Interviews With Residents of Donbas

The following video features interviews with residents of Donbas, the ethnic Russian region of Ukraine that voted for independence in 2014. I don’t know much about the origin of this clip — Vlad could tell you more — but it is a brief excerpt from a much longer documentary.

Many thanks to D@rLin|{ for the translation, and to Vlad Tepes and RAIR Foundation for the subtitling:

Video transcript:

00:05   It all started around June 2014, when we decided to separate
00:11   from Ukraine. So they started shelling us… Mornings and nights.
00:18   My husband and I went to vote in the referendum. We were walking there,
00:23   while they were shooting at us, under artillery shelling.
00:29   They were dropping leaflets on us in 2014, saying we should leave immediately,
00:33   take ourselves and get off the land because it does not belong to us.
00:39   They don’t need the people who live here;
00:43   they want our land and our coal, but they don’t need the people,
00:47   don’t need the people. They want the land, they don’t want the people… They simply want the land,
00:53   not the people…
00:57   My Natasha died…
01:02   they were going to the kindergarten on Shahter street. The child was four years old; she was 25…
01:13   Quiet! Be quiet! There is a child, here is the hand, he is crying…
01:22   Children… They didn’t do anything bad yet,
01:25   to live in such a terrible world.
01:33   I heard explosions and noise outside the window,
01:40   as if something fell down or exploded
01:45   I think it was the loudest explosion I heard in my life… I was scared and ran to my mom.
01:50   My brother was already with her… We tried to call Dad,
01:54   but could not get a connection at the time.
01:60   Ukraine was shooting at us. They hate us.
02:07   It seems to me that even at seven I understood that it’s really a war. I was afraid
02:14   for my parents and little brother. I saw him crying, and cried with him.
02:17   Are our children not like their children? Or we are not mothers like they are?
02:23   When they started bombing us, killing children, women and the elderly,
02:28   I understood that they hate us, even though
02:33   we didn’t do anything to them; we didn’t start a war
02:37   against them. They started it.
02:41   Right now, in 2022, he is asking me: “Mommy, what is this?”
02:46   So I tell my son: “We are being bombed and need to leave,” and he says: “And Daddy?”
02:50   Daddy could not leave, he went to defend his homeland.
02:54   It’s terrible to know that this person is no more;
03:00   he will never come back.
03:03   It’s very painful. How to explain this to children?
03:06   I heard they started shooting. I was scared, obviously, but forced myself to hold on.
03:12   I heard something fly through the window, breaking the glass in the kitchen.
03:17   When I came out, lying on the kitchen table I saw, where I was sitting,
03:20   a grenade fragment, and broken glass is everywhere.
03:24   They started shooting, and also promised there would be a chemical attack.
03:30   We were very afraid… When shelling started, children were scared and were crying
03:35   And then when the really hard explosions started.
03:40   It was impossible to stay in our homes.
03:45   In those eight years I more or less got used to it. You got used to war? Yes, it appears so.
03:52   I think they no longer remember peace. Because you can constantly hear some explosions.
03:56   They say we attacked them,
03:59   that we bomb ourselves.
04:04   When it all started, they said they were not using weapons against civilians.
04:10   They were bombing us using all kinds of unlawful weapons:
04:15   cassette bombs, Grads, Uragans…
04:19   As soon as the bombing starts, they straightaway start reacting. They are already
04:22   conditioned psychologically. They start hiding.
04:25   It’s something you will not forget easily; it’s not that simple.
04:28   Regrettably, the information war is ongoing.
04:32   Somehow everybody is always saying, “Help Ukraine!”
04:37   Help — we have families; we have children. We also had children and families eight years ago
04:43   And now… In the MSM there are too many things that are simply not true.
04:49   And who saw us suffer for seven, almost eight years?
04:54   Noticed our suffering? Nobody.
04:58   Nobody heard us, either… Never… Of course they did not.
05:03   They only hear what they want to hear.
05:06   We hope it will be over soon. We will go home and live as we once did. We hope it will be quiet.
05:12   We don’t need war. We want to live in peace and harmony.
05:16   We want to see our relatives. We want peace.
05:24   Peaceful skies above our heads and a peaceful future for our children,
05:29   For our side and theirs. You need to hear this, need to listen to us
05:36   and understand us.
05:52   Parents stayed home, to defend their homes, their land,
05:56   so that the children could live in their homeland under peaceful skies.
 

17 thoughts on “Interviews With Residents of Donbas

  1. Cueing Green Infidel, “Russia is the evil aggressor & Putin is the Austrian corporal reincarnated.”

  2. This invasion by Putin is about amything but the Donbas – he is looking to take the whole country, not only those parts which, according to Russia, supposedly want to be “liberated”.

