The lasting scars of Donbas: Ukraine's struggle and resilience

Tatiana Kolesnychenko, Wirtualna Polska: Ten years ago, you had to leave your homes—Maryna, you left Luhansk, and Denys left Donetsk. For these years, there was hope that Ukraine would not lose the entire Donbas and maybe even liberate the occupied territories. Now it seems that the fate of the region is sealed. How do you feel?

Denys Kazanski (DK): I would compare it to losing a loved one. They've gone, and I feel sadness. But I can't do anything. Just come to terms with it.

Just like that?

DK: Yes, because even if I imagine that tomorrow, by some miracle, I could return to Donetsk, it wouldn't be the same city. The people who made it vibrant have gone. They either died or left and will never return. It's my personal tragedy, but if you look at it more broadly, it's also a tragedy for the world. Because once again, it turns out that you can invade an independent country's territory, kill people, cut off a piece of land, and not face any consequences.

Maryna Vorotynceva (MV): It's hard to watch, but the more blood is spilled, the more often I ask myself about the cost. How many people must Ukraine sacrifice to liberate these territories? And what will be the outcome? I love Luhansk and its unique local culture, but Denys is right: these cities are no more. The buildings and streets remain, but the people who created the atmosphere and drove the economy are long gone. These cities are destined for stagnation and slow death. Ukraine has been losing Donbas for 10 years, and it seems this process is ending.

The topic of cost is now very palpable in the social discussion in Ukraine. In 2022, the attitude was not to give up a single inch of land to the Russians. Now you increasingly hear it's not worth fighting for Donbas because the local population is disloyal. Is there discrimination in that?

MV: It's an old Russian narrative. It caught on very well in 2014. There were absurd situations where refugees from Donbas were not rented apartments because "they are all for Russia." Many eventually returned to the occupied territories because they couldn't find a place for themselves. The truth is, in 2014, in Luhansk, thousands of people took to the streets in protest. We have public opinion research from that time showing that only 12% of residents were ready to welcome the Russian army, while the same percentage declared readiness for armed resistance in case of an invasion.

DK: Ten years ago, even some Ukrainians bought into this Russian narrative that the war in Donbas was an internal conflict, a miners' uprising. We didn't have strong resistance to propaganda back then and weren't aware of the powerful information campaigns the Kremlin was capable of. Now I see a different tendency. After 2022, many Ukrainians understood what Russian occupation is. Although there was no separatism in the Kharkiv and Kherson regions traditionally attributed to Donbas, when those regions came under occupation, collaborators with Russian flags suddenly appeared from somewhere.

It was clear that the Russians were trying to repeat an old trick, to create the impression that the local population supported them. In reality, it was the social fringe, just as it was in Donetsk or Luhansk at the time. All these separatist organizations had no real influence; they were a smokescreen.

However, I have the impression that the part of Donbas Ukraine lost in 2014 and what it is losing now are two different stories. Take, for instance, Kramatorsk, which the front is inevitably approaching. After 2014, it became the new capital of Donetsk Oblast, businesses and universities moved in, and people who mostly had pro-Russian sympathies before but after encountering them demonstrated a pro-Ukrainian stance.

MV: The difference is that in 2014, we were losing Donbas in terms of culture, information, and politics, but not physically. There were shellings, mortars, and artillery, but cities remained almost unscathed. What now means the loss of Bakhmut or Avdiivka? They simply cease to exist. These cities are left with piles of rubble. In ten years, they will be overgrown with trees; in twenty years, there will be no trace of civilization. These are no longer cities; they are territories.

The current war is the physical destruction of Donbas, its pre-mortem convulsions. For ten years, Russia tried to take control of the entire region using political corruption. They wanted to bring another Trojan horse, Viktor Medvedchuk (an oligarch now living in Russia – ed.), to power. But 2021 was a breakthrough moment. The entire media empire of Medvedchuk, which the Kremlin used to spread its narrative, was shut down. Thus, the Russians decided to destroy what they couldn't obtain peacefully.

