(essay)

In this material, I will tell how Luhansk was robbed of the opportunity to be a city, robbed of the opportunity to dream and meet the same sun. I left the city at the age of 11, but the memories from that period still haunt me. Everything you will read now was about my life, that past vision, emotions and feelings. Some of the details mentioned here I found out later in the process of searching for information. You can call this post a testimony of how everything began for Luhansk and for me. How my personal war began. The memory preserved many moments that I should have written down a long time ago, but it was painful. Now I dare.

March 2014. In my school №21, there was the holiday – “March 8.” Ukrainian songs were playing, and in the air it seemed that something was on the threshold..Soon, the opportunity to sing in Ukrainian was taken away. Do not confuse this anxiety with anything, because it envelops my consciousness very quickly. I clearly remember how from March to May, when the separatists were already freely walking around the city with weapons, in our school at solemn events we often sang theUkrainian song of the Scriabin band “A Country of Our Own.” We held on to this song as if it were a meaning that should preserve our right to be a part of Ukraine, but only one thing sounded in our heads: “You are your own country! Make order in your head!”. But the order could not be seen either in the head or in the city, because the city was turning into a victim of the “Russian spring” experiment, where people lost touch with reality and began to absorb propaganda, which later played an evil joke on all of us.Representatives of the local authorities at that time, or rather collaborators, such as Klinchayev, incited people, gathered rallies and hung Russian rags on administrative buildings, in brief, called Russian hell on Ukrainian soil.

I would like to note that some odious representatives of local authorities were engaged in Russification long before 2014. They tried to plant Russian narratives through our culture. For example, the above-mentioned regional leader Arsen Klinchaev traveled to Moscow back in 2011 to strengthen ties with the “brotherly people” and to get funds directed to the opening of monuments to Russian torturers. Not once, Klinchaev publicly spoke out against Ukrainian statehood, and also had connections with the well-known Medvedchuk.

April. The SBU Directorate is seized, where the separatists took possession of a large number of weapons. From there, they began to record appeals with the demand to hold a referendum on the creation of the so-called “Luhansk People’s Republic.” Residents of Luhansk, who watched these actions of armed people in masks, did not fully understand what this process could lead to and naively hoped that life under the “people’s” government would be much clearer and better. All this arbitrariness was observed by the law enforcement agencies, which did not react in the right way. In parallel with all these pro-Russian sentiments, Luhansk residents, who were against secession under any conditions, went to rallies for the preservation of unity. On April 19, almost half a thousand Ukrainians came to a rally for the unity of Ukraine, who believed in preserving sovereignty to the last, even when strong clashes with a pro-Russian group of people began.

According to the tradition of Russian propaganda, as you can guess, “activists” with tricolors were mostly brought by buses from Russia, because at the beginning of the rallies, their number was not large. Actually, the focus of the propaganda was mostly directed at what the people of Luhansk wanted to hear: “The Verkhovna Rada does not hear us,” “Luhansk and Donetsk feed Ukraine, but they themselves suffer from poverty,” “The new Kyiv authorities are the enemy, and Russia will help us to become strong and wealthy” and further down the list. Russian technologies made people believe that Donbas cannot “prosper” without Russia.

May. The next stage in this propaganda campaign is the wull-scale broadcasting of Russian channels. I remember these feelings: you wake up in the morning, out of habit you want to turn on the “New Channel,” and instead you see “Russia-24.” That morning we woke up under occupation, because through the TV brain-washing info, Russia extended its claws. Still now, their main tool is propaganda; Russian tanks are coming after it. Do you remember, before that I mentioned about Russification through the culture? Therefore, I can confidently say that Russia is occupying the territories in several stages: planting its culture — spreading propaganda — beginning a military invasion. Remember this scheme every time someone suddenly tells you that culture is outside of politics.

Also, a so-called ‘referendum’ was held in May. And then the sad consequences of the “Russian Peace” started.

June. On June 1, pro-Russian militants launched a several-day assault on the border post in Luhansk. Although the first attack on border guard units was carried out on May 7. Eyewitnesses claimed that the Luhansk border detachment remained the only state institution in Luhansk over which the Ukrainian flag was still flying at the beginning of the summer of 2014. In general, this month was remembered for endless air raids, battles near the city, a series of explosions near the Luhansk State Administration, checkpoints of pro-Russian militants near my house, who also set up barricades near residential buildings. It was this month that I learned for the first time what it was like to hide in the basement, and until this moment I keep on running to it, covering my head with my hands. It was a difficult month., when I left home and went to Lysychansk, then to Bilolutsk, because near Lysychansk there was shelling almost every night. And only after Bilolutsk went to Kyiv.

What`s now? Now the war has entered the maximum active phase, and 95% of Luhansk region is occupied by the Russian army. The war did not start on February 24, 2022. The war lasted for 8 years, exactly when Russian rags were raised in Ukrainian cities. However, I believe that the sun will return to the city that always meets the Sun the first in Ukraine…