December 14, 2018

Activist fights for freedom of Donbas through research, media campaigns

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Courtesy of Dmytro Tkachenko

Dmytro Tkachenko, co-founder the Committee of Patriotic Forces of Donbas, at a pro-Ukrainian rally in Donetsk on March 4, 2014.

Produces short documentaries on pro-Ukrainian Donbas activists

Courtesy of Dmytro Tkachenko

Dmytro Tkachenko, co-founder the Committee of Patriotic Forces of Donbas, at a pro-Ukrainian rally in Donetsk on March 4, 2014.

KYIV – On May 4, 2014, Dmytro Tkachenko left his hometown of Donetsk for a one-day trip to Kyiv.

He took his laptop computer and no change of clothing. 

It was a typical business trip. One that he often took on express trains that link the two cities. This time, he came to present survey findings of overwhelming pro-Ukrainian sentiment in the Donbas. 

It was just days before Russian-led proxies in the occupied parts of Luhansk and Donetsk regions were to hold sham referendums for autonomy at the point of gun barrels. Moscow was trying to use the same scenario that played out during the annexation of Crimea two months earlier when a similar vote was held.

After the news conference, Mr. Tkachenko, 36, unexpectedly received a phone call from an officer of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) who he says told him that “people were looking for me at checkpoints in the Donbas,” and warned him that his life would be in danger if he returned. 

Just like that, Mr. Tkachenko became an internally displaced person (IDP) whose numbers have now swelled to beyond 1.6 million due to Russian aggression on Ukrainian territory.

It happened when the Russia-instigated Donbas war was heating up, and with dozens of cities and towns lost to Moscow’s control. 

Donbas Think Tank

A screenshot of an upcoming short documentary film that features Leonid Krasnopolskyi and other volunteers from the Donbas who devoted resources to Ukrainian volunteer battalions and army units.

“We lost Donetsk,” he told The Ukrainian Weekly on December 11, recalling events that started in March 2014 and explaining why the larger pro-Ukrainian segment of the population couldn’t hold on to the city. “But we were unarmed and law enforcement – 80 percent of the police and 60 percent of the SBU were traitors – didn’t protect us.”

Mr. Tkachenko, executive director of the Donbas Think Tank that he co-founded two years ago to research his home region and devise informational and reintegration strategies, was recounting the fateful events of nearly five years ago.

Starting in March 2014, Moscow sent busloads of Russians across Ukraine’s border to join local pro-Kremlin activists from Kharkiv to Odesa to launch a covert invasion in the guise of a “separatist” uprising. Government and law enforcement buildings were taken over, rallies were held and violence ensued.

Mr. Tkachenko called it the “Novo-rossiya” (new Russia) project, in reference to a term that Russian President Vladimir Putin started to publicly use during that time. Local journalists labeled it the “Russian Spring,” but Mr. Putin mostly failed, having achieved negligible success by seizing a portion of easternmost Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts. 

“We knew the Russians started the whole thing already in March 2014, it was a special operation,” Mr. Tkachenko said. “We in Donetsk never saw anything like it before. We noticed a Russian presence. We saw people dressed not like Donbas people dress. They had cheaper-looking… clothing. They spoke differently in Russian. They were from the poor coal mining towns in Rostov Oblast in Russia. We’d never seen so many Russian flags at previous rallies.”

As the Donetsk Oblast Administration building switched hands to and from the pro-Russian contingent, Mr. Tkachenko started organizing rallies for Ukrainian unity with the Committee of Patriotic Forces of the Donbas that he co-founded. 

Three took place in March of that year. First blood was drawn during the last one on March 13, 2014, when Dmytro Chernyavskyi, then a press secretary for the local branch of the Svoboda party, was killed by a pro-Russian mob after the demonstration. 

Donbas Think Tank

A screenshot of an upcoming short documentary film about Donbas residents who joined armed volunteer battalions at the outset of the Donbas war in 2014. Pictured is Army Command Sgt. Maj. Ruslan Pustovoit of Mariupol, a decorated reconnaissance scout who initially, as a Right Sector volunteer, led a combat mission near the Azov Sea coastal town of Mariupol that led to the capture of eight Russian soldiers and the killing of three more on June 27, 2016.

