LETTER FROM UKRAINE
Ukraine,
first casualty of Trump-Putin alliance
In
Donetsk, they wonder what the future will hold if the US president
forges strong ties with Moscow.
By ANNA
NEMTSOVA 2/3/17, 3:50 PM CET Updated 2/3/17, 6:59 PM CET
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine
— On the day that U.S. President Donald Trump got on the phone with
Russian President Vladimir Putin, heavy blasts could be heard in the
rebel-held city of Donetsk.
I had traveled from
Kiev to Donetsk Oblast in eastern Ukraine, where people’s lives
have once again been upended by fighting and the toll of almost three
years of conflict can be read in the faces of the unsmiling children.
Families were
fleeing the frontlines, a region home to more than four million
people, and seeking refuge in the towns of Mariupol and Kramatorsk in
Donetsk Oblast.
It is here, in the
area bisected by the frozen Kalmius River and the Azov Sea, that
Trump will be facing his first foreign policy test over his
relationship with Moscow.
* * *
Since 2014, eastern
Ukraine has been tormented by a conflict that has cost the lives of
more than 10,000 people and left cities pockmarked by shelling. A
peace accord last year put a halt to the worst of the violence but
hostilities have flared up again in recent weeks, in part, observers
say, as a result of the new administration in Washington, which has
upended the fragile balance of power.
The separatists say
Ukrainian forces are engaged in a “creeping offensive.” Kiev says
the Russian-backed rebels have been emboldened by the election of
Trump, who favors warmer relations with Moscow.
According to one
report, Ukrainian soldiers received text messages — which suggests
Russian technological involvement — saying: “You are just meat to
your commanders.”
Many people I spoke
with in the Donetsk region — including local officials, soldiers,
doctors, observers and regular citizens — wondered whether Trump
and Putin will make a deal and, if so, what such a deal would mean
for Ukraine.
“This is a test
for Donald Trump” — Mustafa Nayem, deputy in Ukrainian parliament
The State Department
issued a statement Tuesday, saying the United States is “deeply
concerned with the recent spike in violence” and calling for a
ceasefire. But Trump has so far remained silent and Ukraine is
terrified Washington will ultimately turn its back on Kiev in an
effort to appease Putin.
“This is a test
for Donald Trump,” said Mustafa Nayem, a deputy in the Ukrainian
parliament. “If he wants to sacrifice Ukraine and make some secret
deal with Moscow behind our backs, there will be thousands of people
killed and this blood of children and adults will be on Trump’s
hands.”
* * *
On the day of the
Trump-Putin phone call, I heard Ukrainian soldiers talking about
their “200th” and “300th” — code words for the dead and
wounded — at a small store selling military uniforms in downtown
Mariupol.
The casualty numbers
were picking up — five dead and nine wounded in one day. Father
Albert, a protestant priest with the Ukrainian forces, had just
watched a soldier bleed out, the medics unable to save him, and he
was angry that both the European Union and NATO appeared to have
forgotten about Ukraine. “They seem too busy with Trump news to pay
attention to this disaster,” he told me.
In the dead of this
freezing winter, a humanitarian crisis looms: More than 20,000
residents in Avdiivka and Donetsk city have no heat, electricity or
water. And it’s minus 21 degrees Celsius outside.
“Our main concern
… is that the conflict boils over,” said Donald Bowser, a
Canadian observer in Donbas, describing the humanitarian situation as
a “catastrophe.”
Along the old Donbas
frontlines, the war-weary are once more living with the vagaries of
conflict.
“We see thousands
of broken lives here,” said Marina Pugacheva, the head of the
Center for Social Inclusion, an NGO helping the displaced. “Doctors
diagnose … kids with autism but these girls are simply shocked,”
she said, pointing in the direction of children crowding her office
in downtown Mariupol. One little girl had been hit by shelling: She
had lost an arm and no longer had a home.
A priest blesses
fighters of the Ukrainian Donbas volunteer battalion during a
farewell ceremony in Kiev, before their departure for the east of the
country | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
A priest blesses
fighters of the Ukrainian Donbas volunteer battalion during a
farewell ceremony in Kiev, before their departure for the east of the
country | Sergei Supinsky/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian volunteers
of the Donbas battalion take part in military drills | Anatoli
Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
Ukrainian volunteers
of the Donbas battalion take part in military drills | Anatoli
Stepanov/AFP via Getty Images
Pugacheva’s center
received a $30,000 grant from USAID last year to help and counsel the
displaced. Pugacheva says the center is running out of resourses and
she is worried that Trump’s administration will cut off the funds.
Post-traumatic
stress disorder afflicts both children and adults. They have hidden
in basements and lived without routines and normalcy for years. They
have seen blood and destruction, some have lost limbs, others
relatives and loved ones. Teenagers wet their beds. Some no longer
speak.
The city of
Kramatorsk has received thousands of displaced families. Yelizaveta,
a 43-year-old woman who spoke on condition that her last name not be
used and who refused to talk about the whereabouts of her husband,
had come here with her 14-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter from
Kiyevskiy. The resurgence of violence felt like revisiting a bad
dream. “You are left with nothing and your child is crying and all
you want is to wake up,” she said.
* * *
In Kiev, politicians
debate whether to seal the checkpoints and create “a wall” that
would separate the rebel-held territories from the rest of the
country.
Ukrainians who have
family members on both sides of the conflict risk their lives every
time they cross the frontline. Crossing the checkpoints in Mariinka
and Volnovakha, where people are first checked by Ukrainian soldiers,
border customs and security officials and then by rebel militants on
the other side of the so-called dividing line, can take up to 24
hours — often under artillery fire.
“The discussion
about how to stop this war is two years too late” — Yevgeny
Vilinsky
The government has
begun evacuating hundreds of people from the Donetsk region every
day. But the roads are dangerous to travel and look deserted.
Sitting in a small
Chinese café in Kramatorsk, deputy governor of the Donetsk region
Yevgeny Vilinsky and his staff complained that the renewed fighting
makes it hard to get supplies to people or rebuild what has been
destroyed.
Like many Ukrainian
officials, Vilinsky is convinced that without the backing of
Washington or more involvement from the EU, Ukraine will not be able
to find solutions with regard to Donetsk and Luhansk.
“The discussion
about how to stop this war is two years too late,” he said.
Anna Nemtsova is a
correspondent for Newsweek and the Daily Beast based in Moscow. Her
work has also appeared in the Washington Post, the Chronicle of
Higher Education, Foreign Policy, nbcnews.com, Al Jazeera, Marie
Claire and the Guardian.
Authors:
Anna Nemtsova
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