As The Weekly went to press on January 22, there were several major developments in Ukraine. • The Donetsk airport is completely destroyed and is not suitable for defense, thus a decision was made to withdraw Ukrainian servicemen from the new terminal, reported Andriy Lysenko, spokesman for the Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO). “In the course of fighting, 16 Ukrainian servicemen were wounded and taken captive. The ATO forces are holding the fire station, the areas of the air control tower and of the runway that has been made unusable. Our military is confidently holding the reinforced positions at the localities of Avdiyivka and Pisky.
A hunger strike by Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, who is being held in Russian custody, is now in its fourth week. First Lt. Savchenko’s legal team says she has been ingesting only warm water since she began her protest on December 13, 2014, and that her health has begun to suffer. Her lawyers have been barred from visiting Lt. Savchenko in detention through the end of state holidays on January 12. The pilot, who was captured by pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine in June, was transferred to Russian pretrial detention in July. Russian authorities have charged the 33-year-old first lieutenant with complicity in the killing of two Russian journalists covering the Ukraine conflict.
DONETSK, Ukraine – The website of the pro-Kyiv authorities in the eastern city of Donetsk features the photographs of dozens of local residents that have disappeared and are believed to be in the custody of the pro-Russian separatists that control parts of southeastern Ukraine around both Donetsk and Luhansk. There are many ways to end up in a separatist jail – being caught outside after curfew, failing to produce acceptable documents, or simply arousing the suspicion of one of the many masked men patrolling the streets with automatic weapons. And, increasingly, one can end up there as a result of the old Soviet-style method of denunciation. More and more cases of people detained “under the testimony of neighbors” are being uncovered. In October, a document appeared on social media that purported to be a denunciation form from the separatist authorities of Donetsk that people could use to report about “a citizen who is not worthy of occupying the honored position of a citizen of the DNR [Donetsk People’s Republic] and needs to be isolated” and who “carried out illegal activities not in correspondence with the general policies of the Donetsk People’s Republic and the interests of our country.”
The photographed document accused a local whose name was obscured of insulting two DNR functionaries, calling for the “physical destruction” of the DNR leadership and “offending those who support the idea of the DNR.”
At around the same time, another denunciation raised eyebrows in Luhansk.