“He was the first victim of the Donbas war,” Mr. Tkachenko said. “It was a huge blow to the pro-Ukrainian movement in the Donetsk region. It showed that if we can’t defend ourselves, then they’re stronger and we’re weak. Their [Russia’s] goal was to cause chaos. It was an act of terrorism.” 

Two more pro-Ukrainian rallies were held a month later, the last one on April 28, “which was crushed” by the Russian side, he said. 

For two months, the local political and business elite “were playing both sides, to frighten Kyiv and retain control of the Donbas as their personal fiefdom and Russia… but Moscow outsmarted them,” Mr. Tkachenko said.

By then, armed paramilitary groups from Russia, in concert with collaborators, had already taken over dozens of cities in the region as volunteer battalions were still forming and the military was slow to marshal a counteroffensive. 

Meanwhile, Mr. Tkachenko started assisting foreign journalists during the early stages of the war. They included correspondents for Al Jazeera, The New York Times, BuzzFeed, NBC and Swedish media outlets. 

Given his visible profile in Donetsk and the numerous television appearances he was making, this job also became perilous. 

He was recognized while accompanying a reporter inside the occupied oblast government building. “I was merely kicked out with a stern warning,” Mr. Tkachenko said. 

He then was detained for an hour inside the main police station of Sloviansk while assisting a Swedish correspondent. The Donetsk Oblast town was already under the control of Igor Girkin, a former colonel in Russia’s Federal Security Service. 

An outdated phone saved Mr. Tkachenko. 

“They quizzed me on the names of Donetsk streets, they checked my fingers for gunpowder residue to make sure I wasn’t a sniper,” he said. “Thank goodness they couldn’t see my Facebook page, because if they had, I would be dead.”

After fleeing Sloviansk once Kyiv liberated the city, Mr. Girkin came to Donetsk with his men in July 2014 when Russia “finalized its grip on the city conclusively… he was in charge, nobody else,” Mr. Tkachenko said. 

Miraculously, an inter-confessional prayer tent with a Ukrainian flag atop it, stood in the city center until August of that year. 

By that time, Mr. Tkachenko was in liberated Kramatorsk, thinking what to do next. He worked on Oleh Lyashko’s Radical Party campaign during the October 2014 parliamentary elections. 

A month later, he moved to Kyiv, where he set up operations. 

“I knew this would be a long-term conflict from the outset, so that’s how I think strategically and when planning,” Mr. Tkachenko said. 

Media campaigns were launched directed at his home region to let the people in the occupied territory know they weren’t forgotten. Informational video clips were distributed on YouTube channels, Facebook and Vkontakte, Russia’s most popular social networking service. Other actions weren’t so conventional. His group flew drones above the Donbas to drop leaflets and stickers reminding residents of a united Ukraine, for example. 

His think tank conducted surveys to study identity perceptions and attitudes in the region. A policy paper on the state of the informational space in the Donbas was drafted. The Cabinet of Ministers based its informational campaign for reintegrating the Donbas, approved on July 26 of this year, on the group’s recommendations. 

The think tank also produced a series of short documentary films, averaging 15 minutes in length, that profiled pro-Ukrainian activists in the Donbas. 

“To keep the memory alive of those who advocated for a Ukrainian Donbas,” Mr. Tkachenko said, a new series was produced this year. It focuses on civic, religious and cultural leaders, as well as war cause volunteers, partisans, and volunteer battalion members who hail from the region. 

Titled, “Heroes of Ukrainian Donbas,” it will be screened in Kyiv’s Zhovten movie theater on December 20 with English subtitles. In January, the short documentaries will air on Ukrainian television and a social media marketing campaign will promote the films in the occupied territory. (The teaser for the film series can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/thinktankdonbas/videos/216236602600174/.

Also an adviser to the minister of information policy, Mr. Tkachenko said he has an invitation to present the films at next year’s Edmonton International Film Festival. 

When asked if he believes Ukraine will regain control of the occupied part of Donbas, he said: “Of course I do, otherwise I wouldn’t be doing what I do.”

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