    However, for balance, here’s something about Russian separatist shelling of Ukrainian government-held areas, during the past few years…

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.wsj.com/amp/articles/in-eastern-ukraine-life-under-russian-shelling-becomes-untenable-for-many-11645447028

    Also, a great documentary (and regarded as fairly balanced) by Vice about Putin’s Crimea (last part is about Donbas, and areas being shelled):

    https://youtu.be/lzO7gIT5GYU

    And here are the “huge” crowds recently gathered to celebrate Donetsk “independence” from Ukraine:

    https://youtu.be/Z2hqlwNtlA8

  3. Telegram channels indicate one interesting feature:
    Ukrainians carefully wrap objects of Lviv’s architectural heritage in foam rubber. And at the same time they place guns in the middle of the cultural heritage of the Russian city (in the past) of Odessa .

    • Didnt know that. But a lot of Lviv’s heritage isn’t Ukrainian either, but Polish.

      • This is cultural appropriation. They took the place of the Poles and settled down very comfortably there. They have a tradition of wearing Ukrainian national “vyshyvanka” shirts on the sculptures of the former city of Lemberg.

        After the Maidan, they began to put them on statues in Odessa founded by the Russians.

        I remember one correspondence with a fairly educated and wealthy resident of Kyiv. I decided to poke him (I have an unpleasant character) and mentioned the story of the murder of Polish professors by Ukrainian students. He replied: “Well, what else could they do? Polish professors considered Ukrainians to be an inferior race. They paid the price for that.”

        • Thank you – I didn’t know about that. And then there is Wołyń – an especially terrible episode of genocide, during World War 2. And Ukrainians helping Germans to put down the Warsaw Rising…

          Nonetheless, the situation now is different. 24.02.2022 is for Ukraine, what 01.09.1939 was for Poland, and there is no doubt here, that Poland is one of the possible next targets, if Putin is allowed to take Ukraine with little pain.

          On top of the now 1 million refugees in Poland, economic warfare with gas and flooding Europe with Muslim migrants last year, Putin and Lukashenko are the most destabilising influences in Europe today.

  4. https://www.friatider.se/putin-satter-araber-mot-ukraina

    Putin sets up Arabs against Ukraine

    Publicerad 7 mars 2022

    Published March 7, 2022 at 08.35
    FOREIGN. Syrians are now being offered $ 7,000 to fight for Russia in Ukraine for up to seven months, reports Arab Asharq al-Awsat. The move is seen as a sign that the illegal war of aggression is not going as Vladimir Putin has intended.

    Several of the Arabs are already in place in Russia and are now getting ready to be deployed in Kyiv, according to information to the Wall Street Journal.

    When the UN General Assembly last week voted on a resolution condemning Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Syria voted against. The others who voted against were North Korea, Eritrea and Belarus.

    • And then there are Kadyrov’s Chechens. And the Russian army as a whole (according to some sources, around half of it Muslim nowadays).

      And they’re already bringing their habits into Ukraine – in Kherson, 11 women were raped after the “liberation”, according to doctors.

      To be fair – there are also a lot of Syrians (especially) and Chechens who hate Putin, and may well jump at the chance to join the fight “defending Ukraine”.

      But all in all, makes one wonder why many long-time counterjihadis support an invasion, by significantly-Islamic armies on a mainly-Christian country?

  5. And there you have it. For 8 years, Ukraine is busy trying to destroy the people of the independent regions and no one knows or cares.
    But as soon as Russia intervenes to put a stop to the Ukraine government’s violence, the whole world turns into a mob of hating warmongers. The hatred feed by lies and propaganda of the world’s media outlets.
    I pray that God’s plan becomes apparent soon and the haters are stopped.

    • The name of God is Yahweh. Let’s all think together on which side Yahweh stands. The answer is obvious.

      • It is better to consider if to the best of your ability, am i standing on Yahweh’s side. Yahweh is on everyone’s side but not necessarily for what they want.

        Will you lose access to this sight on March 11? I am presuming you are in Russia. I think you have posted your country location but I can’t recall.

    • Russia is not “putting a stop to the government’s violence” – Donbas has seen less of the fighting… And you ignore the regular shelling by the separatists, which meant residents could not return to their homes, eg near the front line near Mariupol.

      Instead, Russia is busy shelling ethnic Russian cities like Kharkov to pieces. Putin “caring about Russians” is just another of his lame excuses, like “Nazis” or “Nato”.

    • Well John I didn’t see your concern when they forced Germans out of East Prussia, Silesia, and the Sudetenland. So spare me your concern of those Russians of Donblas and Crimea who should be moved to Russia.

      • Very true. This “protecting Russians” sounds very much like “protecting Germans” in 1938 and 1939. A large part of Hitler’s speech was devoted to it, in October 1939 just after conquering Poland.

Comments are closed.