Vladislav Kopatsky, a 24-year-old Ukrainian policeman, brings dough and bread to a village on Ukraine’s eastern front, but at times he has the impression that he is in enemy territory.
Kopatsky pulls groceries out of the trunk of a car and quickly looks at the horizon for trails of smoke that point to the recent Russian bombardment of the city of Novonikolaevka. Then he continues his journey to distribute humanitarian aid to residents. However, his arrival is sometimes met with coldness or worse.
Many residents who remained in Novonikolaevka near Kramatorsk, despite fierce fighting and orders from the Ukrainian authorities to evacuate, support the Russians. Elders who grew up in the Soviet era continue to have a deep distrust of Kyiv.
Kopatsky explains that many residents have already been detained on suspicion of giving the Russians the GPS coordinates of Ukrainian rear bases. “Unfortunately, it happened,” he says, climbing out of the makeshift underground shelter where the family had just spent three days under Russian bombardment.
Kopatsky says he is “trying to talk” to pro-Russian residents, “but those who grew up in the Soviet era are hard to convince.” “They have a point of view, and they will not budge,” he assured.
An opinion fueled by Kremlin propaganda that classifies Ukrainians as “neo-Nazis” on Washington’s orders and makes Kopatsky a potential target in these frontline locations.
Ukrainian soldiers who have been in contact with residents estimate that between 30% and 45% of them support the Russians. “They are definitely passing on our geolocation to the Russians,” complained one soldier during a brief rest after five days at the front.
Donbass is populated predominantly by Russian speakers whose roots in the region date back to sending Russian laborers after World War II. This history has shaped the identity of the Donbass, which has maintained strong economic and cultural ties with Russia since the fall of the USSR and Ukraine’s independence.
Andrey Oleinik, a 48-year-old wheelchair-bound resident of Novonikolayevka, spent the past week listening in the dark to military aircraft hovering and shells exploding nearby. His wooden hut in the garden was damaged. Since then, he has become even angrier at Kyiv and Moscow for not seeking peace.
“The Russians have left Kyiv. For the people there, the war seems to be over. If the people of Kiev continued to live the way we live here, everything would be different,” he says. “I blame both governments. Both parties are responsible. They don’t care about us,” he laments.
Part of the resentment towards Kyiv also stems from the region’s economic condition, which suffered from deindustrialization before the start of the war with the separatists in 2014.
Andrei and his wife Elena managed to collect their savings and in recent days tried to leave with their children for a neighboring town, but were forced to return because four days after their arrival, he became the target of airstrikes.
“Where can we go?” Andrey asks. “There is a war going on all over the region,” he adds. A local policeman, seeing how families return with their belongings, despite the explosions, cannot hold back his tears. “They return to this hell because they have nowhere to go,” he says.
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