I first visited Luhansk at the end of September 2014. Luhansk was the capital of one of the two separatist-held territories in the eastern Ukrainian Donbas region, the Luhansk People’s Republic (LNR). Although there was still artillery fire across the contact line every day, the intensive fighting of the summer had ended, and Luhansk itself was no longer a target. We had crossed the contact line at Fashchivka, west of Luhansk, where, on the Ukrainian side, we met the pugnacious ‘Baloo’, the commander at the Ukrainian frontline position on the road from Debaltseve. On the other side, the opposing Cossack soldiers were amiable. They gave us apples. They called themselves Cossacks, and wore the distinctive round Cossack hats, but they were local men, several of them coal miners. Now they seemed cheerful enough. But despite their uniforms and weapons, these were not experienced soldiers. We continued into LNR-held territory. At the small town of Krasnyi Kut, we were stopped by a group of people in Cossack apparel who were initially reluctant to let us pass. One female soldier in particular was hostile and obstructive. However, once we got out of the car and started chatting with them, their reserve melted and their natural friendliness broke through. After a few minutes, we were on our way again.
Approaching Luhansk from the southwest, we stopped in the town of Lutuhyne. We had not had any lunch, and were hoping to find a shop where we could buy some food. We were also interested to see how well stocked the local shops were after the past months of warfare. Lutuhyne had been under Ukrainian-army control for several weeks in the summer, and there had been heavy fighting in the eastern outskirts of the town, as attested by the ruined buildings we saw, and the burned-out tanks strewn about. When we parked outside a shop, people quickly emerged from buildings, wanting to tell us about what they had experienced, about the conditions they lived in. We were probably the first foreigners to have visited the town since before the conflict. The local administration was functioning, they told us, but they were particularly perturbed by the suspension of banking services. They could not access their accounts, and pensioners could not receive their pensions. This was to be a persistent complaint in LNR-controlled territory in the coming months.
Later in the afternoon, we reached Luhansk. The first impression was of quiet. There were few vehicles on the roads, few pedestrians. The city had been emptied of much of its population. We did not intend to stay long. The days were getting shorter, and we wanted to be back across the contact line before darkness. We sped back towards Severodonetsk by the most direct route, along the main highway to Lysychansk. A couple of weeks later, this road would become impassable, as LNR forces surrounded and pushed out the Ukrainian-held checkpoints along much of its length. Brutally contested during the following weeks, it would be churned up by shellfire, strewn with debris, and in places blocked with landmines. But now it was a good, straight road. We expected to be back in time for supper. However, a Russian soldier at one of the LNR checkpoints had other ideas. Our local interpreter could tell he was Russian by his accent. But his bearing, his crisp, brusque manner told us that this was a very different type of figure to the amiable Cossacks we had met earlier in the day. This was a professional soldier. He was not impolite, but he was firm. We would not be proceeding down that road today. We could only speculate as to the reason. Normally this road was open. Perhaps they were moving military equipment and did not want us to see it.
Now we had a choice to make. Twilight was approaching. Did we want to attempt to cross the contact line further east, across the bridge at Stanytsia Luhanska, in failing light, when miscalculations could easily be made by either side, our identity mistaken? The safest option was to return to Luhansk and spend the night there. Arriving back in Luhansk, the city was closing down. The few shops that were open were shutting for the night. With nightfall, the city was completely dark. No street lights shone, no lights emanated from the buildings lining the ghostly streets. There was hardly a soul about.
We looked for a hotel. At one, we were told they could provide us with a meal, but that there was neither electricity nor water. Another said they could not provide food, but that they did have water, albeit cold water. They had a generator which they could turn on for a while, giving us some light. We decided that having water was the winning argument, and stayed there. In normal times, this was supposed to be the best hotel in Luhansk. We had heard that so-called “little green men”, Russian soldiers without their insignia who had first appeared during the crisis in Crimea earlier in the year, were staying at this hotel, as well as a handful of foreign journalists.
