The seizure of the district police headquarters, the air raid on the Dubrava camping site and artillery strikes on Makarovo
On the 6th of June 2014, around five o’clock in the morning, the Ukrainian air force carried out a crushing strike on the Dubrava camping site in Stanitsa Luhanska, used as a military base for the separatist forces forming there at the time. They declared that their troops had suffered only a couple of injuries, but it was clear that such an airstrike could not have passed without casualties. More significantly, the separatist’s beloved and strategically located base on the banks of the river Severskiy Donets was in ruins and staying there was no longer possible.
Among the people of Stanitsa Luhanska the lurid details of what had happened started to spread quickly. Everyone, who wanted to listen to what eyewitnesses had seen could hear the entire sadness of the situation, for instance through the scene of a young woman holding the intestines of her husband, a militiaman who was torn to pieces by the explosions. Everybody cursed what they called the fascist Junta in Kyiv. No one seemed to make the connection between the formation of a separatist military unit, to which the said husband belonged, and the tragic consequences this had led to.
The surviving pro-Russian militias had to hastily regather and dislocate to a defunct school building in the village of Makarovo close to a bridge across the river Severskiy Donets. Several separatist checkpoints were nearby which gave the new base additional security. Also in Makarovo there are several youth camps, such as Solnechniy, which the armed groups could use to house their combatants. Nevertheless, on June 13, 2014, again early in the morning, Ukrainian artillery fire hit the new base too.
In contrast to the Dubrava camping site, the school building in Makarovo was in the middle of a densely populated area directly surrounded by residential buildings. The artillery attack on the school building damaged these houses too. Footage of the destruction, taken by residents of the area, could perfectly be used for propaganda to turn an already antagonistic population entirely against the Ukrainian state.
I remember how around 10 o’clock that morning in front of Lastochka, one of the few shops open, a small crowd gathered. They were mostly locals who had no intention of leaving. They discussed the monstrous cruelties of the bloodthirsty Junta. Nobody at the time knew the scope of the destruction and nobody wanted to go to Makarovo and see it for themselves. However, after what had happened in Makarovo, the careless attitude with which many had followed the events of the preceding months disappeared immediately and cars began to line up to leave Makarovo.
The same trend also showed among the separatists themselves. Many of those, who until recently wanted to give their lives for the “Russian world”, now understood what was happening and left in whatever direction they could leave, often taking with them the weapons they had been entrusted with just recently. The streets of Stanitsa Luhanska became deserted just like the administrative buildings that were looted by local crime bosses, who carried away everything of value, including the entire equipment of the prosecutor’s office. But this was only a sideshow of the war.
The number of those who wanted to split up the country still continued to grow. The separatists continued to take on local volunteers as well as new arrivals and the number of their bases expanded. The local police headquarters, for example, were seized without firing a shot. A new basis for heavy weapons and for troops was founded in the infamous Mostopoezd base on Ostrovskiy street. The establishment of this base in the middle of a residential area, resulted in many casualties.
This video illustrates the scale of the destruction. It also shows how the stronghold of the “Russian world” in the Dubrava camp site was destroyed and the devastation caused to homes because of the positioning of separatist forces in their immediate proximity.
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