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1st Lt. Nadiya Savchenko in a photo posted on July 10 by RFE/RL.
President Poroshenko’s ATO had some success in early July when Ukraine’s armed forces liberated from pro-Russian terrorists their war-torn strongholds of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in the Donetsk Oblast. The cities’ liberation involved the army and National Guard volunteers, the president said in a July 5 televised address to the nation. That day, 10 soldiers were injured and none killed, largely because the terrorists willfully abandoned these cities and dispersed throughout the region, including the city of Donetsk. “This is the beginning of a breakthrough in the struggle with fighters for the territorial integrity of Ukraine and for a return to the normal life of Donbas, which is an inseparable part of our large, strong, European country,” he said. The success in retaking control of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk boosted the popularity of Mr. Poroshenko, who was under mounting criticism for acting slowly in the Donbas, prompting thousands to crowd Kyiv’s Maidan to protest his actions just a week before the victories.
By mid-year, the war’s toll was keenly felt by refugees from the war zone. There were now more than 46,000 internally displaced persons – about 11,000 of them from Crimea. President Poroshenko ordered the creation of humanitarian corridors so civilians could flee areas worst hit by the conflict, and Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk instructed his government to create a nationwide database of refugees to facilitate relief efforts.
Among those most affected were the Crimean Tatars. Many had fled the Russian-occupied peninsula, while those who remained were subjected to a campaign of harassment and intimidation that included abductions, torture and killings. Crimean Tatar leader Mustafa Dzhemilev was barred from entering Crimean, and his son was arrested and taken to Russia, where he was accused of murder and weapons possession. The elder Mr. Dzhemilev was quoted on October 1 as saying “the Crimean Tatar nation is now in a most complicated and dangerous position since it has always spoken out against the illegal occupation [of Crimea by Russia].”
At the same time, the terrorists in Ukraine’s east were taking prisoners. 1st Lt. Nadiya Savchenko, 33, was captured on June 18 by Russian-backed forces in Ukraine’s Luhansk region and then illegally transferred in July to Russia. The Ukrainian pilot was charged with complicity in the deaths of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine – spurious charges that are nothing less than a bold-faced lie. After she was abducted – the Ukrainian officer says she was captured by pro-Russian forces, hooded and handcuffed, and then smuggled across the border to Russia – Lt. Savchenko was jailed and subjected to a psychological examination at Moscow’s Serbsky Institute, notorious during the Soviet era for its treatment of dissidents, where she was held for a month. She remains in pre-trial detention. In the meantime, she was elected on October 26 to the Verkhovna Rada, running as No. 1 on the list of the Batkivshchyna Party, and she was chosen as one of the 12 deputies representing Ukraine in the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. Lt. Savchenko began a hunger strike on December 13 to protest her imprisonment and as the new year began, there was news that her health had begun to suffer. Her lawyers, who said they have ample evidence to prove her innocence, were working to secure her release as well as recognition that she is a prisoner of war being held illegally by Russia.
Another prisoner being held by Russia was Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who was detained in Crimea and accused of plotting terrorist attacks. The Lefortovo District Court’s spokeswoman said on July 7 that Mr. Sentsov’s pretrial detention had been prolonged. Mr. Sentsov and three other Ukrainian citizens were arrested in May on suspicion of planning terrorist attacks in Crimea’s major cities – Symferopol, Yalta and Sevastopol. In June the European Film Academy, the chairman of the Ukrainian Association of Cinematographers, Serhiy Trymbach, and prominent Russian film director Nikita Mikhalkov urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to assist in Mr. Sentsov’s release. At year’s end Mr. Sentsov was awaiting trial in Russia.
Among those who gave their lives while defending Ukraine was a native New Yorker, Mark (Markian) Paslawsky, 55, who grew up in New Jersey and graduated from West Point. He took Ukrainian citizenship in 2014 and joined the Donbas battalion to fight the Russian-backed forces in the Donetsk region. Known as Franko, he was killed in action on August 19. His funeral was held on August 26 at St. Nicholas Ukrainian Catholic Church at Askold’s Grave in Kyiv. Mr. Paslawsky was buried Askold’s Grave, becoming only the second Ukrainian to be accorded that honor. He was honored with a National Guard funeral, attended by members of his Donbas battalion, as well as family members who arrived from the United States, several hundred friends and other mourners who simply wanted to pay their respects to a man they’d never met but admired from what they’d heard.
The eulogy was delivered by Patriarch Sviatoslav of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church. “Mark was born in the U.S., which seems as the quietest and calm land on the earth today, where many of those who desire to save their skins flee and save their lives,” said the patriarch. “But that was not the striving of the heart of our brother Mark. He traveled to Ukraine, became one of us here on our native land and had become our brother-in-arms in the struggle for a free and independent country. He became one of us even by citizenship, sacrificing the convenient U.S. citizenship in order to stand beside us in our present struggle.” Mr. Paslawsky attended St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic School in Newark, N.J., and was a member of Plast Ukrainian Scouting Organization. Patriarch Sviatoslav said Plast members all over the world were at the funeral in prayer and in spirit; some attended the services in their Plast uniforms.