Ukraine’s journalist who fleed from Donetsk: They threatened to cut our stomachs (interview)
Yuliya Bozhok, a journalist who worked for Ukraine’s TV channel Five, escaped from the city of Donetsk as her life was menaced. She told our Brussels-based correspondent Ales Silich about present-day realities of a war-bent Donetsk.
“It has become impossible to work in Donetsk. [Separatists] started to launch threats, and almost all journalists from Ukrainian TV channels had to leave. They said we would be found in the river with our stomachs cut. And there had been a great number of attempts to prevent us from performing our duties. At rallies people were told that one should not trust Ukrainian mass media. It was dangerous to appear at such actions because people tried to rabble [reporters]. It was dreadful. That is why Ukrainian journalists left Donetsk long before the war. Things did not come round as they were expected,” Yuliya Bozhok said.
“When we were leaving each had only a suitcase. We thought we would come back within a fortnight, after the referendum. Unfortunately, the situation has become aggravated to such an extent that we could not return. It is rumoured that some journalists were put on the so-called shooting list. Nobody saw it with their own eyes but there is every likelihood that one will find themselves in a torture chamber after returning to Donetsk,” she said.
A.S. : Who threatened Ukrainian journalists? Who wanted to take the law into their own hands?
“These persons say the are acting on behalf of ‘the nation’. They are behind those people who participated in the rallies. Their true names are unknown. They might be spin doctors from other countries.”
A.S.: What is going on in Donetsk now?
“It is hard to say how many residents of Luhansk and Donetsk regions support Ukraine. People believe the spin doctors who promised accession to Russia. A lot of people really wanted it. Most of them were born in the 50-70s, they feel nostalgic about the USSR. They saw how easily Crimea was annexed and they also wanted to ‘become Russia’. And they became vocal supporters of the ideas voiced at the rallies. But when people realised by what means it is done (for example, armed separatists seize buildings) most opted out of these activities and said it should be stopped. But it was too late. And all people who stayed in Donetsk are in a trap now.”
A.S.: What shocked you most?
Public gets the impression that it is the locals who are fighting in Donetsk and Luhansk regions. But the picture is deceitful. There are a lot of trained mercenaries [among separatists]. Even Kadyrovites [supporters of Chechnya’s Ramzan Kadyrov] were seen. They shell residential areas and have no mercy. They fire at people at bus stops, they shoot at people standing in lines for humanitarian aid. Kadyrovites cannot but see that the people targeted are civilians. And all the same they open fire. <…> It is hard to predict where a real risk is. Children are in danger; a lot of blocks of flats are damaged or destroyed and if people have no relatives and friends they have to dwell in bombshelters. Some families have already been staying there for six months. You know, a bombshelter is an ordinary basement without any windows, it is not fit for living! There is no light, no heating. But people have to settle in these cold, dark and damp basements in order to save their lives.
A.S.: I know you have relatives in Donetsk. Why don’t people leave the city, what do they hope for?
They are afraid of what tomorrow will bring. They cannot imagine what they will do in any other city. They got accustomed to living there. They are not nomads, they lead a steady life and do not want any change. They are wokers struggling from paycheck to paycheck, they do not have extra money to go somewhere. The people who could stay with their relatives [in another city] or had money have already left. But if one worked hard to buy a flat or a house in Donetsk they often stay, they just cannot drop all possessions that they had painstakingly accumulated. But many name such people ‘slaves to‘bricks’ and say it is not worth a human life.
Ales Silich/MS
