Rebels flee, but Ukraine city remains deeply split

SLOVYANSK, UKRAINE — For the first time in three months, Alla Grebenkova says she can go out on the streets of this city in eastern Ukraine without fear of being recognized as Ukrainian.

“I lived in hell. It was complete chaos and lawlessness,” the 68-year-old teacher said of life in Slovyansk after it came under the control of pro-Russia separatists in April. “I was afraid to admit that I am Ukrainian. Finally, this absurdity has ended.”

The rebels fled Slovyansk, a city of 100,000 that had been their stronghold, over the weekend as Ukrainian troops mounted an offensive. They left behind a city heavily damaged by fighting and riven by vehemently differing views.

The government soldiers may have won the battle for the city itself, but not yet for its people’s hearts and minds.

Many residents in Slovyansk feel Russian by all measures except their passports. The city, 150 kilometres from the border with Russia, had once been part of the Russian Empire and Russian is its dominant mother tongue.

Resentment is high toward the Ukrainian authorities who came into power in Kyiv after Russiafriendly President Viktor Yanukovych fled in February after months of mass protests.

Like Grebenkova, Dmitry Novikov is relieved that the fighting in Slovyansk is over — yet for him, it’s not liberation but failure and disappointment. The separatists and their sympathizers were eager for Russian military intervention and had begged Russian President Vladimir Putin to annex the region like he did the mostly Russian-speaking Crimean Peninsula in March.

“Russia sold us out,” the 56-yearold Novikov said. “We lost because Putin decided not to help us. We feel ourselves deceived and tossed aside.”

“We will never be reconciled with the fascists in Kyiv,” he added, using the common phrase proRussia residents here apply to the central government in Kyiv.

Those easterners claim the Kyiv government aims to suppress their use of the Russian language and wipe out their ethnic identity. In the early days of the new government, lawmakers did vote to repeal a law allowing Russian to be a “regional language.” The move was quashed by the acting president but the damage was done: Russianspeakers lost faith in Kyiv.

Grebenkova says the insurgents were just as much to blame for the ethnic animosity. Her sister, Olga, was held for more than a month by the separatists just for using the Ukrainian language, she said.

“This is our Ukrainian land and it will remain Ukrainian,” she declared.