Ana M. was born and raised in Marijupolje. In the nineties, she lived and worked in Moscow, and then life took her to the other side. He has been in Serbia for ten years. Her father and mother, younger sister and family live in Marijupolje.
"Am I Ukrainian or Russian?" My grandmother, my father's mother, was Russian from Samara, and my grandfather was Ukrainian," Ana tells Vreme. "I don't think there is a family in Mariupol and the whole area that is 'clean'. In the Soviet Union, people from other parts of the country came here, from here they went to other regions, everyone married each other. Well, in eastern Ukraine they speak mainly Russian, but I never thought about who I was, neither me nor others, nor did it matter much, except in the jokes they told about each other. I can't understand what is happening now. To me, everything looks like the wars that were here with you, in Yugoslavia. I haven't been able to sleep normally for months now, I'm worried about mine. Fortunately, at least the connections are not broken, we talk almost every day, by Skype, by phone."
Ana's father, Bogdan S., said in a telephone conversation for "Vreme" that the situation in Marijupolje in the last three or four days has been "calmer, but terribly tense." When asked whose forces control the city, he answers that it is not clear to "ordinary" people. "An army is walking around, we don't know who they are or what they are, the Russians, the pro-Russians, the Ukrainian army, nor are we allowed to ask." They have black uniforms without any emblems, those black caps with slits for the eyes. They stop cars, take legal documents, take away some people's documents, cars, without explanation. We have a house in the village, about 70 kilometers from Marijupolje, but now we are not allowed to go there. They say that they also stop on the roads outside the city, beat, and rob. We don't know who is doing that either, people just say 'some army'."
Bogdan explains that there were no fights in the city itself, like those in Donetsk, but that shooting was often heard from the surrounding area. "I was in the village when planes and helicopters flew over, flying so low that they knocked down chimneys. Those were helicopters of the Ukrainian army, I saw, and I don't know why they did that, there is nothing in those villages, neither soldiers, nor barracks. I don't understand, they go their own way."
There is food, electricity, and water in the city, shops are open, but the prices of all foodstuffs are five or six times higher than before the start of the conflict. "They say that the prices in the west of the country are the same as before." This here is a disaster, for two months nothing came in or out, we were like in a cage, we don't know what we will live on. No way. Winter is coming, gas comes only from Russia, we don't know how we will heat ourselves. "We are near the sea, but it can be minus ten," says Bogdan.
A DIVIDED CITY: Journalist Tim Judah is in The New York Review of Books, in the text about Ukraine that came out on September 5, also mentioned Mariupol. "In Mariupol, people were boarding a train to Kyiv that leaves at 17:05 p.m. It was the end of the summer holidays, but many were leaving because of the situation. Many of those who were leaving Mariupol had already fled from Donetsk and other places. The city was eerily empty and, as in Donetsk, from which about half of the 500.000 inhabitants fled, most of those who remained were old people," writes Jude. "Mariupolj is sharply divided. Half of those I spoke with supported the government in Kiev, and the other half supported the rebels. People are mostly confused, and their loyalties are fickle. "Some told me that they used to support the rebels, but now they support Ukraine, or vice versa," the article reads.
"No one knows what will happen, everyone is tired of everything," says Bogdan. "We just want to live like before, no one cares about politics anymore." Of course, everyone is afraid that it will burst here as in other places. Everything is close here, from town to town 100-150 kilometers, to Donetsk is 140.
People are fleeing, of course, who can and where. You can go to the west, but many are afraid that they will have problems there, that they will see us as traitors in Kiev. I wanted to send at least my daughter and her child to Russia, to my relatives, my daughter is also pregnant. But it can't, the Russians have closed their border here for some time, they don't let anyone in."