I was very much interested as to what we were going to do about food. In principle, I knew that, when travelling in a place under such conditions, it was wise to be prepared for any eventuality, and to have a small stock of food in my grab bag. I had not heeded this advice, except for a small snack bar. Thankfully I did have plenty of bottled water. But a Bulgarian ex-soldier among our number told us not to worry. We would have food. I was wondering where this food was going to come from? There were no restaurants open in the city, we were told. But as we sat down and began to light candles in the hotel lobby, our Bulgarian friend opened his rucksack. It seemed like the feeding of the 5,000. There were biscuits and sausages, and, the final triumph, a bottle of home-made Bulgarian grape brandy, made from grapes pressed by his wife’s own feet. And there was music as well, from his portable system. As promised, the lighting came on for a little while. But we enjoyed our impromptu little candle-lit party. The hotel rooms were comfortable, notwithstanding the cold water.
The next morning, we set out to have a look around Luhansk. It was a sunny day in early autumn, and the town looked less bleak than the previous night. In the centre, guards stood outside the regional administration building, now the centre of the LNR government. The building, and many surrounding it, had been damaged, pockmarked by shrapnel. In June, a government air strike had damaged the building and killed several people. Much of the nearby market had been wrecked by fire in one of the attacks, rows of metal stores charred and twisted by the blaze. Yet part of the market was open, and the hardy Luhansk residents who had remained in the city pottered among its sparsely supplied stalls, buying essentials. Though the town’s restaurants and cafes, deprived of their power supply, were still shut, in the market were a couple of stores selling shaslik grilled on open fires. A couple of them also sold beakers of instant coffee. Life was starting to pick up in the war-torn city.
By the time I next visited Luhansk about a month later, at the beginning of November 2014, the situation had considerably improved. The water supply had been reconnected, and there was electricity much of the time. Shops and the city market which had been poorly supplied a month earlier, were now well stocked. Food products, we were told, were being supplied from a variety of sources, including from other parts of Ukraine. The Ukrainian government had not yet imposed its economic blockade on the separatist-held areas. Many restaurants and cafes had reopened. I ate several times at a very good city-centre restaurant, serving traditional Ukrainian fare. It was a favourite haunt for foreign journalists and for LNR officials. I especially liked the Cossack Borsch, a thick soup served with garlic-rolls and salo, a tasty pork-lard paste. In daytime, the streets were busy, with plenty of traffic on the roads. But at night the city was still dark and largely unlit. Few people were to be found out and about. The walk along unlit streets from the hotel to the restaurant was a slightly nervous experience, my pulse rate rising a little each time a figure emerged from the shadows.
Some of the people who had left the city at the height of the conflict were returning. A city education official told us that while most schools had opened late for the start of the new school year, by October most were open. Shell damage was being repaired, and the numbers of pupils attending were picking up. A semblance of normality was returning. Traffic police were working at some of the main intersections.
Shelling could frequently be heard in the distance. The city was only 15 or so kilometres from the frontline. But the town itself had not been targeted for some time. During the conflict in the summer, Ukrainian forces had come close to the city. One local told me Ukrainian troops had even been seen in the outskirts. He could not understand, he sighed regretfully, why they had not simply taken the city. If Luhansk had been retaken for Ukraine, it would have dealt a severe blow to the separatists, he said. Not all Luhansk’s residents were happy to see their city under separatist control.
But now that the period of intensive fighting was over, and that the Ukrainian forces had been pushed back, the LNR authorities were setting about establishing the institutions of their putative state. On 2 November, elections had been held. They were, of course, a sham. There was no genuine political competition. The trappings of an election were there, including campaign posters. But the LNR leaders were simply confirmed in office. Prominent individuals were included on the lists that notionally contested the election. One who had been put on the list of the head of the LNR, Igor Plotnitsky, and whose picture was on campaign posters in the town, told me she had not sought to be included, but had been approached. Nevertheless, she said she was now a ‘separatist’. Some told me that the turnout had been significant, as evidenced by the long queues at polling stations. But the explanation for that was straightforward. As an LNR minister told me, many fewer polling stations had opened than had been the case in Ukrainian elections.
