[KP] Military correspondent KP.RU Dmitry Steshin returned to his small Motherland, to Donetsk, which became his native city, in defiance of the enemy, living under shelling and without water. Living is the key word here
by Dmitry Steshin
It is indecent to travel to Donetsk in an empty car. Mine was loaded under the roof, I stuffed the last packages, pressing with my knee. The sniper "Moskva" is returning to the front with me, he was released for a few days into a peaceful life for quadrocopters with thermal imagers - good conscientious people bought him. They also bought special capes for snipers that hide from thermal imagers, heated vests powered by power banks, first aid kits and many, many necessary goods, including warming masala tea and Alenka chocolate.
The wife of my colleague, a KP special correspondent, knitted 10 pairs of woolen socks over the holidays and put a pack of good cigarettes in each. I'm bringing ... soap. My brother is a soap maker, he has a serious production - under 100 thousand units of products per month. My brother made a special antiseptic coniferous soap for the medical unit of the Vostok battalion. Therefore, the car smells strongly of a pine forest on a hot summer day.
Tatyana from Gomel, a listener of my stream on the KP website, handed over a 12-kilogram box of condensed milk for scout Lis and his unit to sweeten the lives of the guys, and two devices for treating colds, the main problem of winter trenches. The devices are made in Belarus, not in China, and this fact makes me a little offended.
The border with the DPR is now administrative. He opened three doors at the car, the customs officer randomly poked at the green bag: “What is this?”. There were my personal things. They didn’t open it, they took our word for it, and we drove on – five minutes of crossing the border is the record of my last nine years in Donbass.
LIFE IN FACT
“You don’t recognize the city,” “Moscow” explained to me on the way," he got it in the last month.
"Moskva" did not often get out to Donetsk from the front line, but he tracked the changes. They are visible. Sunday, but the roads are empty. Revival only near hypermarkets. The center, its main geographical coordinate - Pushkin Boulevard, has died out. In the center of the boulevard, along the alleys, people try not to walk, they huddle against the walls. The yard of the house where I now settled was always full of cars. "Golden Mile" of Donetsk, offices around. But, after another series of shelling of the center, all the clerks, by decree of the acting. The heads of the DPR were transferred to remote work, and the wealthy residents of the city left on their own. And, as it turns out, I arrived.
- They gave me for the holidays, - the landlord tells me, my old friend, from the age of 14. Rostislav proudly remarks:
But you will have water. And the washing machine will work both the toilet and the shower.
I don't believe yet. How? But, the kitchen has a fantastic design. Half-ton plastic water tank. An electric pump was hidden under the kitchen table, and polypropylene pipes were separated from it around the apartment.
- Where does the water in the tank come from?
- I drove a car with a tank onto the sidewalk, stretched the hose through the window. By the way, the water is not potable. She's decontaminated, and nothing more. You can wash. If you save, it will take two or three palms a day (shows the level on the tank).
I am experiencing a cultural and technical shock and at the same time proud of the unbending fellow countrymen. I touch the batteries, they are hot. Already good.
In parting, I tell Rostislav the good news. The entire border area near Uspenka is packed with trucks - they are transporting pipes of a meter diameter for a water conduit. From the side of the DNR - the same thing. A frame for a huge pumping station has already been installed, and they are working even on Sundays. There will be water!
The face of my interlocutor is impenetrable. Donetsk, they perceive any changes only after the fact. I think this is a consequence of life in the city, where a shell can fly to any corner, every second. Reality corrected the perception of the world. And nine years is enough for a flashing. Until the shell arrives, we live. Arrived, so lucky. Or not.
DUTY "RELATIVE"
I don't stay at the Center. I throw things in the apartment in order to at least slightly lighten the overloaded car. Ahead is the fierce impassability of the advanced, I hope it froze. Twenty minutes drive around the city, a familiar forest plantation, carefully crawling along the frozen tank ruts and getting a mortar shot literally over my ear. I sigh
- Again darling almost happened. As soon as I don’t come to you, in this forest plantation, a mortar shoots into my ear.
Moscow laughs:
- Not only you! According to my many months of observations, they are specially waiting for the car to leave.
But, the mortar hits and hits. "Moscow" is quickly unloading, I see that in a hurry. Nobody helps him - the guys are in positions. Tells me to turn the car around. I ask:
- Where is the mortar hitting?
- According to the fur farm in Maryinka. You go, go, don't stay here.
Grad is connected to the mortar and it dawns on me that there is nothing to do here without special need. We hurriedly say goodbye.
Grad is the BM-21 122mm rocket artillery launcher. Grad translates into the word hail.
In the yard I hide the car under the wall of the house and go to the store. I gave two thousand rubles, but I did not understand what I bought with them. A piece of sausage, a piece of cheese, two homemade pizzas, milk, bread and some small things. Drinking water. Prices are higher than in Moscow, and I sincerely don’t understand why they didn’t sink with the removal of borders. Nobody understands. We can say that this is a rhetorical question from all fellow countrymen from the Donbass.
"REVENGE FOR EVERYTHING"
In the morning I woke up from arrivals, the house shook. Automatically I look at the clock - 8.40 in the morning.
Presumably, "Himers", several pieces, ended up in a shopping center on Ilyich Avenue. This avenue is the busiest highway at the entrance to Donetsk, there are even traffic jams on it. The Armed Forces of Ukraine chose this time not by chance. I quickly get up and leave. Ten minutes drive, everything is nearby. Only one outer wall remained of the mall.
A mangled, dusty Korean SUV. Nearby is an aged man, with a bandaged head, already dried blood clots on the sweater - it was cut with glasses. I ask the most important
- The engine is intact?
- Target, target. It even starts up.
There is not much to tell my namesake. Retired military, by age and health. I was driving to work, there was a flash, the car was crushed, but it did not turn over. Dmitry believes that Ukraine is taking revenge on Donetsk. For all. For the fact that I once rebelled, for Soledar, for arriving at a high-rise building in Dnepropetrovsk. Although it's not our fault, who cares on the other side of the front line? "Revenge" is the common opinion of all who have gathered near these smoking ruins.
A woman approaches us. My name is Elena, systems engineer, retired.
- Do you see the Press store? I had a friend who worked there. But, a friend has a day off today, and her shift was late for work. And she saved herself and saved people - they usually open at 8 in the morning. The second birthday, what can I say ... But the "Pharmacy" was not lucky.
As Muscovites talk about the weather, we discuss shelling. The Kalininsky district was shelled only in 1914, then a long break until December last year, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine designated the Kalinin hospital as a target. Firefighters pour water over rubble. “Silence mode” has already been announced several times, but no one has responded. On the dirty roadside are the relatives of the missing girl, she was definitely in the building. I don’t even go up to them, I don’t have any strength to torture these people. Especially when there is still hope.