Calm Streets Mask Deep Divisions in Donetsk

Young Ukrainians enjoyed a sunny afternoon this week at a city pond in central Donetsk. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

DONETSK, Ukraine — To the casual observer, this is not a city at war. Masked men are confined to a few buildings in the center of town, where children on in-line skates pass by. City workers tend to flowers in meticulously planted parks. Crowded open-air cafes spill onto sidewalks and into parks. Pfizer is holding a conference at the Ramada, where grilled sea bass is on the menu.

But inside living rooms and offices, something has changed. A teacher has been dropped by 20 friends since he posted a picture of himself at a pro-Kiev protest on a Russian social media website. A construction worker no longer speaks to his Muscovite father. A journalist has left the country, afraid for the safety of her 3-month-old son.

On Sunday, Ukraine will hold its first national election since a bloody upheaval in February deposed the elected government and pitched the country into chaos. But the vote itself will not answer the bigger question of whether Ukraine will hang together as a country. That question will be decided mostly here, in the country’s anguished eastern regions, and will turn on whether ordinary people feel that the vote — and the country that Ukraine is becoming — belongs to them, too.

The West hopes that the election will heal the wounds and provide stability to Ukraine. On Friday, even Russia’s president, Vladimir V. Putin — who seized Crimea and, the West believes, worked hard to destabilize southeastern Ukraine — said his country would respect the outcome of the vote.

But the east is more deeply divided than at any point in this country’s history, and people here say it is possible that the vote will do little to change that.

“It’s like two people talking nonsense to one another, and neither is listening,” said Dmitry Pertsov, the teacher who attended the pro-Kiev protest and who was born a few months before Ukraine became independent in 1991. “It’s a sad fact, but many people no longer see one another as human beings. I’ve stopped understanding the people around me.”

Russia and the West have long presented Ukrainians with a zero-sum choice: them or us. Many Ukrainians say the choice is false and that, in reality, they are part of both. But the poisonous language and the violence, while isolated, are forcing people to take sides, leaving moderates like Mr. Pertsov standing on rapidly shrinking ground.

Mr. Pertsov, who teaches Russian to foreign students at Donetsk Medical University, began to notice hostility on Vkontakte, Russia’s version of Facebook, not long after the government fell. Friends posted aggressive messages, like “Ukraine doesn’t exist anymore,” and “we are no longer brothers.” When they took him off their lists of friends, he was sad, but not surprised.

“When I say I love Ukraine, people think it’s not worth talking to me, they say I am a fascist,” he said, sitting in a classroom empty of students, who were sent home because of the tensions. “When I meet them on the street, I say, ‘Hey, it’s me, Dima, the same person as before.’ ”

Anti-Kiev easterners have some legitimate complaints. One person’s revolution is another’s coup, and many people here, even those who want Ukraine whole, are troubled by the uprising in Kiev, which they say was a coup, plain and simple. Some of its symbols rankled, such as the black-and-red flag of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, a nationalist guerrilla group that fought the Soviets well into the 1950s.

“It’s like waving a confederate flag in Harlem,” said Keith Darden, a political scientist who specializes in Ukraine at American University in Washington.

And changes to a language law stirred up old fears among people in the largely Russian-speaking east that they would be codified as second-class citizens. The changes were later scrapped, but the damage had been done.

World War II was effectively a civil war in Ukraine, with most of the country siding with the Soviet Union against the Nazis, while a clutch of western regions fought the Soviets in the name of Ukrainian independence.

“They say the Soviet Union was an occupying power,” said a 27-year-old personnel manager sitting in a park. “Well, not in my opinion.”

This area, referred to as the Donbass, for the Donets River basin, has long been unique. A Welshman settled here in the late 19th century and started to produce steel and coal, hiring laborers from outside the area, mainly from Russia. The workers lived largely apart from the indigenous Ukrainian peasant farmers.

Mr. Pertsov, the teacher, said he had pinned his hopes on the potential for the armed pro-Russian separatists to alienate residents here.

Anna Kigel, an accountant who wore stylish red glasses, said, “It’s like a drunk picnic.” But despite her disdain, there was fear. She is applying for a passport for her 10-month-old son.

Dima Pertsov, a teacher who supports the government in Kiev, at home with his cat, Simba. Mauricio Lima for The New York Times

“It’s a sticky and unpleasant feeling,” she said. “Like something could hit you in the head at any moment.”

Others have already left. Alyona Povoliaieva, a journalist and new mother, left with her infant son and husband for Moscow shortly after separatists took over the region in March. She supported the uprising in Kiev, but quickly became frightened at the response here.

Separatists, shouting slurs, set up camp near their ground-floor apartment, and she began to receive hate messages because she was a journalist. She and her husband, a computer programmer with a Russian firm, are now living with friends from Chechnya, an autonomous republic in Russia with its own sad history of violence.

“They told us, ‘Do you want to live in a city that’s going to war?’ ” said Ms. Povoliaieva, who is 27. “ ‘Your thoughts will be occupied with how to get water.’ They said it can happen so quickly, you won’t even notice.”

There are arguments within families. Vyacheslav, a 33-year-old construction worker who supported the government’s overthrow, said he had stopped talking to his father in Moscow, who opposed it. His father is Ukrainian but became a Russian citizen because Ukrainian workers earned only half as much.

“That’s Russian brotherhood for you,” said Vyacheslav, who would not give his last name, for fear of retaliation.He said it was no longer that difficult to imagine Russians and Ukrainians fighting.

“These are not the Russians I respect,” he said. “They are the armed ones. They are like wild animals. Their behavior and values are on that level.”

Roman Shapoval, a 38-year-old yoga instructor, said the aggression and emotion would fade as fast as they began, after the oligarchs and politicians he believes are behind the upheaval make deals.

“When they need the idea, they bring it out, dust it off, and use it,” he said of the East versus West talk. “I don’t see a serious danger of war here. There won’t be shootouts on the street.”

Mr. Pertsov likes to imagine that everyone will come to their senses soon, as if waking from a strange dream.

“It’s like we’re all drunk,” he said. “We’re going to get up tomorrow and say, ‘Oh, why did I say such terrible things?’ ”

He added: “We just can’t turn into alcoholics.”

Source: NY Times