For many officials, the new reality presented an acute dilemma. I spoke with one local official who found himself in an impossible position. Whatever he did, he told me, he would be condemned by one side or the other. He had been appointed under Ukrainian law, but now the reality was that others were in control. He told me he felt afraid for his own safety. He had reason to be afraid. In separatist-held territory, during the summer and autumn of 2014, people had been disappearing, nobody knew where, or who had taken them. Many were held in basements, without any process or accountability, their families not knowing what had become of them. If this official were suspected of being loyal to Ukraine, that could be what awaited him. Yet if he stayed in his place, and continued carrying out his functions, many on the Ukrainian side could regard him as a traitor. There was little appreciation or sympathy for the dilemmas such people faced. After all, many officials had left separatist territory and moved to the government-held side. What else could it mean if someone chose to stay put? This was a man approaching retirement. Throughout his career he had always done what was expected of him. He had towed the party line, whether that was the Communist Party or the Party of Regions of ousted President Yanukovich. Now there were competing demands for his loyalty, and he was in an unimaginably uncomfortable position. He asked us not to visit him again. While he was happy we were there, and he was sure we were nice people, he was afraid that his talking to us might be misconstrued.
Such dilemmas faced many others, torn between what they felt was their duty to continue to ensure the provision of services to the population and the anxiety that in Ukraine they would be condemned. The water supply was a critical problem for the city, and even more so for many other parts of LNR-controlled territory. Pumping stations and pipelines had been damaged, and an already decrepit infrastructure was collapsing altogether in some areas. The LNR’s particular problem was that while most of the water supply came from government-held areas, the majority of the region’s population were in separatist-held territory. Water supplies to separatist-held towns were drastically cut. During 2015, hundreds of thousands had no mains water supply at all for extended periods. The authorities on the Ukrainian-controlled side used their control of the water supply as a weapon.
I met the director of the public water company in Luhansk a couple of times. He saw himself as responsible for the water supply for the whole region, on both sides of the contact line. He tried to maintain contacts with officials on the government-controlled side. There was a degree of cooperation to maintain essential infrastructure, including the water supply and electric power cables. Local cease-fires were agreed to enable repair work. But it was limited. The water supply company director was treading a fine line. The last I heard of him, he had crossed into government-held territory, and had promptly been arrested.
The Ukrainian authorities took an increasingly harsh attitude towards the civilian population in rebel-held territory. Towards the end of 2014, they began to implement an economic blockade. Not only were pensions no longer paid, but traffic across the contact line was drastically restricted. This caused unbearable strains for many people. Families found themselves cut off from each other. Pensioners who had been able to cross the contact line to draw their pensions were now stuck. The blockade also brought shortages of many goods. In the early weeks of 2015, Ukrainian products gradually disappeared from shops in Luhansk. Prices soared, often double or more the prices of the same products on the government-controlled side. Some people went hungry. Medicines were not supposed to be included in the blockade, but too often they could not be found. I brought drugs across the contact line for one elderly woman with an ailing heart. A local official told me, his face racked with pain and sadness, that his mother was dying of cancer, and the medicines she needed were not available.
At the end of December 2014, I attended a rally in central Luhansk, a protest against the blockade. It was in a city centre square, next to the war memorial and the eternal flame. Flanking the square are two First World War vintage tanks, abandoned by the British force that had intervened on the side of the Whites in the revolutionary war. It was a largish crowd for Luhansk, up to 3,000 people, I estimated. They waved flags of the LNR and of Plotnitsky’s ‘Peace for Luhansk’ party. One could suppose that many of those present were state-sector workers who had been told to attend. Speakers included the leading triumvirate of the LNR, Plotnitsky, the prime minister, Gennadiy Tsipkalov, and the speaker of the LNR parliament, Aleksey Karyakin, as well as the mayor of Luhansk and representatives of veterans’ and women’s organisations. There was much emotive language, accusing the Ukrainian authorities of genocide and of a new ‘holodomor’, a reference to the mass starvation in Ukraine in the 1930s. The non-payment of pensions was raised time and again. While people were not being paid the pensions they had earned, money was instead being spent on arms to attack them. One speaker said that if the Ukrainian government considered Luhansk region to be part of Ukraine, it should pay people their pensions. But if not, it should say so plainly.
