“Here was a collaborator”: this village in eastern Ukraine is destroyed after its liberation

On September 19, Yarova returned to the control of Ukrainian forces. This Donbass village was previously occupied by the invader. But this launch did not bring peace to the streets of this town near Donetsk, nor to the minds of the people.

Ukrainian patriots point to those among the inhabitants who have adhered to the Russian cause. Thus, on the occasion of a report broadcast this Sunday by BFMTV, Mykola, a retiree from Yarova, guided our cameras towards the houses of these alleged collaborators.

Two irreconcilable stories

At the wheel, he begins: “In that house there was a ‘collaborator’.” “We should send them all to Russia,” he complains. Then he stops in front of a second gate: “We are in front of the house of the collaborating priest who is detained by Intelligence for having collaborated and organized false elections.”

A woman arrives with diametrically opposed views. A dialogue then begins between her and Mykola. A dialogue, or rather a fracture between two stories that seem irreconcilable.

Yes, they arrested him but I like it, me”, she says first. “He mainly helped the Russians to conquer the Ukraine,” Mykola retorts. “I, I didn’t ask anyone,” she throws at him later. “So you don’t want Ukraine here, do you?” the retiree shouts.

“Only God can forgive”

The fracture sometimes cuts old links that run the length of the artery itself. Especially since the people have lived for eight years in the shadow of the so-called “Donetsk People’s Republic”, that secessionist region that Russia has just annexed to its Federation.

Thus, while Mykola and his wife, Rubov, lost their son in the war, who fell dressed in Ukrainian uniforms, their neighbors chose to fight with the pro-Russians, starting in 2014.

“I told my neighbor: ‘I don’t want to stay by your side, your son joined the separatists in 2014. He’s a bastard.’ He answered me: ‘Don’t call him because I told him: ‘My son’. he died to defend his country, yours is a bastard,'” Mykola recalls.

For Rubov it is not about forgiving either: “No, only God can forgive. I pray to God that they pay for my tears, my pain.” The couple also affirms this: if the collaborators are not convicted, continuing their existence with complete impunity in the village, they will leave Yarova.