These are Alexandr and Svetlana with her granddaughter Sofia in the centre of their home city Kriviy Rih in Eastern Ukraine. The largely Russian-speaking city is a major iron ore mining hub and the hometown of President Zelensky. During Soviet times, Alexandr was stationed in Kaliningrad in a nuclear rocket…
Ostblog Posts
Leonid is co-founder of Veterano Pizza, a restaurant in Kyiv run by veterans of the Donbas war. Over a pizza and beer, he told me his story. “When the Russians infiltrated the Donbas, I wanted to go there and fight immediately. But the army did not take me. I only…
Roman and Masha are living together in a small flat in central Sloviansk. They are both working for the Czech humanitarian NGO “People in Need”, which is supporting the suffering civilian population in the Donbas war. Roman left his hometown Donetsk in July 2014, when the city started to get…
Fyodor was a sailor in Soviet times, based in Kherson in the Dnipro delta. He is originally from Russia and his parents are both Russian, but he feels fully Ukrainian now. “Putin tries to convince people that Russian speakers in Ukraine are discriminated against. This is bullshit. Look at me,…
Andrey is a Ukrainian military police officer guarding the police headquarters in Sloviansk in Donbass, Ukraine. The occupation of this building by Russian-instigated separatist militias in April 2014 initiated the establishment of pro-Russian authorities in Sloviansk, followed by other cities of Eastern Ukraine, ushering into the war in Donbas, which…