceries. She calms down.
Residents say that there is a strategically important substation in the village, so they will not connect the gas. It is strange that eight years ago there were no problems with gas in Zolotoy.
- Can I have something to eat, too? - asks a short elderly man with round glasses. Volunteers take a bag of groceries out of the car.
- When there were tanks here, the gas workers came every day and fixed everything for us. Everything was fine. Now they're all gone, - he says rolling up the bag.
How the boundary of normality has been erased, I think.
- Whose tanks?
- Sometimes one, some the other - he answers, smirking.
Local residents began to flock to the square. Everyone wants help. Andrei takes me by the hand and guides me away to the car: "Let's get out of here. Everything is still fine here."
We say goodbye to the locals and get in the car. I turn around and look through the rear window, looking out the half-broken square. After a moment, it is abruptly empty. It's like we never came here.
"Part of his body rotted away, and part of it eaten by animals."
The sun is already setting behind the waste heaps. A purple sunset illuminates the road. Sometimes it seems that the war is going on somewhere in another dimension. We pass a roadblock, fortified with tires and reinforced with trenches. The war is only gone for a moment.
"Here's our settlement," says Andrei. The car stops in front of a rusty, crumpled iron sign that says "Toshkovka". I step out into the street and look around in horror. The five-storey houses look like they have been gnawed from all sides - the shells have chewed out entire floors. Bare concrete slabs stick out of the torn wounds.
For a second it felt like I was transported back to Mariupol in March: my first dead, the midst of urban fighting, and the ringing sound of lead shells exploding a few meters away from me. But worst of all were the faces of the people, the expression of their eyes full of horror. I would never want to see them again.
We get in the car and drive on through the city streets, or what's left of them. We drive past someone's exposed kitchens, bedrooms, living rooms. A wall with only a square outline of a window is left of one building, with clouds sifting through the building frame.
We pull up to another five-story building that has been destroyed. Andrei honks his horn, trying to draw attention to our humanitarian group.
A couple dozen hungry cats come running out to meet us. They are screaming loudly, begging for food. Volunteers feed them, the screaming stops. It's quiet now. I look up. The iron beams sticking out of the apartments sometimes creak in the wind. Among these beams hangs a huge tattered teddy bear. Where is its owner now?
I come closer. There are familiar inscriptions on the doorway: "People live here" and "Z".
- Watch your step. There are a lot of unexploded shells lying around, - warns the volunteer.
It is. One step away from me is a black tire, and in it is a mine. A meter away there are clothes. I look closely, it looks like a military uniform.
- It's was Ukrainian soldier. - says Andrei, noticing that I'm getting closer.
- Part of his body rotted away, and part of it eaten by animals. - the volunteer adds.
The village of Toshkovka was liberated from the Ukrainian army on June 20. It turns out that the remains of Ukrainian soldiers have been lying here since the summer.
*I'm not including photos of the remains here*
Volunteers call me to the basement. There are two more down there. Most likely, they were buried by concrete debris. I take a closer look. What's under the helmet looks like a burst soccer ball. It's hard to imagine that in its place was the outline of a human face. Next to it is another one. All that was left was a black glove and a gnawed bone sticking up.
I walk down the concrete blocks and planks into the basement. Broken glass crunches beneath my feet. The familiar smell of rot hits my face. The stench penetrates my clothes, skin, hair, soaking me through. And another man.
- Do not go close to the corpses, they can be mined, - reminds the volunteer.
The soldier's body is intact. It lies in delicate white feathers from the torn mattress. It looks like he's just fallen asleep. I walk carefully around his feet in gray sneakers, slowly approaching his head on the soft featherbed. I lean over. What's left of his face is a charred skull and the top row of white teeth. Probably torn by a shell.
*I'm not including photos of the remains here*
Examining the body. On the left arm is a patch of the Ukrainian flag. Nearby, on the mattress, there is a piece of the lower jaw. I notice that a wire is tied to the soldier's torso. Apparently, they tried to pull him out.
I take pictures and step away from the body. I walk down the long basement hallway. The smell intensifies, and it also gets loud. I turn around. It's the volunteers calling me from the street. Before I knew it, I was all alone.
