After Russian Occupation, Resentment In East Ukraine

Stariy Karavan, Ukraine, (UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 22nd Jul, 2023 ) :Nadezhda Sereda feels like she is being punished for staying during Russia's occupation of her one-road village in Ukraine.

The retired factory worker and her dozen neighbours have had no power since the days Russian forces fought their way through Ukraine's defences in May of last year.

Ukraine's liberation of Stariy Karavan and a web of other eastern settlements three months later created still more problems for Sereda.

"Our leaders started to divide us between those who stayed under the occupation, whom they didn't consider human, and those who left and supposedly truly love Ukraine," she said in exasperated tones.

Sereda was out on the street to greet volunteer medics who had to navigate a pontoon bridge and a cratered road to reach her frontline home.

"They are angels," she said of the privately-funded team. "They are the only ones who come here." Stariy Karavan's shell-scarred houses remained without running water and power once Ukraine's government reasserted its control one year ago.

Locals still lack gas to cook with and depend on spotty cell phone service and the radio for news.

Resentments are running high.

"When the Russians came, it's not like we committed treason or told them about anything," Sereda's neighbour Valentyna Chumakova chipped in.

"We just quietly sat at home." Sereda's anxieties reflect broader social fissures in dangerous and deprived lands such as Stariy Karavan and the neighbouring village of Brusivka down the road.

The wooded communities are cut off from the rest of government-held Ukraine by a twisty river whose bridges have been destroyed by the 17-month war.

Russian forces on the other end of the forest nearby have reassembled and are trying to launch a new advance.

Still more Russian brigades are pushing further north toward Kupyansk in the once more-peaceful Kharkiv region.

The resurgent Russian threat is one reason volunteer medic Mykhailo Dobrishman leads his mobile clinic to these isolated lands.

His Base UA volunteer group has been organising evacuations from some of the most dangerous flashpoints of Ukraine.

"But now, we meet very few people who want to leave," the 33-year-old said. "On the contrary, more and more people are coming back." Stariy Karavan's isolation and the rising Russian threat may be one reason few of Ukraine's stretched resources are reaching Sereda and her neighbours.

Dobrishman tries to be understanding and no longer fights older villagers' refusal to part with their homes and vegetable plots.

But he draws the line at younger families with children.

"These are the most critical cases. When we see children, we come back several times to convince families to leave. We try to get help from the police," the 33-year-old said.

"These children are our future." But Sereda's anger seems almost personal.

The 66-year-old seethes at the idea that someone could think that she was collaborating or spying for the Russians.

"Our administration looks down on us," Sereda said.

"Everyone has their own reasons for wanting to stay," she said. "I just want to be treated like a human being. Is that too much to ask?" Mykola Brus lives in similar hardship and worships Ukraine and its troops.

The 69-year-old's village of Brusivka is named after his family and his roots to the land run just as deep as those of Sereda.

"The guys, the soldiers here, they help us all the time," the 69-year-old said of the small groups of military men dispatched out of sight in the tall-grass fields.

"The soldiers take turns looking after me. They check on me to see if I'm still alive," he said without a hint of irony.

But even he struggled to remember the last time anyone from the civilian administration visited these regions.

"We have the soldiers," he shrugged. "They come at any time of day. They bring me food, borsch, they help with everything."zak/oc/yad