Ukraine, the last frontier to the east

At 5 local time on 24 February, the Armed Forces of Russia crossed the borders with Ukraine going to strengthen the separatist people's republics of Luhans'k and Donetsk in the Donbass region which were recognized by Moscow on February 21 last. With the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, President Putin began the conquest of the territories claimed by Russia. The penetration into the Ukrainian borders was preceded by bombings against the air bases and ground-to-air systems of Kiev.

The war in Donbass is a story that begins eight years ago. In February 2014, President Yanukovych, backed by the Russian government, was forced to flee to Russia after the riots in Kiev's Maidan Square. In April of the same year, the Russian-speaking enclave of Donetsk and Lugansk, supported by Russia, proclaimed themselves independent, following in the footsteps of Crimea and thus starting the Donbass War.
A conflict fought house by house, in the shelters made in the basements, in the shelters besieged by artillery, mud and frost. A dripping of deaths that did not spare even civilians, on both sides.
For eight long years it was a silent and unknown war that was slowly taking place in the center of Europe far from the spotlight of the media where more than ten thousand people died with two million internally displaced people. Today the conflict has spread and is no longer just limited to the Donbass. Europe wakes up after a long pandemic, with a war at home and five hundred thousand refugees pressing on the borders of Poland and Romania, with bombs falling in bunches on the capital Kiev and on other Ukrainian cities from Karkiv to Mariupol without sparing civilians.

In the geopolitical chessboard one can only assume that this move of invasion to a sovereign state is a plan by the Kremlin to demilitarize Ukraine (which became a buffer state too close to Europe after joining the 1998 Atlantic Pact (NATO) of all those countries of the former Soviet Union that are bordering on "Greater Russia"); the other goal is to dismiss the current President Zelensky by all means by establishing a "friendly" government, and annexing the city of Mariupol, an obligatory corridor for troops and goods from Moscow to Crimea, already self-proclaimed independent in 2014, in addition to the other two pro-Russian republics of Donetsk and Lugansk. What will happen in the future of Ukraine at the diplomatic negotiating table has not yet been written on this new page of history, but peace can only be achieved by stopping shooting.

Photos and texts by Paolo Siccardi
The pictures in Ukraine of this service were taken in 2014
NP March 2022

Zaitsevo village in the Zero Point of the Buffer Zone, chaplain of the Ukrainian army
 

Ukraine, Donbass, on the highway MO3 which connects the city of MYRONIVS'KYI front line with Debaltseve in the hands of the Donbass separatists
 

On the MO3 highway connecting the city of Myronivs'kyi front line with Debaltseve in the hands of the Donbass separatists
 

Ukraine, 128th Volunteer Brigade of the Ukrainian army on the front line on the Debaltseve front in Donbass
 

Ukraine, Zaitsevo village in the Zero Point of the Buffer-zone
 

The Ukrainian community demonstrates in Italian squares after the invasion of February 24, 2022
 

Zenit front in the Donbass
 

Ukraine, Donbass, on the MO3 state road connecting the city of Myronivs'kyi front line with Debaltseve in the hands of the Donbass separatists. Volunteers enlisted in the National Guard of the Ukrainian army
 

Some religious images in the trenches on the Marinka front-line
 

Checkpoint at the Marinka corridor for the DNR
 

Ukraine, Donbass, on the MO3 state road connecting the city of Myronivs'kyi front line with Debaltseve in the hands of the Donbass separatists. Volunteers enlisted in the National Guard of the Ukrainian army
 

Ukraine, remembrance of the martyrs who died from the Maidan revolution in St. Michael's Square in Kiev