Bitter residents of Slavyansk pick up pieces of shattered city

As tanks rumbled through eastern Ukraine this weekend, tightening the noose around pro-Russian militants preparing for a final battle in the provincial capitals of Donetsk and Lugansk, the citizens of Slavyansk were picking up the pieces of their shattered town.

Ukraine’s army won the battle for 100,000-strong Slavyansk a week ago, chasing rebels out of what for months had been their stronghold. But the wounds of war are a long way from healing in this once sleepy city. The residents who endured weeks of siege are still living in severely damaged buildings without running water and electricity, and the authorities in Kiev have their work cut out if they are to win their hearts and minds.

Taking Slavyansk seemed a turning point for Ukraine’s army. But the city provides a glimpse of the long-term costs of the battle for eastern Ukraine – especially if similar showdowns follow in much bigger Lugansk and Donetsk.

Slavyansk highlights, too, the long-term task in winning back the trust of the eastern population. People here long felt themselves far from cosmopolitan Kiev and have been heavily influenced by Russian TV reports beamed in from across the border, reports that portray Ukraine’s new government as ultranationalists.

Wearing dusty, sweat-soaked clothing, residents who had not bathed for weeks walked with their heads down, avoiding eye contact. They carried bread and buckets of water supplied by trucks amid 30-degree temperatures, along streets pockmarked by artillery.

Government humanitarian relief is trickling in but not fast enough to ease the pain.

Maryna, 52, a mother of two, crouched over a bucket, sifting glass from the curtains of a now windowless apartment building. Some say it was hit by Ukrainian army fire, others by the rebels in a provocation.

“Nobody will tell you the truth now, it is dangerous,” she said. “But someone, someday, will pay for this.”

Pointing to a nearby building that had lost most of its façade, she said a rebel fighter’s wife had died there. “Do you think he shot at his home and killed his wife?”

“About 20 per cent of our city feels liberated by the Ukrainian army. The rest [feel they] are now under occupation,” she added.

Slavyansk’s television tower collapsed this month, leaving it cut off. But rebels had shut Ukrainian channels off weeks earlier, replacing them with Russian broadcasts that accuse the west of backing Kiev’s “fascist” government. The propaganda has penetrated deeply.

“The Ukrainian army was worse than the German Nazis, slaughtering our peaceful citizens in their sleep,” said Nikolai Kalegin, a 71-year-old pensioner. “It is all the fault of fascist America, which wants to spark a new global war so that they can explore for shale gas here, take over Russia and the rest of the world.”

But amid the damage to schools, hospitals and factories, not everyone blames Kiev.

“I do not know who was behind the bombings but of course I am liberated now because, though I have no water or electricity, I have slept well this week . . . without bombs going off throughout the night,” said another pensioner called Mikhail Antonovich, 80.

In the courtyard of his heavily scarred residential building, he huddled with others around a makeshift outdoor grill. They are among an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 who did not flee the city. “We lived in peace and had none of these problems before the so-called ‘Russian liberators’ arrived,” he added.

Blocks away, one woman wept as she arrived by taxi at her bullet-riddled apartment after seeking refuge a month and a half ago with her daughter in Kiev. Having watched events unfold from Ukraine’s capital, her daughter welcomed the army troops to “Ukrainian territory,” insisting many locals had been brainwashed by Russian TV.

“We now need a massive information campaign to open their eyes to what really happened here,” she said.

Trust in authority has been shattered. The Slavyansk police, whose loyalty to the government in Kiev was called into question after they failed to stand up to the armed pro-Kremlin rebels, now patrol the streets without their firearms to try to win back the confidence of the locals.

In a bid to demonstrate his loyalty to Kiev, one officer speaking fluent Ukrainian insisted: “Lots of times I witnessed the separatists themselves bombing buildings as a provocation, showing up within minutes with Russian television crews to rescue people.”

Still picking glass from her curtains, Maryna said she had initially supported the rebels, insisting the Russian-speaking community had “just wanted our voice to be heard”. But she grew disillusioned with Igor Strelkov, the Muscovite rebel commander who fled to Donetsk last weekend.

“Looking back, it seems Strelkov and the others used us and our city, doing everything possible to ensure maximum destruction, so that [Russia’s President Vladimir] Putin would send the Russian army in,” she said.

She had a blunt message for residents of the 1m-strong city. “Get out. Save yourselves.”