Lily Hyde reports: Harassed Dmitry Chas doesn’t know what day it is, or exactly how long he’s been in round-the-clock charge of the Dynamo roadblock outside Horlivka, a city of 250,000 people north of Donetsk.
But one thing he is sure of: he’s not a terrorist.
“We’re so fed up with what’s being said about us: that we’re wild; that we’re armed,” he said, hurrying to pull on a balaclava to hide his face. “To occupy a building can seem like the work of terrorists, but this road block protecting the town shows that the town supports this goal; that it isn’t terrorism, it’s from the people.”
The armed takeover of state buildings and one whole city in regions of eastern Ukraine has been blamed by the Ukrainian government and media on Russian agents and paramilitary groups from both sides of the border.
But many small-town locals like Chas seem to be closing their eyes to the ominous proliferation of weapons on their streets, or a possible wider geopolitical agenda. They have joined the movement calling for greater independence from Kyiv out of a simple sense of grievance, disillusionment and despair.
“I’m not a politician, I just want my town to be peaceful and to know what’s going to happen tomorrow,” said Chas. “After those revolutions in 2004 and 2014, there’s no faith in tomorrow. I want to be confident that my kids will finish school and institute and get a job; not like now, when you work and work and then there’s a revolution and you lose your job and have nothing to feed your children. We’re just sick of it.”
Chas, a father of three, lost his job as a grocer after the 2004 Orange Revolution. Most people in Horlivka have forgotten what it’s like to have job security, or hot water or money to spare. A people who largely define themselves proudly as workers, without employment many Donbas residents feel lost and abandoned by the rest of the country. [Continue reading…]
Finding the locus of truth,justice, and righteousness in the volatile mixture of collapsing social structures, failing states, and opportunistic superpower meddling is a tricky business.
“The armed takeover of state buildings and one whole city in regions of eastern Ukraine has been blamed by the Ukrainian government and media on Russian agents and paramilitary groups from both sides of the border.”
No mention of overthrow of Ukrainian President, of the fact that the socalled government of Ukraine is not legal, that the east is rebelling against rebels, and as for media blame, look at all the US MSM. Does their blaming make truth?
Its endlessly ……..amusing/disgusting… to hear or read “western” “progressives” lament the overthrow of corrupt klewptocrats because they won an election. The crisis in Ukraine has been driven by the insane levels of corruption in all post Soviet government. If Cheney and his flying monkey were dragged out of the White House by their heels for mass murder, ginning up wars, and establishing torture as a recognized Normal, would these same people be gasping: “but they were ELECTED!” ……. I think maybe so….
Nice little article, with a shrewd sense of humour, cute quotes (“I’m head of the roadblock and I have three rules: no politics, no news, no alcohol”) and some sense of local reality. Of course with comedy here lurks a great pathos. A certain Passport to Pimlico aspect may be hard to acknowledge or concede, for lack of cultural familiarity, sympathy or empathy. Similarities with the NYT article linked to above here – Behind the masks in Ukraine, many faces of rebellion – may signal a softening of Western knee-jerk media responses, and they may give a sense of something more “rich and strange” than hatred of Putin or respect for Europe can quite muster. Thanks for the links.