‘This is a voice that should have a stage, should be heard, at least I feel so’
Meet a girl from Donetsk this morning. Let’s call her “Olexandra” (that is not her real name).
This beautiful, young Ukrainian girl has been in London for only a week.
She is a Russian speaker from Donbas.
Exposed to 8 Years of never ending propaganda and war… I didn’t know what to expect.
But then she told me:
‘My parents could not leave Donbas because of elderly relatives. They have been suffering in limbo for over 8 years now. They have had to pretend everything is ok to survive.
‘Since February 24th my father went outside to the street ONCE – to a dentist. Donetsk has been a ghost city since 2014. Most normal people have left and it has been fully occupied by the Russian zombies.
‘People who stayed are terrified to say a thing and pretend all is fine. No credit cards are operating. Only Russian rubles. Destruction. Wild West. 1990’s!
‘People know of our strong Ukrainian position, but the people who know would never tell this to the Russian occupiers. Thousands of Ukrainian people are living hostage in the dead zone of Russian horror, unable to escape, unable to make a sound.
‘They’ve been waiting for 8 years now. They will wait for few more months. I know we will be free. As soon as it happens I will go back home,’ she concluded.
This has been adapted with very slight edits for clarity or flow from this twitter thread:
Sankt Panzerfaust want ​to get this posted and available to a wide audience, as we rarely hear anything from the people in Donbass. So including a picture helps to engage more people.
‘Important to me, having grown up under Russian occupation myself, all this holds a ring of truth. No sensationalist stories of rape or torture, heroic partisan resistance against Russia… Just ordinary people trying to make ends meet in a difficult situation,’ he said.
‘This is a voice that should have a stage, should be heard, at least I feel so,’ he concluded.
