In Isolation Read online

  In Isolation

  Ukrainian Research Institute

  Harvard University

  Harvard Library of Ukrainian Literature 1

  HURI Editorial Board

  Michael S. Flier

  George G. Grabowicz

  Oleh Kotsyuba, Manager of Publications

  Serhii Plokhy, Chairman

  Cambridge, Massachusetts

  Stanislav Aseyev

  In Isolation

  Dispatches from Occupied Donbas

  Translated by Lidia Wolanskyj

  Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute Harvard University

  The Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute was established in 1973 as an integral part of Harvard University. It supports research associates and visiting scholars who are engaged in projects concerned with all aspects of Ukrainian studies. The Institute also works in close cooperation with the Committee on Ukrainian Studies, which supervises and coordinates the teaching of Ukrainian history, language, and literature at Harvard University.

  © 2022 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College

  All rights reserved

  Printed in the U.S. on acid-free paper

  ISBN 9780674268784 (hardcover), 9780674268791 (paperback), 9780674268814 (epub), 9780674268807 (PDF)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2021948577

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021948577

  Commentary in the editorial notes and the timeline of events by Oleh Kotsyuba, edited by Michelle R. Viise

  Maps by Kostyantyn Bondarenko, MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine, Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, https://huri.harvard.edu/mapa

  Timeline design by Mykola Leonovych, background maps source: ZomBear, Marktaff, “War in Donbas,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_in_Donbas

  Cover image: Wilhelm Neusser, “Bus Stop / Yellow Cloud” (#2011), 2020. Reproduced with permission from the artist and Abigail Ogilvy Gallery, Boston, Mass.

  Stanislav Aseyev photo courtesy of Radio Svoboda (RFE/RL)

  Book design by Mykola Leonovych, https://smalta.pro

  Publication of this book has been made possible by the Ukrainian Research Institute Fund and the generous support of publications in Ukrainian studies at Harvard University by the following benefactors:

  Ostap and Ursula Balaban

  Jaroslaw and Olha Duzey

  Vladimir Jurkowsky

  Myroslav and Irene Koltunik

  Damian Korduba Family

  Peter and Emily Kulyk

  Irena Lubchak

  Dr. Evhen Omelsky

  Eugene and Nila Steckiw

  Dr. Omeljan and Iryna Wolynec

  Wasyl and Natalia Yerega

  You can support our work of publishing academic books and translations of Ukrainian literature and documents by making a tax-deductible donation in any amount, or by including HURI in your estate planning. To find out more, please visit https://huri.harvard.edu/give.

  Translation of this book was prepared within the PEN Ukraine Translation Fund Grants program in cooperation with the International Renaissance Foundation.

  Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by the Translate Ukraine Translation Program of the Ukrainian Book Institute (Ukraine).

  Publication of this book was made possible, in part, by a translation grant from the Peterson Literary Fund at BCU Foundation (Toronto, Canada). The Peterson Literary Fund recognizes the best books that promote a better understanding of Ukraine or the Ukrainian people, or whose subject matter is relevant to a global Ukrainian audience.

  From the Editors

  In this book, transliteration of personal and place-­names follows a modified Library of Congress system for Ukrainian and Russian. With the exception of the name for Kyivan Rus´, primes for the soft sign (ь) and other diacritics are omitted (thus Luhansk and Lysychansk rather than Luhans´k and Lysychans´k), while apostrophes are retained (as in Slov’iansk and Pryp’iat). In personal names where a vowel follows a soft sign in the original, the letter “i” is used to indicate softness (as in Aksionov and Kiseliov). Toponyms are usually transliterated from the language of the country in which the designated places are currently located, including the Ukrainian letter “i” with diaeresis (ї), except for the capital of Ukraine, thus yielding Kyiv, Odesa, Lviv, Makiїvka, Avdiїvka, etc. Furthermore, well-known personal and place-­names appear in spellings widely adopted in English-­language texts (thus Yanukovych rather than Ianukovych and Moscow rather than Moskva).

  Editorial commentary and the timeline of events leading to and during the war in Donbas were prepared by Oleh Kotsyuba and edited by Michelle R. Viise. Translator’s notes were prepared by Lidia Wolanskyj and Anna Korbut.

  In the course of translation and editing of the book, the author approved revisions of a number of passages and turns of phrase in portraying certain female and male protagonists, including those suffering from addictions, referring to geographic locations and stereotypes associated with them in Ukraine and Russia, and comprising metaphors that would be alien to an Anglophone audience.

  Road signs for Makiїvka and Donetsk, with Msta-B 152 mm howitzers on the road.

  Preface

  By the time the Ukrainian edition of this book came out, I had already spent a year in a special prison “for exceptionally dangerous persons” in the city of Donetsk. I had been locked up there for my political views and for the articles I had published in the Ukrainian press about life in the Donbas. My prison was located on the grounds of Izoliatsiia, formerly an insulation manufacturing plant; today it has earned a bitter reputation as a modern-day concentration camp. In part, that’s where the name of the book In Isolation comes from; it refers to my imprisonment and contains the observations that I recorded while working as a journalist in the Donbas.

