The residents of occupied Donbass have suffered death and hardship that would disappear if the separatists went away. Will they eventually, driven by desperation, use people power to rid themselves of the Russian-backed forces? If so, Russia will face a hard decision.
Keep in mind that Russia does not want the occupied Donbass territories as part of Russia. Rather, Putin wants the self-proclaimed People’s Republics of Donetsk and Luhansk to be independent provinces within a unitary Ukraine that exercises veto power over major domestic and foreign policy decisions. Such an arrangement would spell the end of Ukraine as a state independent of Russia. Hopes for a peaceful settlement coming out of the Minsk negotiations are therefore futile, with no ground for compromise. Russia does not want the Donbass, and Ukraine will not accept a Donbass under rebel control. It’s that simple–although Europe’s peacemakers have trouble accepting that fact.
Although the Donbass once produced some 20% of Ukraine’s industrial production, Donetsk and Luhansk are wastelands of bombed-out factories, damaged schools and vacant apartment houses. The most mobile and educated have fled, leaving behind children and elderly residents unable to flee the carnage. Whoever ends responsible for Donetsk and Luhansk faces a monumental bill of reconstruction and redevelopment. Russia has already incurred a $27 billion price tag for incorporating an unscathed Crimea into Russia. The cost of incorporating a ravaged, decaying, rustbelt Donbass would be manyfold. Perhaps only an international effort could do the job.
The protest of some 500 Donetsk residents, blocking a main thoroughfare in front of the administration building of the self-proclaimed People’s Republic of Donetsk, offers a glimmer of hope for a resolution. That protest has been reported by a number of reliable news sources, including Novaya Gazeta and Agence France-Presse. Video is also circulating on the internet.
The angry protesters are shown demanding an end to the war, in particular to the artillery attacks launched from the Donetsk suburbs in which they live. They complain that Russian-backed separatist fire from those residential areas invites return fire from Ukrainian forces; they are suffering while those who live in central Donetsk are partying. They demanded that the war stop and that the rebel leader, Alexander Zarkharchenko, meet with their representatives. Police are shown mingling in the crowd and examining passports, but they seem unsure of what to do.
As the crowd fails to disperse, Zakharchenko, accompanied by his gunmen, is shown arriving to calm them down. The protesters demand that he stop the war and provide them with housing and pensions. His only answer is to say that his government is working on those problems. Donetsk residents from a neighborhood near one of the city’s main hotspots accuse the separatists of using them as human shields. “You are hiding behind our backs.” Others simply shouted, “Shame!” “It has been impossible to live in these conditions for the past year,” says a young woman who refuses to identify herself for fear of retribution. “We have hardly been able to leave our basements for the past two weeks,” says a fellow demonstrator. “They have left us to our fates.”
Another woman complained to Zakharchenko: “We are disappointed with you–you promised us peace when we voted for you last November.” In response to Zakharchenko’s claim that separatist forces must fight off the Ukrainians, a woman reportedly retorted that, even though both sides “are shooting imprecisely,” the separatist forces “need to go away. We are Ukrainians here and if they [the separatist forces] weren’t here, there would be no war.”
The basic message of the protesters: Get out of here, all of you (Uedite vse).
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