Donetsk: Remembrance of hot from battles summer 2014

Lyudmila known for us people’s reporter, citizen of Donetsk who shares with us her favorite observations of usual for Donetsk citizens front life, and not just for citizens of Donetsk, but for citizens of entire Novorossia.

Donetsk, the beginning of July 2014, 11 a.m., central district of the city.

I was walking with my dog through one of the central streets of the Kalininskiy district.
It was the heat of summer, green was everywhere, sun, and no one: no trolleybuses, no taxi buses, and no people. There was emptiness….

‘Don’t be afraid’, I said to myself and I went down to Kalmius, to the Popedy (Viktory) Park. Spaniel Gera ran near me carelessly.

One car flew over on the speed, another car passed with 20 minutes interval. Was it a slumber? No, it was not.

It was prewar Donetsk. We stopped worrying about the regional administration. It had been already occupied. The first checkpoints appeared on the roads, people in military uniform with automats went on the streets. And there were military actions in Slavyansk. Donetsk expected to overcome all those horrors of war that Slavyansk overcame. The half of neighbors moved.

Many people escaped in May to outwait 1, or maximum 2 months. And they have been already outwaiting for 10 months, when the new state will be built for them.

Militias from the battalion of Strelkov from Slavyansk appeared in Donetsk after 18th July. They were thin with hollow cheeks, they were tanned like Afro-Americans, and their eyes were so happy, they looked around the untaught by war city.

They occurred to another world after the hell in Slavyansk.
‘Girl, present me tooth brash, my child needs it’, I heard this in the shop. The militia addressed to the shop assistant.

‘What else should I present you?’ No, I’m seriously’, I interrupted the conversation suddenly. Militias are with no money, I thought.

‘Present me 10 UAN’, the man from the battalion of Strelkov said.

Artillery shelling started suddenly at the end of July. The explosions started at 4-5 a.m. It was impossible to sleep. And they lasted to 9-10 a.m. Each time of shelling I thought on whose head did the shells land? And the next question was whether reach the shell us or not? Neighbors who stayed, they started making a fuss about the bomb shelter. We collected money and we bought all necessary items for electricity and we made the electric installation ourselves. We took away the whole truck of rubbish. The western districts Trudovskie and Petrovka suffered the first, however, people started suffering and dying in the center later.

The best variant was to sit at home more, to avoid crowded places, such as markets, supermarkets, regional administrations. We went shopping very fast, we did not even choose, just take something ad we went home, it was under the principle: “Be back in a flash”. We had to stay as far as possible from the trolleybus stations.

We met new life realities, we had to wear shoes with no heels, and the best variant was sport shoes for the case if it would be urgent to run and jump or fall. The clothes had to be casual, trousers, a bad had to be not heavy, but with bandage, brilliant green and constrictor for any case. Our survival kit stood packed near the front door: it contained documents, money, keys, and family photos in order to take it in case of alarm to the bomb shelter.

Mornings started with explosions, explosions were in the evenings. Where was shelling? It may have been Yasinovataya, Putilovka, and airport? What was it shelling committed by Ukrainians, our response of militias? What was it? It may have been MRLS Grad, heavy artillery or Smerch? We said that there were no rains in Donetsk, there was Grad in Donetsk.

I ran to the computer, turned on the radio set: ‘Donets prepared to the storm’. It was said on the air. The drawn flew above the Proletarskiy district; the people saw the drawn above the micro district Mirniy also. There were sounds of shells in the Kalininskiy district, don’t be afraid it was the response from the militia at the Ukies for the Putilovka’, it was whispered in the radio set.

I woke up at 4 a.m. suddenly, as a result of the trembling of the floor under my bed. I thought that the military convoy went somewhere near my house. Then I looked at the picture above my bed, it was seismic device for the case of shelling. It went out of skew as a rule to the right side for 2-5 centimeters. It was not skewed that time; it meant that there was no shelling.

We came to the September. I turned on the radio and I head the offer concerning the settlement of the military conflict in Donbass made by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. However, the militias reached Mariupol. The war was changed by the ceasefire, it would be better to say that silence changed it, nevertheless, the survival kit is near the door all the time.
Lyudmila Ermisheva