  But the term izoliatsiia refers to more than just a jail. It also denotes the feeling that functions as the leitmotif of this book, the sense of aloneness and isolation I experienced every day, when forced to hide under the pseudonym Stanislav Vasin in my own land in order to be able to write about the things that you will find in the pages of this book. Despite my use of a pseudonym, I was still found out and arrested by pro-­Russian insurgents and thrown into Izoliatsiia for twenty-­eight months. This occurrence still holds some mystery for me, as my arrest was definitely no accident. To this day I have no idea how these people tracked me down.

  Oddly enough, even after my arrest, while I was being held in a basement, my captors forced me to pretend for nearly a month that I was still free: to call family and friends, to keep posting comments to Facebook, and even… to write articles. In fact, the last chapter of this book, “A Knack for Losing Things,” was an article written by me in that prison basement. It was included in the Ukrainian edition of this book by editors who had no idea of the circumstances under which I had written the piece. Indeed, when I asked my captors to give me a pencil and paper, they refused. I had to come up with the article overnight, which meant composing it entirely in my head so that I could quickly produce it in electronic form the following day and send it off to the editorial office. Curiously, my captors were not the least bit interested in censoring the content of my article: for some reason, it was more important for them that no one raise the alarm that I had been arrested.

  During my stay in Izoliatsiia I came to understand that I knew very little about this war after all. From the minute the conflict began and up to my arrest, I did not leave the conflict area once for a prolonged period. I witnessed the operation of a separatist mobile artillery unit deployed ri
ght outside our apartment building, and I myself endured shelling by Ukrainian units in response. Furthermore, this war was the focus of my work as a writer and journalist. But it was only in captivity that I understood how minor all of this was compared to the world of underground torture chambers in Donetsk, where I found myself. It was here, in prison, that I witnessed dozens of lives broken, psyches destroyed by torture, and suicide attempts, but also the power of human will in situations that seemed entirely hopeless. All of this I described in detail in my second book, Svitlyi shliakh 1(forthcoming in English as Torture Camp on Paradise Street), which is entirely dedicated to the concentration camp in Donetsk where I was held.

  Most of the hastily written dispatches published in this book were used as evidence of my “criminal activities” on the territory of the DPR (the “Donetsk People’s Republic” or, in Russian, the DNR, “Donetskaia Narodnaia Respublika”), which earned me two prison sentences, each for fifteen years. As evidence of my “guilt” my accusers used the quotation marks that I put around the name “Donetsk People’s Republic,” even though my usage was politically neutral: the world community, including the Russian Federation, did not recognize the “republic.” The pro-­Russian leadership of the DPR, however, considered these quotation marks to be a form of extremism, one of the seven counts for which I was found guilty: for these quotation marks alone I was sentenced to five years. Another piece of evidence was the chapter “Donetsk: A Tour of Expropriated Places,” a short piece included in this book in which I describe elements of civilian infrastructure like hotels that currently serve as military bases and are surrounded by barbed wire. This was interpreted by the local court as “spying,” because it supposedly revealed military secrets, although all these buildings were (and are) visible to any passerby who happens to go through downtown by bus. This added another thirteen years to my sentence.

  In general, however, the dispatches in this book focus mainly on social and psychological transformations on the level of both society and particular individuals who, regardless of their views, have found themselves isolated in this, or indeed any, war. This kind of isolation is not only cultural but also psychological, rendering people in the conflict zone incapable of experiencing appropriate emotional reactions, as, for example, when a child is crippled by a grenade. This very incident is described in the piece “Grenades Aren’t a Big Deal Anymore: Everyday Tragedies in Makiїvka.” Apathy and hopelessness are everyday feelings for everyone who lives in the heart of this war.

  Without a doubt, though, one of the main themes of all my pieces was my isolation from most friends and even family who came out in support of the other side in the war—the separatist militants and mercenaries, and their masters in Moscow. Aloneness in one’s views and the personal rift that has torn apart not just families but society itself demonstrates more than anything else just how strong the Soviet mindset remains in Ukraine. It is this mentality that Russian propaganda has played upon so effectively. “The Half-­Life of the Sovok” and “Propaganda on the Streets of Donetsk” are about this issue; the essays are an attempt to comprehend not just the Soviet past but its latest transformation in Moscow’s massive propaganda war. After all, the challenges that Ukrainian society has faced on the territory of the Donbas with the start of the war are not exclusively a problem for Ukrainians: the mechanisms of lies and disinformation that I bring up in my writing are used in a variety of forms in many wars around the world—military, informational, and hybrid. Herein lies the urgency of my book, as it attempts not only to raise the question of how individuals are to live in a suddenly risky situation, of their life principles and how those principles fare under difficult circumstances, but it also tries to illuminate nearly invisible things that in the end may cause people to become combatants without any political motive.

  In December 2019, after a total of thirty-one and a half months of imprisonment and torture, I was released from captivity by the insurgents who are sponsored and directly handled by Russia. Only because I was released do I now have the physical opportunity to write a preface to this book.

