‘Ukraine will be free ... or it will not exist at all’
Families in war-torn east of country preparing to take up arms as Russian troops march closer still
‘I can see clearly where things are going now: unless Putin gets Nato’s guarantees, which no one is going to give him, it can only mean one thing. War’
‘We’re going to see where we can get a gun or two – or a machine gun. We’re not going to give up. We need to stand for ourselves. We’re going to shoot and kill’
Valentina Buchok is already in her car with her husband on the way to buy a weapon when the phone rings. “We’re going to go and see where we can get a gun or two – or a machine gun,” the 56-year-old says, just hours after Mr Putin effectively ordered an occupation.
Russian soldiers could soon be just 14 miles from her Ukrainian home, where the current front line with Russian-backed separatists lies.
Mr Putin’s dramatic escalation in a speech on Monday night has struck fear into many resilient Ukranians, accustomed to eight years of war on their doorsteps in the east of the country. “We’re not going to give up,” Ms Buchok says resolutely as she heads to a nearby town for a gun licence.
“We need to stand for ourselves. We’re going to shoot and kill.”
Ms Buchok was an electrician in Donetsk when she was snatched by separatists in 2017 and accused of being a Ukrainian spy.
She spent a year and a half at Donetsk’s notorious secret prison where she was tortured, and was released in a prison exchange around Christmas in 2019. She said she took Mr Putin’s speech as a direct threat against Ukraine’s very existence.
“Ukraine will either be free or it will not exist at all,” she says, before speeding off on her mission.
Ms Buchok is not alone in her fears. For residents in governmentcontrolled parts of war-torn eastern Ukraine, Mr Putin’s latest move spelled immediate danger.
“I couldn’t get to sleep until 4am: I couldn’t believe this actually happened,” says Enrique Menendez, an activist, by phone from the town of Kostyantynivka less than 15 miles from the front line. “Jitters are in the air. Everyone is talking about it.”
Menendez (his surname is from a grandfather who fled the Spanish Civil War to eastern Ukraine), has not been to his native Donetsk since February 2016, when separatist authorities expelled him and his colleagues for running a relief operation.
The 38-year-old activist has been defending Russia’s stance in pushing Kyiv to offer autonomy to the separatist-held Donetsk and Luhansk but he now fears Mr Putin’s surprise recognition of the two statelets will lead to full-scale hostilities that he went through in 2014-2015.
“I can see clearly where things are going now: unless Putin gets Nato’s guarantees, which no one is going to give to him, it can only mean one thing: war. It’s scary to say these words and it’s scary to think we’re going to go through this all over again.”
President Putin’s speech on Monday night in which he lashed out at Ukraine for “squandering and pilfering its dowry” of land and riches that it “received” from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union confirmed Ukrainians’ worst fears that Mr Putin is hostile to the very existence of their state. The subsequent recognition of Donetsk and Luhansk, separatist statelets in eastern Ukraine, also known as the Donbas, left more questions unanswered: by the end of yesterday, not a single Russian official could say for certain if by recognising the separatists’ sovereignty Moscow was recognising their current borders or their claim to all of Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions.
Many residents in the two-thirds of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions that are under Kyiv’s control fear that Mr Putin will not stop at sending troops only to the separatist-held areas.
The people in the governmentcontrolled Donbas to whom The Daily Telegraph spoke say they have not seen any signs of panic in their towns and villages as the residents are already battle-hardened by devastating fighting in 2014-2015, which left more than 14,000 people dead.
In Mariupol, a city on the Azov city just 30 miles from the Russian border and 12 miles from the front line, a dozen people came out for a picket on Monday, holding a Ukrainian flag and placards saying “Mariupol is Ukraine”.
Victor Harmash, 43, who served in a volunteer battalion for two years after fleeing his native Donetsk, is angry with the Ukrainian government for what he thought was a downplaying of the threat of a Russian invasion.
Russia has stubbornly denied its role in the conflict, while overwhelming evidence showed that Russian troops were sent in to fight Ukrainian forces in 2014-2015. Mr Harmash, who is ready to take up arms if Mariupol is attacked, said most locals appear “a bit confused” by Russia’s surprise recognition of the separatist republics.
Parts of the Donbas saw fierce fighting overnight, making political rallies less of a priority for its residents.
Nataliya Zhurbenko, a 68-year-old grandmother from Stanytsia Luhanska, one of the recent hotspots of fighting, where a kindergarten was shelled over the weekend, said she is worried about the ongoing escalation in fighting. “It is very intense right now and there is no electricity or internet; we don’t even have any water,” said Ms Zhurbenko, who lives just nine miles from the front line.
She now thinks the Donbas needs to brace itself for the worst.
Her only hope lies with the Ukrainian army: “I always say I believe equally in God and in the armed forces of Ukraine. If I wasn’t sure of the army I would leave this place immediately.”