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| Soviet-style youth squads are making a comeback in Donetsk, a pro-Russian enclave in eastern Ukraine. (Credit: Nick Schifrin) |
Soviet-style
youth squads are making a comeback in eastern Ukraine
July 06,
2016 · 4:45 PM EDT
and
Zach Fannin
In the self-declared
Donetsk People’s Republic, the breakaway region of eastern Ukraine, training
for war starts young.
Teenage girls wearing Russian military uniforms
spend Saturday afternoons taking apart and putting together Kalashnikovs. The
average Russian soldier needs more than 10 seconds to break one down;
15-year-old Katerina, who declined to give her last name, takes just 9 seconds.
With a blindfold on.
“Since I was little I preferred playing
football with boys to playing with dolls,” said Katerina with a smile, before getting
serious. “This is our history. … We remember our
history. We remember who we are.”
They are young Ukrainians who want to separate from
Ukraine and join Russia. They call themselves rebels, although Ukraine prefers
"separatists." When she refers to history, Katerina is embracing
Ukraine’s Soviet past — including reviving the Soviet tradition of cities
creating youth squads.
“Since Soviet times, the military and
patriotic education of school children was a priority,” says the
teenagers' instructor, Sergey Fomchenko, “to cultivate
love of school, motherland, and city.”
Donetsk is largely independent from Ukraine after two
years of war, sparked in 2014 when hundreds of thousands of pro-European
Ukrainians threw out a pro-Russian government. In response, pro-Russian
residents along the Russian border in eastern Ukraine seized government
buildings. Russian troops entered Donetsk and helped local fighters repel
Ukrainian soldiers.
Today, the front that divides the Donetsk People’s
Republic and the neighboring Luhansk People’s Republic from the rest of Ukraine
is 280 miles long. Ukrainian army soldiers guard checkpoints on one side;
Donetsk fighters do the same on the other.
“Ukraine split into two parts,” Fomchenko
says. “We loved our city and our region and kept loving
it. The whole eastern Ukraine is closer [culturally] to Russia. That’s how it’s
always been. … I would like us to be part of Russia.”
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| Youth squad members participate in training drills, including taking Kalashnikovs apart while blindfolded. (Credit: Nick Schifrin) |
When the girls aren’t training, they’re
proselytizing. They walk through Horlivka, a city of about 250,000, passing out
Donetsk military recruiting fliers to fighting-age males — anyone between 18
and 55. The girls are guarded by local police officers wearing Russian
uniforms.
“I can’t serve. I’m too young and we’re
not in a state of martial law now, so there’s no mobilization of women. This is
how I can make a contribution,” Katerina says, walking quickly with a stack of white
pamphlets. “First and foremost, a man defends his
motherland, his home, his family. And only then comes all the rest.”
But as this region separates from Ukraine
ideologically, teenagers’ futures are becoming more uncertain. Most residents
who could leave left long ago: the UN estimates the number to be well over 1
million. In Donetsk, there are no working banks, and the highest salary — $225
per month — is a soldier’s.
Katerina stops to hand fliers to two
17 year olds.
“Right now, there’s no prospects here,” says Vadim
Bazey, when asked about his economic future.
“The best option in terms of opportunities is to go
abroad, for example to America or England, and find companies there,” says
Alexandr Goryakin.
But that’s impossible — they’re landlocked in
Donetsk. Because of checkpoints, the two 17 year olds can’t leave the
self-styled republic to get Ukrainian passports. And their Donetsk IDs allow
access only to Russia.
None of that matters to Katerina. Ukraine and
Russia might have agreed Donetsk should eventually reintegrate into Ukraine,
but she and almost everyone here rejects that, because of what she says this
war has forced them to see.
“There was a shell in my apartment block.
Everything was blown up. We were running away with my whole family,” she said.
“When someone you know gets injured or killed, it’s very hard to keep
going. When you just saw him, and two minutes later you’re told he is no
longer there, it’s very hard.”
Sometimes it’s hard to remember that the girls are
girls. Before we left, they wanted to show us one more thing. They giggled as
one of the teenagers unfurled a flag with their logo: a red stiletto over an
AK-47.
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Donetsk youth squad logo (Credit: Nick Schifrin)
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Reporting
made possible by the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. Here's more by Nick Schifrin and Zach Fannin from
the Donetsk People’s Republic from PBS NewsHour.
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