  Stanislav Aseyev

  January 2021

  Prelude to War: Maidan and the Revolution of Dignity

  2013

  November

  Popular protests begin in Kyiv, on Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square), after President Viktor Yanukovych cancels plans to sign the Association Agreement with the European Union, an abrupt pivot away from closer cooperation with the West that held the promise of closer integration with the EU and a continuation of democratic reforms in the country. The protests quickly spread across the cities of Ukraine and become a popular uprising dubbed the Revolution of Dignity, or the EuroMaidan Revolution, or simply the Maidan. The Maidan becomes the focus of an anti-corruption, pro-Western, and pro-democracy movement.

  In response to these events, the allies of the president and his party, the Party of Regions, mobilize “anti-Maidan protests” in Kyiv and in Ukraine’s east and south. Among the attendees of these pro-government, pro-Yanukovych, pro-Russian, and anti-EU demonstrations were people paid to participate and to attack the Maidan protesters.

  2014

  February 18

  In the morning, Maidan protesters march to the Ukrainian parliament building in order to put pressure on the representatives to vote for a reinstatement of the 2004 edition of the constitution, which stipulated significantly weaker presidential powers. The march ends in violent clashes with the police and other state forces.

  During the day, the special forces launch an attack at the Ukraїnskyi Dim (Ukrainian House), a base of operations for the protest movement, complete with a small hospital for wounded protesters, a kitchen, a cafeteria, and the Maidan Open University. After an initial wave is repulsed, police forces approach with armored personnel carriers and water cannons to attack the Ukraїnskyi Dim a second time.

  Late in the evening, an attack begins on the Budynok Profspilok (House of the Trade Unions), another provisional base of the protest movement, which houses the main hospital for the protesters, a kitchen, a pharmacy, a distribution center for warm clothing, and sleeping quarters. During the attack, a fire breaks out on the upper floors of the building, killing an estimated forty to fifty people.

  February 19

  The Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) announces the beginning of an “anti-terrorist operation,” which the administration of President Yanukovych uses as a pretext for a series of ominous actions:

  1. All roads entering Kyiv are blocked.

  2. Entry points to the Maidan are closed.

  3. President Yanukovych fires the chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, colonel general Volodymyr Zamana, and replaces him with the pro-Russian Admiral Iurii Ilїn. Simultaneously, the Armed Forces are subordinated to the SBU.

  4. Channel 5, the television station supportive of the Maidan protesters and owned by oligarch Petro Poroshenko, is forced to discontinue its broadcast briefly following electricity cuts to the area.

  5. The Kyiv subway system, used by protesters and their supporters to travel to and from the Maidan, ceases operations.

  6. The SBU’s response to the Maidan protesters unfolds in two sub-operations, “Boomerang” and “Wave,” supported by close to 20,000 members of the interior forces, the Ukrainian police, special units such as the Berkut riot police, the interior ministry regiment Iahuar, the antiterrorism unit Omeha, and assault brigades of the State Border Service. Although the government initially plan to use units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to quell the protests, the refusal of then chief of General Staff colonel general Volodymyr Zamana prevents them from doing that.

  February 20

  Early in the morning, the special units and the police are pushed back from Independence Square by the protesters. Simultaneously, protesters and the press report shots fired by sniper rifles under the direction of state forces. Interim Minister of Inter
nal Affairs Vitalii Zakharchenko orders the police to be equipped with firearms.

  In the evening, an extraordinary session of the parliament is convened. The parliament passes a resolution condemning the actions of the security forces and outlaws the operation against the protesters. Seventy-three protesters and eleven security forces have been killed in the operation.

  February 21

  Leaders of the opposition parties of Ukraine and President Yanukovych sign an agreement for the political resolution of the crisis. The agreement stipulated:

  1. The restoration of the constitution of 2004 decreasing presidential powers within 48 hours of the signing of the agreement;

  2. Reform of the constitution by September 2014;

  3. Snap parliamentary elections by December 2014;

  4. The passage of new voting laws and the replacement of all members of the Central Election Commission;

  5. An international investigation of the violence against the protesters by the state forces.

  Although endorsed by the ministers of foreign affairs of Poland and Germany, a representative from France, and an ombudsman from Russia, the signed agreement is rejected by the protesters, who, after the previous day’s bloodletting, demand the immediate resignation of President Yanukovych.

  February 22

  In the morning, Viktor Yanukovych disappears from Kyiv. The parliament responds by passing with an overwhelming majority a resolution declaring that the president has removed himself from office and withdrawn from the performance of his constitutional duties. The parliament subsequently schedules snap presidential elections for late May 2014.

  On the same day, Viktor Yanukovych releases a television address in which he calls the events of February 18–20 a “state coup” and compares them to the Nazis’ takeover of Germany in 1933. Yanukovych refuses to recognize the legitimacy of the parliament’s vote. A later investigation would show that preparations for Yanukovych’s flight from Kyiv had already begun three days earlier, on February 19. On February 21, Yanukovych is photographed personally overseeing the packing and removal of valuables and antiques from his lavish estate at Mezhyhir’ia. He leaves his home sometime in the next twenty-four hours, with last loaded trucks departing from the estate at 4 am on February 22.