Pro-Russian forces in Lysychansk, in the Luhansk Oblast, staged a “shakedown” in the Lysychansk school #8 when several armed men came looking for the Ukrainian language teacher Antonina Havrylyuk.
Havrylyuk had been warned of possible kidnapping, and was not in the school at the time. Havrylyuk has been highly valued by the parents of her students. The class where she teaches has been renovated by the parents and is one of the best in the school. She is an active supporter of a united Ukraine.
From Valentyn Maltsev:
Russian-speaking Dnipropetrovsk has always been impartial in its opinion on the rest of Ukraine. None of the local politicians sparked anti-Ukrainian hysteria, but there has been no uprise of Ukrainian patriotism here either. Back in February thousands of Dnipropetrovsk citizens, akin to those in Donetsk and Kharkiv, gathered for Anti-Maidans.
Yet everyone who has been to Dnipropetrovsk recently, has the impression that the city has “fallen in love” with Ukraine. The people are walking the streets with bunches of blue and yellow balloons, painting mirrors and hoods of their cars with the colours of the national flag. At least one out of four cars in the city has a Ukrainian flag both outside and inside. A new emergence in Ukraine was born here – the autovyshyvanka. They are stickers with the Ukrainian national ornament which are pasted onto the middle of the hood, roof and front of the car.
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| Tram in Dnipropetrovsk |
It is notable that this wave of patriotism did not make Dnipropetrovsk citizens Ukrainian-speaking. Ukrainian language is still rare here, like before. The locals see no ideological conflict in this. “I speak Russian, but I am a Ukrainian. To be Ukrainian means to feel the integrity of the country from Lviv to Donbas, and not speak Ukrainian. Ukrainians are different, but we love our country equally for the same things – for our freedom, which Yanukovich and then Putin tried to take away, for our humility and for our ability to love,” 37-year-old businessman Maxim explains his position poetically to “Rosbalt” correspondent.
However the Ukrainian fashion here started with the government – in the first days after Kolomoyskiy’s appointment, hundreds of trams and buses in the city were pained blue-and-yellow – but it was caught by the citizens as well, who bought paint themselves to colour the sidewalk and concrete plates on crossroads and the riverside.
They say that for the most part this is happening because the people started “supporting peace” after hearing about all the horrors of war from the refugees and the wounded. “They had a lot of complaints about Kyiv and Maidan. But peace is the most important thing. We don’t want there to be shootings near our homes,” concluded 42-year-old plumber Sergey.
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