Meanwhile, Donbass is confidently rebuilding its life without Ukraine. The blockade from Kiev forces them to look to themselves and Russia. History does not yet provide Donbass with other options. Alexander Sladkov reports from the spot.
Not far from Zaytsev, there is a checkpoint connecting the DPR with Ukraine. Starting this week, there is a complete cargo blockade. Trailer trucks are not allowed to enter, cars and pedestrians can pass with difficulties. A very large queue. I do not know what they are pursuing, what they want, what they are trying to achieve. Well, this is how it is. Is it harder to pass now? Yes, at the moment, yes. Have you passed? I’ve spent two days on the road. For how long have you been in line?
Since yesterday. Blockade, shelling. In Donbass, they don’t understand such signs of friendship from Kiev. They, apparently, have such a vision of the situation. They somehow think that the worse they make the situation, the faster we will turn to them. I do not know who told them this. We will simply fight them with a threefold strength. Malysh and Decky are experienced marksmen. They travel along the front lines, knocking down enemy snipers and machine-gunners. Usually snipers hide their faces. For us, they made an exception. They're precise. Here we had problems with a machine gun, which would shoot at our soldiers every night. The guys invited me, I made two shots from a machine gun and good-bye. It calmed down. Is there anyone you don’t kill? Yes, there was one time we could tell that the guys have just come.
Those who were just enlisted are easily distinguished, they can be seen immediately. We try not to shoot at them. What for? Well, yes, we kill him, he will be sent home, they'll carry him in a coffin in Kiev, and later, his family, his wife will be against us. That's why they do it. They are just trying to push us to have more blood and to be mad at each other. Malysh is local, Decky is from Serbia. This week in DNR, the topic of foreigners has already come up. A reporter from Rome Bianchi Giorgio came to make a film about his countryman Maximilian, a former Italian infantryman and a soldier of the army of the DPR. In the end, the Italian himself felt what it meant to be under fire. Faster! Faster! No! No! No! Stand up! Stay there! I'm here not because of money. I really want Europe to know what's going on here. I'll make this movie, and everyone will see what Donbass is.
Although censorship remains in Europe, there's still a shortage of information about Donbass. In London, Rome, Berlin, people have no idea what war is. This week we went to film the results of an artillery raid three times. Do they often bring wounded people? Now, almost every shift. Injured civilians are brought from the outskirts of Yesinovataya. They are brought here, to our hospital. Pavel Gorbushkin is an ordinary watchman. He has splinters in his waist and arm. He has just been brought in and is awaiting surgery. Four Ukrainian shells were fired at Yasinovataya. It’s very scary, very scary. At first something buzzed, and then... that's it, a man is gone. Either wounded or torn to pieces. There have been so many such cases already. The village of Zaitsevo. Wednesday. An artillery raid, a broken roof. The residents climbed up to repair it and were shot from a machine gun. Poletaeva Street is in the outskirts of the infamous Zaitsevo. Further away, there are positions of the Ukrainian troops.
Tonight, there was shelling. In the morning, there was one more, and people were digging graves. The dead. The wounded are in the hospital. Ordinary life of Zaitsevo. They saw it through binoculars, they saw that people were working. What for? To frighten us? They did. Now, people are dead. — From there. — From Ukraine. They shoot from Ukraine. Don’t you see? And then, they accuse us. They blame us for shooting. But it’s they who shoot at us. There was a truce, as far as I know, there was a ceasefire. It wasn’t just a truce. They requested a day-long ceasefire. We stopped shooting, and they showed purely fascist barbarism. It's clear why here it's possible to meet such soldiers as Molchun. He is a self-taught sniper, a former miner. A homemade armor-penetrating rifle, a great desire to fight. I threw away my jackhammer, took a submachine gun, and then this gun. And up to today, I’ve been defending my home, my relatives. Are there any people you don’t shoot at? No, only the civilians. If he's in uniform, he is an enemy. If he has weapons his hands… He's an enemy, he must be destroyed. Are they looking for you personally? They are. A bullet scratched my head. So far so good. Donbass. There is a blockade, there is an economy, there is a social environment. Children, miners. But still, everything here starts and ends with war. Unfortunately.
Yesterday, it became known that the International Monetary Fund postponed the decision to allocate the next tranche of a billion dollar loan to Ukraine. Observers note, that the reason is that the blockade declared by Kiev to Donbass is changing the proportions of the Ukrainian economy. If so, in the new situation of a reduced solvency of the country, it may be necessary to recalculate the conditions and reevaluate the appropriateness of the current program of cooperation between Ukraine and the IMF.