Why does Russia need these destroyed cities in Donbas?

DK: It can't be viewed through the lens of logic. I've studied Russian propaganda for 14 years and concluded that Putin is a psychopath obsessed with Ukraine. For the past ten years, on all the major television channels, during prime time, they haven't discussed local issues, low salaries, underfunded healthcare, or education.

The subject of all talk shows has almost exclusively been Ukraine, or rather the notion that such a state doesn't exist, just like the Ukrainian people. According to them, Ukrainians should be subjugated or destroyed. Dozens of books and films have been made on this topic. It's pure madness because the Russians live with the problems of another country.

Putin has made the idea of revenge against Ukraine a national ideology. We didn't comply like Belarus and didn't become a Russian colony, so we must be erased from the face of the Earth. I would compare it to a situation where a woman leaves an abusive husband, and he decides to destroy her since he can't have her. But everything he does has the opposite effect. In regions where they once regarded Russia with sympathy, they now hate it. Take Kharkiv, which is bombed daily. What about demilitarization? We now have one of the strongest armies in Europe. There's nothing logical here, only pure animal hatred. These cities are of no use to Putin. He destroys them and sacrifices thousands of his people but gains nothing but the satisfaction of revenge.

MV: Donbas was built over 300 years, and it took Russia only ten years to plunge it into stagnation and just two to turn it into ruins. I agree with Denys: it's not about logic. The sole aim is to inflict pain, to ensure as many people as possible die defending these cities, to scare civilians. Kharkiv is a good example. It used to be a thriving student city, young and energetic, attracting people with a high standard of living, good restaurants, and shops. Now mainly older people remain, too afraid to leave and find a new place in the world.

That's the point—to get rid of the local population. For example, Luhansk is currently quite far from the front line, so it has become a rear military base. Russian soldiers bring their families there. When you travel from the Russian hinterland somewhere in Siberia and arrive in a city where there used to be universities, parks, and shopping centres, with a milder climate, it's like a gift from destiny. So those Russians will have children there and consider the city as theirs. In fact, it's a population exchange.

You mentioned that Luhansk and Donetsk weren't hit hard by shelling. But what about cities that were practically destroyed after 2022? Are they being rebuilt?

DK: From Russia's standpoint, rebuilding Donbas makes no economic sense. Take Popasna, a small, depressed town like thousands in Russia itself. It's unsuitable for rebuilding; it must be built from scratch. For whom? For the 100 residents who stayed and are living in ruins? Building a new city from scratch in Russia would be more logical.

Or Bakhmut, which is completely deserted. Even if you imagine that the Russians are rebuilding Bakhmut for propaganda purposes, who will live there? A portion of the 60,000 residents died, and some left. The entire industry that sustained the city is destroyed. Rebuilding factories built in the 19th century makes no sense. Donbas is scorched territory where life will never exist again.

The exception is Mariupol, which has become a propaganda showcase?

DK: Yes, Mariupol is the only city where something is happening. But it's not a matter of chance; it's propaganda. The location of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov played a role. Ukrainians didn't much like vacationing there, considering it a dirty area. They went to the Black Sea, to Crimea. The Azov coast was chosen by the least affluent. But no one would have considered Mariupol a resort because it's a highly industrialized city. On the city beach, there was a massive slag heap, a remnant of the metallurgical plants.

But with Mariupol, a similar story occurred, as Maryna mentioned. For Russians from the far provinces, it turned out to be an attractive vacation destination. Hence, all the rebuilding there is focused on creating a resort. Russians are building, but mostly it's investments, apartments for sale, under mortgage. The locals, who lost everything, can't afford to buy them. So Russians buy them. Often, the occupation authorities evict local residents to demolish a building for a new investment. They then change the street name and numbering. For example, instead of Azovstal Street, which was associated with the Azov Brigade, there's now Tula Avenue. Property deeds lose validity, and proving anything is impossible. Russians don't care about the locals; they are building for themselves, literally on the bones of the local population.