The only residents of Toshkovka - Bakitko family
I get out of the basement. Again I began to scrutinize the building, memorizing every detail. One part of it catches my attention more than the others. The door to the porch is intact. I lift my head: through the glass aisles I notice several stacks of firewood, stacked neatly on top of each other. Even higher up, on the fourth floor, is an intact balcony with pale pink paneling.
- Young lady, what are you looking at? This is my apartment, - a woman's voice called out to me.
I turn around. A woman in her fifties, with dark hair and blue eyes, is standing next to me. She's holding a small bag of groceries in her hands.
Her name is Angela Bakitko. She and her husband Eduard are the only ones who stayed in Toshkovka after the Russian military arrived. During the hostilities, her husband and wife went to visit their children in Lugansk. When the village was finally occupied by Russia, the family decided to return. As of today, these two are the only residents of Toshkovka.
- I'm not afraid of anything anymore. I've been a social worker here for eighteen years. I've done pensions, I've helped people. I know everybody. I have a sister who died here and my parents. I don't even know where they are. According to eyewitnesses' accounts they were buried in rubble, - Angela says
- How will you live here? The building can't be rebuilt.
- Well, Mariupol has been restored. Although I was told by Russian soldiers that it's not like that there. It's just Stalingrad here," the woman replies.
- And if you were provided with housing in Russia, would you leave?
- No one will give it to me - this, first of all. Secondly, I do not know. Let the village be rebuilt. We have a wonderful mine, there are coal deposits for a hundred years. My husband is a miner, already retired, so I know everything about the mine.
- Can I take a picture of you?
- No, come on! I don't want people on the other side looking at me.
I put the camera away.
- Oh, there's Peter Ivanovich, bringing bread, - she says, looking over my back.
I turn around. A cherry-colored Lada pulls up to us. A tall gray-haired man in a loose sweater gets out of it. He's holding two loaves of bread.
- Pyotr Ivanovich, do I owe you money? - Angela asks, approaching the man.
Pyotr Ivanovich shakes his head in disagreement. Angela takes the bread from the man's hands, but, unable to hold on to it, drops it on the ground. She quickly picks up the pastry, shaking off the rough brown crust, and puts it in a bag.
Pyotr Ivanovich lives in the neighboring settlement of Cheherovo. There are still people there - about a hundred hungry old people, surviving without heat, water, and almost no food. Humanitarian organizations do not reach these places, but my companions are an exception.
Andrei has known Pyotr Ivanovich for a long time. He is the "elder" in Toshkovka and Chekhov. During the bloody city battles, he didn't leave, he stayed behind. He helped his fellow countrymen in every way he could: extinguishing fires, pulling the wounded out of the rubble, helping with food.
- Do you want to see the Ukrops? - he asks me.
- I saw them in the basement.
- They're still lying on the other side, - the man says, smoking a cigarette. - They stole my car. They stole my brother's too, but I got his car back.
- And how did the Russians behave?
- They helped me, and I boiled potatoes for them. I still keep in touch with the Donetsk boys. Do you want me to show you my brother's apartment?
I agree. We go into the house. It seems as if the walls could collapse on us at any moment. We climb to the fifth floor, go inside.
As I crossed the threshold, I go numb with horror. The floor of one of the rooms has collapsed several stories below. Everything is sooty. The lamp in the hallway is melted, as if already solidified drops of metal were dripping from it. A few months ago, this place had been hell. However, it's still here even now.
Peter Ivanovich begins to cough loudly. I feel that he is crying.
- If you are going to film it, say it's the apartment of Rukov Vladimir Ivanovich, my brother. He's dead, - the man says and immediately leaves the apartment, leaving me alone with this black, all-consuming emptiness.
Having captured everything on camera, I go out from the porch. Pyotr Ivanovich is smoking by the car. Volunteers are talking to Angela.
- Our people didn't receive benefits. Some went to their relatives, some rented an apartment in Lugansk for ten thousand. I recently got a call from my neighbor in Moscow, she is with her son. She found a job for eleven thousand, and she spent it all on utilities and groceries. She can't even buy socks. She said: "I want to go home." But there is no home.
- Don't know where to go. The head of the Pervomaisk administration tells everyone that everything is fine here. He hasn't even visited these two, - he points at Angela, - once. We are here by ourselves. By ourselves.