Anger at the Ukrainian authorities was widespread, even among people who did not support separation from Ukraine. How could our president do this to us, I heard time and again? There may have been a certain logic to the blockade. The territory was out of the government’s control, and, Moscow’s denials notwithstanding, ultimately controlled by Russia. For Kyiv, this was occupied territory, and it was the occupying power, Russia, that was obliged to provide for the population. But the Ukrainian government’s approach did nothing to encourage people to see for themselves a future in Ukraine. For many people in separatist-held territory, the situation seemed clear. Ukraine had abandoned them, denied them their salaries and pensions, blockaded them, shelled them. For some, the realisation of their situation was tinged with sadness. I asked a villager close to Luhansk whether she could see a future within Ukraine? She replied that unfortunately she thought people in the rest of Ukraine had a negative attitude to the people of Donbas now.
Yet amid the hardship, the city authorities tried to restore a semblance of normality. As 2014 came to an end, Christmas lights were hung in the city centre, and a large Christmas tree was raised in a central square, in front of the statue of Lenin. Children played, and little electric toy cars were hired out for them to ride in. And then, perhaps the most important symbol of normal life returning, the city centre’s street lights were switched back on for New Year. A stage was erected in the city centre, and there was a pop concert. Celebrating New Year in our hotel, not far from the city centre, we listened to the fireworks. Not shells that evening, but fireworks.
Early in 2015, the sense of returning normality was for a few weeks broken. Our movements were restricted. We were mostly not allowed to leave the city, and when we were, it was only under strict coordination with the LNR authorities. We had a fairly good idea what was happening. Things were being moved along the roads of the LNR that we were not supposed to see. In the second half of January, the shelling started to pick up along the contact line. Thankfully it was mostly not aimed at Luhansk itself, although one shell did fall less than a kilometre from our hotel. The boom boom boom of shells, and the whoosh of rocket launches punctuated the nights, disturbing my sleep. To the west of us, a battle was going on for the strategic town of Debaltseve, which would fall to the Russian-backed separatists in February.
The fall of Debaltseve was a severe blow to Ukraine. Once again, the inability of its army to withstand a determined offensive by the Russian-backed separatist forces had been demonstrated. In the aftermath, an uneasy normality resumed in Luhansk. Shelling continued up and down the frontline. But life in the city carried on. The shops, denuded of many products due to the Ukrainian blockade for several weeks, were gradually restocked with Russian replacements. More restaurants opened. Public sector salaries began to be paid, as well as pensions. They were low, lower than in government-held territory, but it made things easier. They were paid in Roubles, indicating where the money was coming from. The Rouble was now introduced as an official currency, along with the Ukrainian Hryvnia, the US Dollar and the Euro. In practice, the Rouble quickly supplanted the Hryvnia as the main currency, unsurprisingly given that people were being paid in Roubles.
Strolling through the bustling streets of central Luhansk that spring and summer, life could almost have been normal. Students crowded around the university during breaks from their lessons. The American-style diner was full of youngsters enjoying burgers, pizzas and Tex-Mex. Smart cafes served capuchinos and delicious cakes and pastries. On my last weekend before leaving Luhansk in September 2015, there was a fair in the city centre. Folklore dance groups from around the LNR performed. Stalls sold local products. One had been set up by the town’s Greek community. Youngsters posed in front of e newly-erected sign saying ‘I love Luhansk’. Plotnitsky paid a visit, inspecting the stalls, chatting amiably. It was a sunny day, and the atmosphere was festive.
Yet all was not normal in Luhansk. While city life may have appeared normal on the surface, many faced severe hardship, deprived of earnings, facing high prices in the shops, dependent on humanitarian assistance. Only a few kilometres away, across the contact line, for all Ukraine’s chronic problems and its crumpled economy, conditions were nevertheless incomparably better than in separatist-held territory. Whatever the show of normality and optimism put on by the separatist authorities, Luhansk existed in a kind of limbo. Locals again and again expressed disbelief about the region’s long-term separation from Ukraine. One local journalist told me there had been a lot of excitement in the spring of 2014, that many thought they would soon, like the people of Crimea, enjoy Russian-level salaries and pensions, higher than in Ukraine. But it had not happened. A year later, many had concluded that Russia did not want them, and that all the pain and suffering was for nothing.
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