May 4, 2014
DONETSK, Ukraine — Diana Berg and Ekaterina Kostrova
were brought up speaking Russian, but in the past few weeks they have
discovered in themselves a new sense of Ukrainian patriotism. Theirs was a
vision of a united Ukraine, a country with “European values” but with close
ties to Russia, a country where it does not matter whether you speak Russian or
Ukrainian at home — because you can express yourself freely in either language.
Little by little, that vision is under attack — by men
with guns and stone-hurling, stick-wielding mobs, by street battles and molotov
cocktails.
“Most of us don’t want to be a part of the European
Union, but we don’t want to be part of Russia either,” Kostrova, 23, said last
week in the apartment the women share in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk.
“We just want to live in a united Ukraine.”
“We insist it is possible to stay in Ukraine, be
ethnic Russian and speak the Russian language,” Berg said.
Kostrova describes herself as a writer. The
34-year-old Berg is a graphic designer. Both speak English fluently. Neither
had any inclination to get involved in politics, at least not until gunmen took
over their city and proclaimed it the capital of the new pro-Russian,
independent Donetsk People’s Republic. There is talk of a “silent majority” in
Donetsk opposed to the division of Ukraine, but Kostrova and Berg decided they
could not remain silent.
“We could not go on, just passively observing,” Berg
said. “We saw this catastrophe going on around us, and we wanted to do
something. That’s why we gathered the first rally.”
“We asked ourselves, ‘What the hell is going on?’ ”
Kostrova added. “We felt a mixture of rage and anger and despair. We couldn’t
understand why nobody was doing anything. So we decided to do something.”
What they did was set up a page on a popular
social-media site here and invite people to join in a “grass-roots” rally for a
united Ukraine. They expected a few hundred to attend. On March 4, they say,
2,000 people came. The following day, it was 10,000. They describe their
supporters as “mostly educated, free-minded, critically thinking people.”
But their attempts at peaceful protest were met with
hatred and abuse. Kostrova says her brother and cousins support the separatists
and have posted insulting comments on social media about her. Berg said she has
received death threats.
On April 28, they marched through the streets of
Donetsk, joined by men, women and children, with flowers in their hair and
Ukrainian flags flying high. They walked into a trap, attacked by hundreds of
men who were wielding clubs and whips and carrying gasoline bombs, commonly
known as molotov cocktails. Riot police stood by and watched. Some, Berg said,
even joined in beating the marchers.
“We were beaten at our march just for having Ukrainian
flags,” Kostrova said. “The pro-Russians who attacked us said we are fascists,
but they burnt our flags and beat our people — so who are the fascists?”
The women fled into nearby buildings but decided that
the city was no longer safe. On Wednesday, they decided to leave for the Black
Sea port city of Odessa. “I got sick of being afraid for the safety of my own
life,” Berg said. “Nobody is coming here to help us.”
The pair say they feel abandoned by the new government
in Kiev, as well as the “Euromaidan” protesters who toppled the pro-Moscow
government of Viktor Yanukovych in February. “People from this region went to
Kiev for Euromaidan, but now nobody there cares about what is going on here,”
Berg said.
But her story took an ugly turn when she joined a
pro-Ukrainian rally in Odessa on Friday, attended by thousands of soccer fans
before a game that night, as well as ordinary citizens.
The peaceful march came under attack by hundreds of
men armed with sticks and shields, some carrying guns and molotov cocktails.
But the soccer fans, the most organized and fanatical
of whom are known as the “ultras,” were no pushover. A group of them, carrying
shields and sticks and wearing helmets, had assembled to defend the marchers.
For hours, the streets of Odessa were the scene of running
battles between stone-throwing mobs from both sides. Photographs show masked
men using the cover of police barricades to shoot at the pro-Ukrainian side;
three people were fatally shot.
Eventually, the pro-Russian forces were overwhelmed
and fled.
That evening, pro-Ukrainian forces counterattacked,
burning tents where some of the separatists had been camped and attacking a
building where they had taken shelter.
Berg watched the attack unfold. She says the
pro-Ukrainian supporters were fired on from the roof of a building but admits
that some of them threw gasoline bombs at the structure. Flames enveloped the
building. About 40 people died, choked by smoke or after jumping from windows
in desperation.
Earlier in the day, Berg had been triumphant. “Odessa
is ours,” she had said. But later, as she realized the scale of the tragedy she
had witnessed, she was appalled.
“It is awful, it is terrifying. I can’t imagine how
their families feel,” she said. This, she said, was not her vision of a
peaceful, united Ukraine.
“But I see how violence causes violence,” she said.
“It was a peaceful event, just Odessa citizens, and they were attacked. They
just shot them with guns. It made people angry, and they decided to fight
back.”
Berg says she and her family are receiving hundreds of
death threats a day, with her address and photographs posted on Russian
social-media sites alongside abusive comments. She wonders whether she will
ever be able to return to her home town.
Simon Denyer
