Expensive bread, cheap whores. ‘I never expected such shit’ – Donetsk everyday life
A story of a surgeon who used to run a business and be a cop but has taken to the wheel of a taxi.
For the latest years Valera has been driving his taxi along the streets of Donetsk to the strains of the so called Russian chanson, i.e. the songs of the criminal world. A number of customers has recently fallen; now he earns his living by shepherding visiting journalists through the ‘Donetsk republic’. His wife married a French buinessman, took their children and left Ukraine.
‘My eye cornea was burnt with laser during a surgery; thus, my carreer of a surgeon came to its end. Later I tried to run a business – my friends and I were making fake vodka – but these SBU fa**ots [SBU – Ukraine’s Security service] started stifling us. And all went down in flames,’ he said.
Why did you become a cop?
I happened to wound my wife with a knife. And at a police station I was thrown into a dilemma: going to prison or working for them. Firstly I was a district police officer. I never fleeced anyne of their money or extract bribes. I experienced much: I saw looneys with axes and former prisoners brandishing guns.
Are there many criminals in Donetsk now?
Cars are wrestled away only from the rich. There is a zero tolerance policy for bullies = they are shot in sight. Nobody makes bones of them.
Some weeks ago a guy got into my car. He gave me an address, we got to Oktryabrski residential area where hardly a block of flats remained undamaged. He pulled a machete out and told: “Give me your car keys!” I fell down, threw the keys to bushes and escaped.
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Are your former colleagues still working for the police?
Yes, there are the same people. There are even former prisoners among them. It’s OK for the Donetsk police to hire former prisoners if they have a good head upon their shoulders.
Are former prisoners taken to the front?
Criminal lords are not called up; according to criminal ‘laws’, they are not allowed to take arms. Small potatoes are sent to war.
Why do you back the idea of ‘the rule of the people’ and ‘independent republic’?
Not long ago I was at Ukrainians’ and watched their TV. They are restoring Nazism. What do they want from us? It is them who came to us. We had our referendum and I voted because I was in favour of our acceding to Russia. I never imagined that there would be such a shit. I believed all would happen under the Crimean scenario. Donbas has never been Ukrainian. How would I live next door to these Nazis after all that they have done here?
Frankly speaking, it is Akhmetov [a Donbas tycoon] who stirred everything up. But later he realised that it was getting really tough and quit. He is afraid of losing his assets. Like your Lukashenka he is trying to keep a foot in both worlds. Now he is providing cheap humanitarian aid – bread and rotten sprats.
Due to this war prices for food have soared in Donetsk, but prostitutes’ costs have fallen by third. How can one believe in God after that???
What way do ‘DPR’ troops maintain their families?
Russia backs them. They get their salaries in U.S. dollars.
How many people in Donetsk identify themselves as Ukrainians?
No f*cking one. Have you met anyone peaking Ukrainian here?
I didn’t look for them. By the way, do you know Ukrainian?
Better than some Ukrainians. I learnt it at my school and university. When I speak the literary language to Ukrainian soldiers they answer in their Polish-Hungarian Surzhik. They are not Ukrainians. Their Poroshenko sold our land to Americans, to Obama as there is shale gas for which we are shedding blood.
Graves of separatist troops
Yury Wysocki
