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Kategorie: Faces of the East

Stories of the war in Donbas and a pizza restaurant as a save space for veterans

Leonid is co-founder of Veterano Pizza, a restaurant in Kyiv run by veterans of the Donbas war. Over a pizza and beer, he told me his story. “When the Russians infiltrated the Donbas, I wanted to go there and fight immediately. But the army did not take me. I only…

When you cannot return home because separatists think you are a spy

Roman and Masha are living together in a small flat in central Sloviansk. They are both working for the Czech humanitarian NGO „People in Need“, which is supporting the suffering civilian population in the Donbas war. Roman left his hometown Donetsk in July 2014, when the city started to get…

An ethnic Russian in Ukraine: being Ukrainian as a state of mind

Fyodor was a sailor in Soviet times, based in Kherson in the Dnipro delta. He is originally from Russia and his parents are both Russian, but he feels fully Ukrainian now. “Putin tries to convince people that Russian speakers in Ukraine are discriminated against. This is bullshit. Look at me,…

A veteran of the 2015 battle of Debaltsevo who believes in Ukrainian victory

Andrey is a Ukrainian military police officer guarding the police headquarters in Sloviansk in Donbass, Ukraine. The occupation of this building by Russian-instigated separatist militias in April 2014 initiated the establishment of pro-Russian authorities in Sloviansk, followed by other cities of Eastern Ukraine, ushering into the war in Donbas, which…