Angela looks up at her apartment: "All right, let's go. I'll show you where we live. Just don't film me."
"We bought a plasma, the old one was stolen by soldiers."
There is a "Z" on the door in the hallway
- What wouldn't we do to be left alone, - says Angela.
We go into the apartment. The landlady takes several pairs of slippers out of the closet. We take off our shoes. Behind us, several cats come up to the floor. Seeing them, Angela quickly closes the front door: "They scurry about the corpses, and my place is clean".
The two-room apartment really is clean and tidy. It was as if no fighting had taken place in the village at all. I go into the room, it's a bedroom. The bed is neatly made. On the dressing table there are a few icons and a small bouquet of bush roses. Above that hangs a plasma TV.
Angela says that neighbors saw Ukrainian soldiers entering her apartment and taking out the family's belongings in an orange blanket: "They even took away the plasma TV set, we had to buy a new one. Here it hangs now, pleases the eye."
There is no electricity in the village. But the family believes that Russia will restore everything.
The house flowers - a ficus and a dracaena - remained intact. The family brought bedding and clothes from Lugansk. There were no windows in the apartment. Angela says that her husband replaced intact windows from uninhabited apartments. It's cold here. Closer to winter, the family will heat wood: "We had everything broken, my husband and I put canisters of drinking water outside. We waited for the water to build up, then we cleaned up".
I go into the kitchen. There's a view of the wrecked village from the windows. Somewhere in the sky, clouds of smoke are rising. Must be more shelling.
We go down. A little orange dog comes running out to meet us. It barks and wags its tail.
- It's Natasha's, a neighbor. He start following her in 2014, - Angela explains.
- And where is his mistress now?
- Gone to Rostov. No time for a dog there. Her sister is kicking her out herself.
The sun is almost over the horizon. The guys transfer the humanitarian rations to Pyotr Ivanovich's car, he will go to Chekhurovo to distribute it to the needy. We leave one bag of food to Angela.
- All eight years of the war you stayed on Ukrainian territory. How did the military treat civilians?
- They are all different. Some are normal and some are not. The AFU is normal, but the battalions are awful. But we lived normally. Our neighbor Ilya repaired their cars, and Tanya welcomed them. She had a sauna, she sent them girls, - Angela says.
- Did you interact with the battalions?
- No, never.
- We were waiting for Russia, and now the local authorities are accusing us of sitting under the Ukrops. So we were sitting just like you. - Peter Ivanovich joins the conversation. - Our children, brothers and sisters live on that side, and they are still sitting in the trenches. And these people just occupied the chairs and started to screw with our heads. Can't stand it. There's only a loving year or two left to live. Let us live like human beings!
I take Pyotr Ivanovich by the arm.
- Have you noticed the flowers growing next to the house? - I asked him, trying awkwardly to change the subject.
He calms down, lowers his gaze to the ground, where yellow and red flowers sprout from the rubble.
- It's true, - he says to me, lowering his voice. - Everything is ruined, but the flowers are growing.
- This is our flowerbed, we used to do everything here, - Angela says. - We always kept it clean. Lyuda Vasilchenko and I used to manage everything. She used to paint everything.
I take a closer look at the base of the house. Somewhere there are still painted animals, trees, and flowers.
- The swings were still in the yard. We lived here!
***
The sun is over the horizon. It's starting to get dark. We have to go back to Donetsk. We say goodbye to Angela and Pyotr Ivanovich. We promise to come back.
We drive along the dark road. Occasionally a pair of yellow headlights whizzes by.
- Andrei, did you often talk to Limonov?
- Of course.
- What was the last thing you talked about?
- He said to me, "Andrei, I can't understand what's in your head".
- What did he mean by that?
- I guess I'm thinking about the wrong things, - Andrei answers with a slight smile.
We drove on in silence, staring into the darkness of the cold autumn night. I lay down on my bulletproof vest and fall into a deep sleep. I dreamed of some bright flashes of light. I wake up a few hours later to the pounding of the wheels on a speed bump.
Through the window a bright yellow light from a flashlight spills over me. I squint. I open my eyes and a multi-storey building appears before me with a huge inscription: "Russian Donbass". We arrived.
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Nov 24, 2022 18:39
