The book is dedicated to breaking the war-related myths created by Russian propaganda with the aim to split Ukrainian society. The collection analyses and refutes misconceptions about Donbas residents and the outbreak of war in 2014, the reasons why people agree to obtain Russian passports, stay under the occupation and the realities there, as well as about captivity and the problems of civilian prisoners of war. The book also touches upon the issue of compensation for the victims by the Ukrainian state.

“Russian propaganda was used not only to convince international institutions that we have a civil conflict. It was also trying to make Ukrainians think that the share of pro-Russian people in the east was critical and that they initiated the split of the country on their own, without Russia’s interference. This was done in order to whittle down our defences, so that we do not realise the full extent of the Russian threat,” said Nadiia Nesterenko, an analyst at the “Eastern Ukrainian Center for Civic Initiative” and co-editor of the book, at the beginning of the event.

During the presentation, the authors spoke about several chapters of the book and urged to read it in full. In particular, they discussed the issues of pro-Russian and pro-Ukrainian rallies in the East in 2014, the so-called “referendum”, the reasons why people stay in the occupied territories, the ideological attitude of people living in the occupied territories, and the phenomenon of “pension tourism”. 

“In 2014, so-called “referendums” were held in Donetsk oblast. In the autumn of 2022, the so-called “referendum” was held in Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts. There is a separate category of people who voluntarily went to vote to separate these territories from Ukraine. But the main idea of the so-called “referendum” was that people with “ballot boxes” were accompanied by people with weapons. They walked around the settlements, approached houses and invited people to come out and vote. Do you understand what it looks like when a person with a machine gun offers to go out and vote?” asked Andrii Moskalenko, co-author of the book and representative of the NGO “Public Committee for Protection of Citizen’s Constitutional Rights and Freedoms”.

The co-author of the book, Yulia Chystiakova, spoke about the passportization in the occupied territories, which had several stages. She noted that the pressure of Russian passportization continues and restrictions are being imposed on the ability to dispose of property, including agricultural land. Without occupation passports, children are not allowed to go to school, medical care is not provided, and access to administrative and social services is restricted.

An active discussion demonstrated that despite the fact that the issue of “pension tourism” has become irrelevant since 2022 due to the closure of the checkpoints, it is still a surprisingly critical problem, as is the issue of attitudes towards Ukrainians who stay in the occupied territories.

The discussion showed various examples of why people stay in the occupied territories, including expensive rent in the government-controlled areas, sick relatives who are unable to travel, places close to their hearts, and support for the Armed Forces of Ukraine.

“There is a lady who was the head of an NGO in Starobilsk. She stayed under the occupation for some time because she had a mission: she counted tanks, armoured personnel carriers, places where the military was concentrated, and passed these data to our guys,” one participant shared her admiration for that woman.

“I have no right to judge those who stayed there. I have no right to deprive them of their pensions. But everyone who relocated left their property there. More than 6 million people who are in Ukraine and a huge number who went abroad were brave enough.
They are not beggars. They left the graves of their closed ones. Because they could not accept the paradigm of living with the Russians,” indignantly said another woman who was forced to leave Berdiansk several years ago because of the occupation.

It was not easy to find common ground, as these are fresh and painful wounds for many.

At the same time, one of the presentation participants concluded that it was very important to publish such books during the full-scale invasion and to hold such discussions.

“In my opinion, many of the problems and realities in which we all find ourselves are related to the fact that we have not talked to each other for many years. The West did not know about the East, the East did not know about the West. Needless to say, it was only in 2018 that the Uzhhorod–Lysychansk train appeared, and it took me 26 hours to travel by it. And this is also about that destroyed communication between the regions, which played a very important role in those situations, i.e. those incidents of misunderstanding that we are all still facing,” she said.

The book is available for free download here.

This book was prepared as part of the project “Strengthening Civil Society to Transform the Culture of Remembrance: Nonviolent Efforts to Counter Russia’s War Against Ukraine” by the “Eastern Ukrainian Center for Public Initiatives”, the NGO “Public Committee for Protection of Citizen’s Constitutional Rights and Freedoms”, the “Moloda Prosvita Prykarpattia” NGO, and the Crisis Media Center “Seversky Donets”, with the support of Kurve Wustrow — Centre for Training and Networking in Nonviolent Action as part of the Civil Peace Service (CPS) programme.