What did they do with the remains of the bodies of the city's residents?

DK: I once interviewed someone who lived in the Azovstal district, where heavy fighting took place. That person said the stench of decay emanating from bombed buildings was unbearable. Some people burned in their apartments; others were buried alive in basements under collapsed upper floors.

When the Russians began "rebuilding," those buildings were demolished, bulldozers leveled the area, and human remains were taken to the dump along with the rubble. There are no graves and no way to count civilian casualties.

Yet some Ukrainians are returning to the occupied territories. Why?

DK: It's true; they are returning. Russia blackmails people. Anything that survived is treated by the Russians as abandoned, meaning ownerless. If you don't personally renew the deed, the property will be confiscated. Only those return whose apartments or houses survived and want to sell or keep them for themselves.

MV: In Luhansk, these rules applied as of 2017. Property deeds issued by Ukraine were not recognized, and to get new ones, you needed a passport from the so-called Luhansk People's Republic or Russia (now only Russia – ed.). Without these documents, you couldn't even call an ambulance. I know people who left to get documents and sell property, but after 2023, entry and exit to the occupied territories became virtually impossible.

Currently, Russians allow people with Ukrainian passports to cross the border at only two places. One of them is Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, where a de facto filtration camp operates, with long interrogations and arbitrariness. I have a friend who moved to another country before the war. Now she wanted to take her 80-year-old mother with her, but the Russians interrogated the elderly woman and eventually claimed she was linked to Ukrainian services. They sent her back to Donetsk. It's absurd, but anyone trying to enter the occupied territories understands they might never leave.

What will the loss of Donbas mean for the Ukrainian economy?

DK: It won't have much impact. We've been through this in 2014. In some media, the Russian narrative kept repeating that Donbas feeds the whole of Ukraine and without coal, Ukraine would freeze and break apart. The truth is, the industry in Donbas was based on factories mostly built in the 19th century and even before 2014 was on the verge of profitability. The Ukrainian economy quickly learned to live without it. Some industries started to develop more actively, and the environment benefited as well.

So the loss of Donbas won't have much of an impact on the economy. It will strike our worldview much more. Ukrainians blindly believed in Western values, that one must fight for democracy and freedom, and the countries that praised these values would surely join forces to help us, because letting a dictator win is against everything Western. Because Russia is a primitive dictatorship, and it can't be that it won't be held accountable for starting a genocide in Europe, for dropping missiles on a maternity ward, or a hospital where children with cancer were treated.

If Ukraine is forced to sign some rotten peace, handing over Ukrainian territories to Russian control, it will suddenly turn out that this beautiful vision of Western values was a fake. Because the West, which stands as a guardian of order and law in the world, is willing to agree to a dictator's demands just to have peace. This disappointment will be a much greater tragedy than losing Yenakiieve or Krasny Luch. Perhaps that is the real goal of this war. Putin doesn't care about taking over the ruins of Soledar or Bakhmut, but about discrediting the West, making Ukrainians despise it.

MV: We already have a significant difference of opinion in society. Some Ukrainians believe we should fight until we reach the 1991 borders. But most often, these are people who aren't on the front lines and never will be. In my opinion, the majority of Ukrainians support starting negotiations but differ on the concessions Kyiv can make. You have to understand that these people live under conditions of constant terror under daily bombardment, with power outages, carrying their small children to the 20th floor because the elevators don't work. Many lost their loved ones during the invasion. That's the goal of Russian terror—to affect Ukrainians' feelings. It's easy to be steadfast when you live somewhere in Europe and your life isn't under constant threat.

Everyone wants the war to end, and everyone understands that we must pay the most. Whether it ends with the loss of Donbas or continues, in any of those scenarios, we'll pay a high economic and social price. But what then? We'll give up Donbas to Russia, buying ourselves some time until the next invasion. The question is, will it be enough for us? Will it be enough for Poland and the Baltic countries?

Tatiana Kolesnychenko, Wirtualna Polska