The inhabitants of a street called Zeleniy Hay (green grove) in Marinka fled their homes for safer grounds in summer 2014 during a phase of intense fighting. Back then, it seemed their escape would be only temporarily. Now, they are forced to live in unfamiliar cities and villages under the status of internally displaced people. By now it has become pretty clear that they hardly will return to Marinka anytime soon. What is more, the hope is also dwindling that they might get a compensation for their destroyed and pillaged properties.
Dolce Vita
Before the war, Marinka was a small town, considered in the region as a well-to-do suburb of Donetsk. Zeleniy Hay street was directly adjacent to the Petrovskiy district of Donetsk. One could easily walk there. The street was home to the A. S. Makarenko school for orphans and to 57 families, many of which worked in the school. The street lay a bit off the town of Marinka. Its inhabitants jokingly called it a separate country.
“We had a state of our own, where unwelcome people wouldn’t come, and if they came there, everyone knew that they were strangers,” recalls one former inhabitant of the street, Olga Samsonova.
The inhabitants of neighboring Donetsk referred to the street as a little paradise.
“My daughter came to visit us from Donetsk and she said ‘mum you have a little paradise here. One can hear the nightingale and its green all around. Such a good school such spruce houses, all the front yards are impeccably clean. It’s good here’” recalls Valentina Solodova.
When the fighting started in the summer of 2014, Marinka was squeezed between the Ukrainian armed forces and various “DPR” militias. The area constantly came under fire. Nearly all of the inhabitants of Zeleniy Hay street moved to safer places during that summer. Many moved in with their relatives or friends. They left their properties and most of their belongings behind in the hope of a quick return after the artillery fire would have ceased. The army managed to establish control over most of Marinka, but Zeleniy Hay became the front line. It was hazardous to stay there. In that period and for the duration of another year, the inhabitants sometimes still could visit their houses, take some of their belongings and even bring in the harvests from their garden plots. In autumn 2014 they did so to the sound of artillery fire.
Between the fronts
In July 2015 the situation changed. The Ukrainian army was able to liberate Marinka after heavy fighting. They concentrated their forces in the area of Zeleniy Hay and the area became a forbidden zone even for its inhabitants. People who didn’t want to leave their houses were simply thrown out by the military. The inhabitants could get permission to visit their houses only from representatives of the military-civilian liaison's office after a month of bureaucracy and collective dispossession. They found their homes not only destroyed but also pillaged.
“We noticed right away that the front door had been broken. Inside, everything was pillaged, all of our stuff was gone,” says Olga.
She went on to say that the last time she and her husband were able to visit their home is now more than two years ago, back in March 2016. She assumes that by now there is nothing left of their home. She knows about the state of her house and neighborhood thanks to the internet if the soldiers post photos or videos about Marinka.
Criminal charges were pressed and an investigation into marauding was opened. However, according to the inhabitants, these investigations were consciously held up and they haven’t so far led to any results. Nevertheless, Ukrtelekom, the Ukrainian telephone company, has continued to send its bills to the street’s inhabitants and even threatened people with lawsuits, although they had long left their homes or were forced to live there without electricity for months on end.
Promises, neglect and the court
The grievances of the Zeleniy Hay residents who were forced to live in miserable conditions in neighboring towns have attracted the attention of the media and of the state.
Some politicians met the residents, among them, Pavel Zhebrovskiy, at the time head of the military-civil administration in Donetsk oblast. He stressed that it was necessary to wait until the end of the fighting, but he didn’t mention any date. According to the residents, he was more impatient in subsequent meetings and eventually started sending his deputy to such meetings. The deputy, at some occasions, conducted these meetings in a rude way. Finally, the residents were ignored altogether.
More than once, the head of the administration said that the main condition for the return of the inhabitants of Marinka was the ceasing of combat in the area. In 2016 he made it clear that the state was unable to pay compensations for the properties lost because such compensations were not specified in Ukrainian laws.
Some officials promised they would find sponsors to solve the question. These should build cottages for the residents. This idea too never became more concrete. More promises were not yet made.
In four years, the residents of Zeleniy Hay street have sent dozens of letters, pleas, and applications to different offices, demanding compensation for their damage. They have never received a clear answer. The state has insisted that their failure to pay compensations was caused by the lacking legal base for such payments. Eventually, three residents of Zeleniy Hay teamed up to file a lawsuit against the cabinet of ministers, against the treasury and the ministry of defense. They request a compensation for the loss of their property and their suffering. The lawsuits were kicked into the long grass and after more than a year have not yet led to any results.
A street of desperation and hopelessness
Its worth remembering, that not only the inhabitants of Marinka have had similar problems, but many thousands of people along the front line in Pesky, Opitniy, Vodyaniy, Shirokino, Granitniy, and many other places. Left to their own devices, with no homes to go back to, people have lost hope in a better future, but they still dream of living in their homes. Those who belong to a young generation have to realize that they also lost a part of their lives.
“One wants to believe in a better future, one wants to hope, but it seems its getting only worse. We have to move from one place to another, but we want a place for ourselves,” says Olga.
She adds that if she had the possibility to return home, she and her family would not hesitate for a minute. “Even if now it would be probably terrible to see what has remained of our home.”
The residents of Zeleniy Hay remain in contact to one another, they send holiday greetings and try to support each other, even though they now live in different cities. None of them expected to lose everything. Instead of living their lives they are now forced to just survive without hope for justice. As long as there will be no clear procedure for compensating the losses of the civil population by the government, their ordeal will go on.
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