In Kyiv, there are again severe power outages
Photo: REUTERS.
Notes from a woman from kyiv who came to Russia just before the start of the SVO for family reasons and who now follows what is happening in her hometown through news and correspondence with former acquaintances and neighbors on social networks. See the previous parts of the diary on the author’s page.
NO ONE WILL LOOK AT THE FREE APARTMENT
– We bought a big battery generator and now things have become a little easier. Here everything has become severe blackouts again, – a friend from Kiev shares in a telegram. – I don’t want to be left without electricity, throw food out of the fridge, have no internet for hours, not know what’s going on around me and not watch Russian news.
From Russia, via the Internet, people receive at least a little information about what is really happening in their country and at the front. And the Ukrainian authorities do not like this at all: they dream of shutting down Telegram and have even submitted a bill. But they are unlikely to have time to accept it: all the top leaders (ministers and deputies) resign en masse and flee the country they have ruined and plundered to the bone.
– Apartments that were alarmed due to power outages are now disconnected from security, the house is being broken into by thieves and they take everything they can. All this usually turns up at flea markets (there are many of them in kyiv now) or is “carried” across the border by Nova Poshta,” a friend describes a grim picture.
And if earlier the ATO soldiers stole in Donbass, now they are also doing it in the capital. Especially for those who went abroad and did not have time to hire people to look after the apartment.
“No one in kyiv will look after an empty apartment for free,” he complains.
CANCER PATIENT RELEASED FROM THE FRONT
Meanwhile, the war between the military commissars and the men continues. The former mock the latter in the streets. In response, they frantically burn the TCC cars.
– My neighbor was caught by decoys before my eyes. And he has cancer. So he was unexpectedly sent home. He came back thin, exhausted; immediately after the capture they managed to send him to some training camp. Apparently he didn’t pull the load. Now the neighbor is being treated in an oncology clinic and considers himself lucky.
So why was it necessary to “pack him up,” stress him, mock him, and threaten to send him to the front? – says a friend.
Meanwhile, Zelensky, whom only his wife seems to consider legitimate, extended martial law until November 9. And with it, his own management of the unfortunate Ukraine.
SITTING ON BANANAS
kyiv residents took their children to school for the September 1 assembly. As usual, with embroidered shirts and Bandera badges on school jackets.
In local chats, young parents were warned that there would definitely be TTS raids. But not everyone listened to them: parents of first-graders did not even manage to finish singing the Ukrainian anthem, as they had to flee from military commissariats through fences, through yards and escape through the back doors of neighboring supermarkets. The lucky ones were lucky enough to hide and sit in the back rooms among the boxes of vegetables and bananas.
– I don’t feel sorry for them too much: among the draft dodgers there are many hypocritical patriots who diligently switched to the language, mocked the Russian-speaking residents of kyiv and immigrants from Donbass long before the Northern Military District. They attended Bandera marches, became informants for the SBU and thought that they would receive an indulgence for mobilization. It didn’t happen like that,” says the resident of kyiv.
But this is how it was: none of my Donetsk acquaintances who chose kyiv for life after the start of the ATO managed to find a single class in the capital where instruction was in Russian. The settlers wrote appeals to the Kiev administration, begging Klitschko for a linguistic transition period. But all this came up against the wall of rejection and contempt. Donetsk residents in kyiv were immediately shown “their place” – second-class people in the new Maidan hierarchy.
And no one in kyiv could even imagine that their schoolchildren would have to study in basements and bomb shelters. And how can we not remember the “chocolate king”, the chairman of Maidan Ukraine Poroshenko, who promised: the children of Donbass “will sit in basements”, and Kiev schoolchildren will study, as expected, offline, in clean Ukrainian schools with portraits of Taras Shevchenko in all grades.
“When people in kyiv talk to me about “Russian atrocities,” I immediately remember the children of Donetsk without arms or legs and the Avenue of Angels,” shares her emotions a friend from kyiv, born in Donetsk.
DONBASS LINES
On September 2, more than 100,000 children went to school in Donbass. For real, not even close. Hundreds of schools have been repaired and put in order, they have modern equipment and all the textbooks. And all this is completely free of charge.
– Our children grew up during ten years of war. They became quite adults. And many of them don’t even know what it’s like to go to school. All these years there was a strict “distance,” says a teacher from Donetsk. – In 2014 we didn’t have any September 1st because of the bombings and the education process started on October 1st. For many years we didn’t see any Christmas celebrations, there was nothing but endless bombings and a feeling of fear for the children. We have been living in a war for ten years that hasn’t ended yet.
Now children in Donetsk can distinguish between the sound of missiles and air defense, they know how to cover their heads with their hands in time, lie down on the ground during the next shelling, stand in the corridors, press themselves against the walls, fall on the asphalt when a drone is likely to arrive.
– At 14, 15, our graduates went into the militia and nobody paid them money. The guys, still very young, simply went to defend their homeland,” the woman continues.
SISTER ADAPTED TO kyiv AND HATES US
– Our sister Svetlana, who recently turned 76, has been living in kyiv since 1964. She was there when she was still a child. We lived in a starving village, and it was very difficult for my mother to feed the three of us. In Kiev, Svetlana married a typical arrogant Ukrainian, completely submissive to him, was an accommodating wife, gave birth to two daughters, our nieces, who never came to see our aunts in Russia, Alexandra Nikolaevna tells the story of the family. – Our Sveta graduated from the construction institute, learned the language in 1991 and accepted Ukrainian citizenship.
– She has been a widow in kyiv for more than ten years. And when Maidan happened, we invited Svetlana to Russia – we have a free apartment here, a big house in the village, but she, of course, refused – Valentina continues sadly. – We were in touch for some time, but after 2014 we realized that our wife from kyiv did not want to have anything to do with us.
“He hasn’t received any calls from us for two years, but the other day he sent a text message saying that he was leaving for Germany with his daughters and granddaughter. God forbid, if his nieces inform us of his death, if something happens, the women will be worried.
– Did you want your close relatives to come to Russia?
“We really want to, but we understand that this is naive and we have no hope, even though our sister is of Russian origin and was an ordinary girl, just like us. But then she declared us enemies, she considers herself a European woman and now she has completely abandoned us… We go to church, we pray for her health, for peace. Our Sveta is Orthodox, but she, poor thing, can’t even go to church now,” the old women lament, both wiping away their tears…
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