The war came to Luhansk six months ago, on June 2. It was the real war with shots, explosions, and assault on a military barracks. On that day, people of Luhansk first heard whistling rockets and saw blood being shed. Six months is long enough for us to sum up, to trace the consequences of delaying. In the meantime, let us remember how it was.
It was 4 a.m. on Monday, the beginning of the week. Residents of Myrny neighborhood were woken up by unexpected shots, followed by sounds of a fighter aircraft. “They are assaulting the Luhansk Border Detachment barracks,” was the news spreading on the Internet. Some Luhansk residents allowed militants to use their homes so that they could shoot at the Ukrainian military base nearby. A few months later, when the bandits shelled this neighborhood with mortar rounds, these same citizens blamed Ukrainian soldiers. Only some of them were clever enough to blame themselves.
Few of them realized then what trouble they had let into their city, their streets and even their apartments. Fighters of the so-called Army of the South-East, sporting St. George’s ribbons, were running about in the streets, while journalists of Lifenews recorded stories about the “heroic” fight which “militiamen” waged against “junta” and the Ukrainian National Guard’s offensive on the peaceful city (as if Ukraine attacked itself). A resident of Luhansk who lived precisely in Myrny neighborhood, where the shelling of the military unit started, recalled on Facebook later: “I still shudder to remember that day. It was when the horror began outside my windows. I still believed then that it was a transitory occurrence. The final understanding took another two weeks.” Another resident of the same neighborhood wrote: “June 2 is my birthday. The morning started not with congratulations, but with a plane flying close to our windows.”
Luhansk journalist Liudmyla Sokolenko: “I was going away on a business trip to Vinnytsia on that day, and was woken up early in the morning by strange rumble and shaking windows. The ubiquitous Internet almost immediately told me that the militants were assaulting the border service barracks in Myrny neighborhood... Already in the afternoon, before going on to the station to board my train, I heard the second shock: it was the explosion in the oblast state administration (OSA)’s building, which seemed to be strong enough to shatter my apartment’s windows. The station was a scene of terrible panic before the train No. 20 left (it ran from Luhansk to Kyiv), as people bought tickets to any place at any price. The railcar was buzzing like a beehive, all discussing the events of the day and who bought what coveted tickets and for how much. It was the war coming to Luhansk...”
During the day, a Ukrainian fighter flew over the city center a few times. Suddenly, a terrible news swept Luhansk: the fighter hit the OSA building, which had been occupied by the militants. The missile hit the windows and the entrance to the OSA. A video appeared on the Internet at once, showing a woman, writhing in agony, dictating her phone number to man with a Caucasian Mountaineer accent. I must say that armed Caucasian Mountaineers were already very visible in the city then. The OSCE instantly recognized that the attack on the OSA was done by a Ukrainian aircraft. They also emphasized the deaths of civilians, although the victims were primarily the so-called Luhansk People’s Republic’s officials and militants. They took pains to downplay that morning’s armed attack on the border guards’ barracks, though, as well as beating of pro-Ukrainian citizens, destruction of national symbols, tortures of patriots that were committed in the city center. This day made it clear to almost everyone that an armed conflict had begun. Few people gave any thought to its name – street fighting, invasion or something else. It was clear that those who would show more determination and strength, first of all, the physical one, would have the upper hand.
The malignant tumor of the April and May events grew into armed confrontation, its logical next stage. Next, the terrorists seized strategic sites, that is, military units, one by one. As one soldier, who was in one of the barracks attacked, said: “They shoot, we fight back. Order comes from Kyiv to retreat because our base has been captured. But it has not been! We need reinforcements! No, they say, your base has been taken by the enemy, so you must retreat.” This same situation was on June 2. Our border guards asked for reinforcements then. Spokesmen of the Ministry of Defense told the media repeatedly that the besieged soldiers had been relieved! But the officers who phoned home said otherwise, as they got no reinforcements. The story of Luhansk’s surrender deserves a separate study. Many people see clearly that the Ukrainians delayed necessary actions and even behaved passively for some reason. We witnessed strange captures of the State Security Service, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Prosecutor’s Office, Court of Appeal, military bases, and other facilities, inexplicable steps taken by the military leadership, orders to retreat, lack of relief, and strange ineffective air attacks.
After six months, how does the surrendered and never liberated Luhansk look like? The city has now the phrase “Luhansk is a Russian city” clumsily written on the fence separating the ugly, abandoned fountain from the former regional office of the Communist party. Its citizens vote in faux elections to get discount cards. Prisoners are kept in the basements. To get to the basement, it is sometimes enough to speak Ukrainian or simply to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. The city is well-supplied with food, but totally lacks money, and fakes are already being printed. Those mercenaries who stormed the border guards’ barracks on June 2 in Myrny neighborhood have mostly died or fled their own side’s purges.
Luhansk is dominated by “polite people” speaking with a Russian accent, and Manolis Pilavov serves as “mayor” of the city. By the way, he, too, spent a few days in the basement for allegedly stealing humanitarian aid, but it turned out that none of the low-life invaders knew the city enough to govern it. Therefore, Pilavov was freed to govern the city, which still has limited power and water supply. But, oddly enough, some residents still dream of Putin coming with cheap gas, plentiful jobs, and generally the “Russian World” with all its blessings. They have not understood that Putin has come to them back then, six months ago. Shots, explosions, shells, and mortar rounds – it was the true face of Putin, with which they will have to live as long as it will take Ukrainian troops to come back there.
