"So many things are related to Donbass! I have relatives there, my father grew up in Debaltsevo, and I have a grandmother there. All my close relatives lived there... But now it turnes out that they were divided as if into two clans: those are the bad ones, these are the good ones..."
A resident of Horlivka (for security reasons, the names of witnesses are omitted)
During the war, besides the loss of relatives, it might be even more difficult to swallow the fact that a family member sided with the "bad guys". However, the stories about how the armed conflict separated families are quite common. Because the war in Donbas, as researchers have repeatedly stated, is hybrid. Its most effective weapons take aim at the minds and hearts. However, such shots do not cause physical damage.
As the saying goes, “Water dripping day by day wears the hardest rock away”. Similarly, a message, no matter how preposterous, if repeated systematically and for a long time, will eventually have the intended effect. It happened in Donbass, where, according to witnesses, the ideological work on polarization of the population had been carried out for many years.
When activists of the Coalition “Justice for Peace in Donbass” collect evidence of human rights violations committed during the armed conflict, they also ask respondents about their perception of the war. About what, in their opinion, had led to the war, and about what had shocked them most. Often their answers get one thinking.
"It shocked me how people are subjected to the perception of another kind of power... People simply do not know how to think, in terms that it is so easy to deceive the human mind. And many were indeed deceived ", remembers a resident of Horlivka.
Militants of Ukrainian army also speak about the simplified perception, created and imposed on people by information influence.
“Again, for many soldiers the war becomes very familiar only because the war is a completely black and white story. Meaning there is an enemy there, and there are “our guys”. And those, on the other side, are entirely wrong, and those on our side are all heroes. It simplifies life incredibly”, says a fighter of Donbass battalion.
Above and beyond constant injections of hostility which dehumanize the “other side” on both sides of the demarcation line, the other colors might appear along with black and white. In the end, it becomes clear that, above all, we are people, and there is much more that unites us than divides us.
"But these are exactly the same people who speak our language. Dressed in the same clothes. They live, perhaps a little worse than people in Zhytomyr, but in general their way of life is no different from the way people live in Vinnitsa, Zhytomyr or Poltava", a resident of Luhansk points out.
Initially, the situation in Donbas at the end of 2013 and in early 2014 was similar to the one that evolved after the Maidan in 2004. Witnesses argue that the only difference was how intensely the opposing views were voiced. The political elite of the Donbas has united to strengthen the de-facto single opposition force headed by the ex-president.
"For all these years it has always been set in stone. Dissent has been eliminated", says a resident of Kramatorsk.
In some cases, inaction is also a crime. Witnesses often emphasize that the state didn’t manage to act on the information battlefield in time and to show people that they weren’t left alone. As a matter of fact, people become indifferent to the color of the flag in their city. What they need is a ceasefire.
"I understand that there are people who, for ideological reasons, have been on the side of pro-Russian militants. But there are people who were victims of brainwashing and the indifference of the Ukrainian authorities. Because the government still does nothing in the cities, villages and towns on the contact line to somehow inform people where the shells flew from, who bombards them", says a resident of Sloviansk.
Individual respondents tend to generalize, based on their own observations, that residents of the temporarily occupied territories live in a specific information space. Many of them watch television daily for many years and they tend to believe in what is being broadcasted. And that's why it's extremely hard to talk even to people one is close to.
"And to convince a man who has been watching TV for the last 60 years, one would need as much time as this person has spent watching TV...", says a resident of Luhansk.
Relatives of victims often continue to live in the temporarily occupied territory. A resident of Luhansk describes a dialogue with her father who stayed at her home:
"Dad would watch too much TV and say "So what's happening in Ukraine?". Me, "Dad, where are you, get down to earth!". Whoop, Dad got real. He gets carried away sometimes".
People who have suffered from the conflict in different ways often recall manifestations of human behavior during the war. Someone would buy pending coffee or show the way, help with medicine or food. Sometimes, even in the face of serious danger, strangers came to meet when they saw a person in trouble.
"One woman who worked for the railway in Ilovaysk helped us very much. That is, she gave us a lot of clothes. She helped many of us contacting our relatives. She helped us with food as much as she could... Of course, she did this at a great risk. But I have to say that it was a common case. There were really lots of such people", recalls a former prisoner.
When the state is inactive, humane behavior is perhaps the only antidote to the information mud that has invaded the minds of thousands of people. However, until the "us" and "they" disappear, families are unlikely to be reunited. Until the state's information security mechanism starts working at its full capacity, and not merely counter-attacking fakes and fibs, peace will not come. For against the propagandistic giant of Russia, grassroots humanity is powerless.
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The Secretariat of the Coalition «Justice for Peace in Donbas»
04060, Kyiv, Ryzhska str., 73 G