In Isolation

Dispatches from Occupied Donbas

Stanislav Aseyev, Lidia Wolanskyj, Lidia Wolanskyj

• Publisher: Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9780674268814
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Literary Collections
• Index: Literature

In this exceptional collection of dispatches from occupied Donbas, writer and journalist Stanislav Aseyev details the internal and external changes observed in the cities of Makiïvka and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine. Aseyev scrutinizes his immediate environment and questions himself in an attempt to understand the reasons behind the success of Russian propaganda among the working-class residents of the industrial region of Donbas.In this work of documentary prose, Aseyev focuses on the early period of the Russian-sponsored military aggression in Ukraine's east, the period of 2015–2017. The author's testimony ends with his arrest for publishing his dispatches and his subsequent imprisonment and torture in a modern-day concentration camp on the outskirts of Donetsk run by lawless mercenaries and local militants with the tacit approval and support of Moscow. For the first time, an inside account is presented here of the toll on real human lives and civic freedoms that the citizens of Europe's largest country continue to suffer in Russia's hybrid war on its territory.

Notes

1. Lviv: Staryi Lev Publishers, 2020.
2. Literally “New Russia”—a historical term used in the eighteenth century imperial Russian conquest of today’s southern Ukraine and in the annexation of the Zaporozhian Sich, revived by Russian propaganda for a brief time during the 2014 aggression against Ukraine in the Donbas and in the occupation of Crimea (editor’s note).
3. The flag of Ukraine represents a banner of two horizontal bands of equal size, blue on the top and yellow on the bottom, symbolizing the blue sky and the yellow fields of wheat. The color combination was used on the banners of the Kingdom of Galicia-­Volhynia (today’s western Ukraine) as early as the twelfth century and as a national symbol during the 1848 Spring of Nations (ed.).
4. Opolchenie is a historical term that refers to the defense of the Slavic homelands from culturally and religiously distinct invaders arriving from the South or the West during a period that stretches from the Middle Ages to World War II. The use of the term by Russian propaganda in Ukraine’s Donbas was meant to introduce the notion of the homeland defense similar to that during the Nazi attack on Soviet Ukraine in World War II, thus effectively marking the Ukrainian government in Kyiv after the 2014 Revolution of Dignity as a “fascist coup” (ed.).
5. Russian propaganda TV channel that was in operation in 2013–2017 (as Life in 2016–2017) and which engaged in pro-­Russian reporting on the ground during the Donbas military aggression. The channel’s reporting was criticized for manipulations, including an episode in which supposedly the business card of Dmytro Iarosh, the leader of the Pravyi sektor paramilitary organization, was filmed among the personal effects of a deceased Ukrainian fighter. The role of the far right Pravyi sektor during the Revolution of Dignity in Ukraine was routinely exaggerated and demonized by Russian media in an attempt to portray the entire popular uprising as far right, “neo-­Nazi,” and xenophobic, and these efforts extended to the military hostilities in the Donbas and their portrayal (ed.).
6. A reference to the Order of Saint George, the highest military order of the Russian Federation. Originally established by Catherine II in the Russian Empire of the 18th century, it was revived in 2000 in Russia. The ribbon of the order is orange with three black stripes. Ribbons of the Order of Saint George were adopted in 2005 by Russian state and state–sponsored organizations in celebration of the “Russian victory” against the German forces in World War II. Since 2014, Russian propaganda has promoted the use of the ribbon in the Donbas as a symbol of resistance to the Ukrainian forces, an implicit parallel to the Soviet struggle against Nazi Germany during World War II (ed.).
7. “Russian Spring” is a term credited to Egor Kholmogorov, a Russian far-right ideologue and writer, one of the authors of the “Novorossiia” project. The term was meant to establish a parallel between Russian-­sponsored anti-­Ukrainian actions in Ukraine’s east and the pro-democracy movements known as the Arab Spring (ed.).
8. Grad (in Russian, “hail”) is the name of BM-21, originally a Soviet 122-mm multiple rocket launcher (MRL) that later received several modifications in Russia, including systems with satellite navigation and automated target aiming (MRLS). The launcher is capable of firing up to 40 rockets in 20 seconds, reaching targets as far as 19 miles away. The system is generally considered imprecise and is used for blanket shelling of an area, usually resulting in a high casualty rate (ed.).
9. Ukrop is a Russian ethnic slur for Ukrainians that was used for pro-independence Ukrainians after the Revolution of Dignity (2013–2014) and adopted during the Donbas aggression as a derogatory reference to the Ukrainian forces (ed.).
10. A reference to the unlawful referendum in the DPR on May 11, 2014, universally seen as an attempt to legitimize the separatist “republic” in a process that would imitate free and open elections by the local population. A similarly bogus referendum was held on the same day in the “Luhansk People’s Republic” (LPR) (ed.).
11. A reference to the snap presidential elections in Ukraine on May 25, 2014 that were held following the ousting of the pro-­Russian president Viktor Yanukovych after the Revolution of Dignity (ed.).
12. A reference to Pavlo Hubariev, a pro-­Russian activist who proclaimed himself the “people’s governor” of the Donbas (March-­November 2014) but was soon sidelined by other leaders of the militia forces (ed.).
13. The alias of Igor Girkin, a Russian nationalist and officer of Russia’s GRU military intelligence service who played a key role in Russia’s occupation and annexation of Crimea and the later military aggression against Ukraine in the Donbas, where he briefly held the position of “defense minister” in the DPR. In 2019, the Dutch state prosecutors charged Girkin along with other co-conspirators for murder in the downing of the MH17 flight that killed all 298 people on board (ed.).
14. Anti-­Terrorist Operation (ATO) is the name Kyiv gave to the war operation in the country’s east, because admitting that it was a war would have had considerable unwanted repercussions for civilian institutions and foreign aid (translator’s note).
15. A reference to the “parade of ...

