April-June 2014

In February 2014 the “Maidan” revolution overthrew Ukraine's president Viktor Yanukovich. Under pressure from Vladimir Putin, he had abandoned negotiations for an Association Agreement with the European Union in favour of closer links with Russia, prompting protesters to occupy Kyiv's central Maidan square and demand his resignation. While originally peaceful, the Maidan was forced by police repression to organize into “self-defence units' dominated by activists from right-wing groups who proved willing to fight and die in what they saw as another battle in the struggle of the Ukrainian nation to free itself from Russian domination. After days of street battles in which dozens of protesters were killed, Yanukovich was forced to surrender power to a new government which included the nationalist parties and on its first day attempted to abolish the status of Russian as an official language. Alarmed by what they saw as a western-backed coup by Ukrainian nationalists, the Russian-speaking inhabitants of the south-east of the country begun mobilizing into an “anti-Maidan” front.



With the country in disarray, unidentified soldiers occupied Crimea in what turned out to be a Russian invasion aimed at “protecting Russian-speakers”. Within days a piece of Ukraine was annexed to the Russian Federation after a dubious referendum hastily organized by local pro-Russian “self- defence forces”, reinforcing the Ukrainian nationalist hysteria against all things Russian and setting in motion the vicious circle of mutual fear and distrust. As Maidan activists took down statues of Lenin in the name of Ukrainian identity and resistance against Russian aggression, anti-Maidan activists rallied around other statues of Lenin in the name of Russian identity and against Ukrainian nationalism. Inspired by the takeover of Crimea and fanned by the unrelenting propaganda of Russian TV about an impending genocide, a wave of anti-Maidan demonstrations swept through the south- eastern regions, calling for increased autonomy from Kyiv and occupying government buildings, effectively dismantling Ukrainian state authority in the Donbass region.



Living in an impoverished coal-mining district whose standards of living actually worsened since the break-up of the Soviet Union, the people of the Donbass maintained their Russian identity and strong cultural and economic ties across the border. They never felt much attachment to independent Ukraine and were bound to feel even less as the Maidan revolution ushered a surge in Ukrainian national pride, making them very receptive to the separatism that reappeared in the region, calling for secession and possibly a union with Russia. The increasingly besieged new Ukrainian government shunned any negotiations and declared an Anti Terrorist Operation (ATO) against the anti-Maidan, while Putin hinted that if the situation degenerated he might have to intervene militarily to restore the peace. With the obvious support of their powerful neighbour, the anti-Maidan activists took over the Donbass' capital city of Donetsk, announced a referendum on the future of the region and declared the establishment of the “People's Republic of Donetsk”.



In a perverse cycle of self-fulfilling prophecies, Ukrainian nationalists reacted by mobilizing private militias to defend the motherland from the hordes coming from the east, in turn retroactively justifying the Russian paranoia which called for an antifascist struggle painted as a rerun of the Second World War and the battle of Stalingrad. The escalating rhetoric, together with disproportionate amounts of Russian weaponry that somehow made their way to the Donbass, quickly made any form of national dialogue impossible and inevitably led to an armed confrontation. A few months later, pro-Russian militias are fighting Ukrainian nationalist battalions and Donetsk is being shelled by artillery. Countless people have been forced to abandon their homes and thousands have been killed, making the prospect of any reconciliation even more remote. This photo essay documents the evolution of the People's Republic of Donetsk from April to early June 2014, as Ukraine slid into a civil war that few remember exactly how started, and nobody knows how will end.