In the messages that I receive via an official government chat, I read that in Vasylivka, Zaporizhia region, a collaborator has been appointed to replace the incumbent mayor. Not the first and definitely not the last case of collaboration, but because Wassylivka is the home of my friend O. and her family, I ask her if that’s true. “Yes,” O. writes back, “I cried all day yesterday. The place is blocked, no one is allowed out, no one in. All employees of the city administration have resigned. It’s horrible.” She sends me the link to the mayor’s farewell post, but I can’t access it anymore. “And then the speech of the new ‘mayor’. Everyone is shocked. A local who used to support the mayor. I can’t believe it. A traitor from our own ranks. Our children went to kindergarten together.”
I ask if the woman could have been forced to do it. “I don’t think so,” writes O. “It doesn’t look like it. Why her of all people?” O. sends me a video of the “inaugural speech”. A woman in her thirties. “I address the citizens of the city of Vasilyevka. In view of the serious humanitarian situation and the refusal of the acting city administration to cooperate with the military administration, I, Natalia Reznichenko, assume the duties of the mayor’s office. After the 2014 coup d’état, the Kiev regime in Donbass unleashed a bloody battle. I am sure that together with the fraternal Russian people we will be able to build a peaceful life. Social benefits will soon be paid in our city, aid supplies and medicines will continue to be delivered and everything else that is necessary for the normal functioning of the city “Dear residents: I love our city just like you. That’s why it’s our duty to maintain order here. The Ukrainian army is shelling Vasilyevka to prevent peaceful life here. I beg you, the military administration of our city support so that the situation in us city stabilized as soon as possible. I have set up a contact point where everyone can turn to with their problems or apply for help if they have been injured as a result of the shelling by the Ukrainian army.”
It’s unbearable to watch something like this from afar. How might it feel for a person who calls the place home?
Since I don’t know the woman, but I do know the rhetoric, I’m not as shocked as O. However, I can empathize by imagining what it would be like if someone from my circle of acquaintances suddenly appeared in a similar role. The lady’s speech seems learned by heart or read aloud. “It sounds a lot like a metodichka,” I write. “Metoditschka” in this case is the name for the texts or speeches prepared by propagandistic “text writers”. You know all that from the Soviet era.
“100% correct,” writes O. back, “The new ‘mayor’ of Berdyansk spoke the identical text, word for word, only the place name was different. I know the woman personally. We weren’t friends, we just said hello. Her son was a little film star, everyone knew him. The city administration and the mayor personally also supported him, bought costumes, paid competition fees. She invested a lot in her son herself, but he was also given a lot of support by the city. Maybe it wasn’t enough for her. Anyway, it always seemed like she was after money and power.”
O. also sends me a video showing the flag-changing taking place over the City Hall building: the Ukrainian flag is lowered, then the Russian one is raised. Watching something like this from a distance and on video is unbearable enough. How might it feel for a person who calls the place home? And feels as connected to him as O.? It is true that I live in a city that has experienced this process six times in the 20th century, and if you add in the three occupations by Russian troops during the First World War, then even more. However, in contemporary Europe it was hoped that such a thing would be over forever.
Not even close. In a geographically partly European country, phantom pains on the one hand and neo-imperialist ideas continued to be nurtured. O. writes that she believes everything will be over quickly. That’s what I wish for her as much as I do. I can’t console her. I can only give her some chocolate easter eggs and a chocolate bunny for her son the next day. Although Easter is over, hopefully he will be happy. Later O. actually writes that he “laughed and danced”, they have not seen such sweets before. At least a little joy for the parents. I can’t suppress one thought: that the little movie star, the son of the new “mayoress”, doesn’t have to miss his toys and Lego like O.
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