Table of contents

• From the Editors
• Preface
• The Lost Generation of the “Fabled Novorossiia”
• How I Became a Shadow in My Own Land
• Who Has Joined the DPR Militants and What Are They Fighting for?
• Executed as an “Enemy of the People” of the DPR
• The Checkpoint: “I’m Alive because of the War”
• How to Defeat the DPR
• Young People in the DPR and the LPR: What Does the Future Hold?
• The Donetsk “Uprising” a Year Later: The Future of an Illusion
• An Excuse to Pull the Trigger
• The Voice of the Donbas: How Five Thousand Victims Are “Heard”
• Chronicle of Decline and Fall: The Donetsk Oblast State Administration Building
• Grenades Aren’t a Big Deal Anymore: Everyday Tragedies in Makiїvka
• Why They Like “Tsars” in the Donbas
• What is Ukraine to Me? The View from Makiїvka
• A Letter to the Russians
• Who Lives off the Residents of Occupied Donbas?
• The “Esperanto” of Vladimir Putin
• A Letter to My Country
• The Half-life of the Sovok
• Irreconcilable Differences
• A Few Fairytales about the DPR
• Donbas: Seven Hundred Days of Solitude
• What Comes Next?
• Lower Than Rock Bottom
• Cultural Life under Occupation: The City of Donetsk
• Citizens without Citizenship
• Homo Donbasus, or The Changes Brought by the War
• About Easter… and More
• Chaos in Their Heads: How the War Is Perceived in the Occupied Zone
• What Pygmalion Left Unsaid
• Evening Strolls through an Empty City
• Quid Prodest?
• The “Remainers”: The Undiscovered Bosch of the DPR
• Screeching in the Thorns
• “Primaries” under the Occupation
• Propaganda on the Streets of Donetsk
• Occupation as It Is: Khartsyzk
• That Sweet Word, “War”
• Where the Elite of Occupied Donetsk Take Their Leisure
• Donetsk: A Tour of Expropriated Places
• Immersed in War
• The Donbas in 2017: Three Variations on a Theme
• The DPR and Religion
• How the Militants Prepare Children to Join Their Military Organizations
• “I Fought in the War”: Life after Leaving the DPR Militia
• Back in the USSR: Soviet Themes in Donetsk Eateries
• “Looking for a Tusk to Buy”: Ads in Occupied Donetsk
• Following the Path of Crimea?
• Us and Them
• A Knack for Losing Things
• Notes
• Illustration Credits