DOKUCHAIEVSK, Ukraine — In this front-line town in eastern Ukraine, the cease-fire called more than three months ago seems to be only an insulting guise. Shelling rocks the area so often that dogs have learned to head for the basement at the first blast.
Everyone wants the shelling to stop, both the town’s civilians and the rebels who control it. That weariness points paradoxically toward new violence.
The rebels are itching for an end to the pretense and wish their leaders would give the order for a full-out assault.
“We’ve asked them for permission, but all they say is: ‘no, no, no,’ ” said one rebel sniper, who goes by the call sign Rzhavy.
The hollowness of the phony armistice was rudely exposed last week as a ferocious one-day battle erupted on the western edge of the main rebel stronghold, Donetsk. International appeals for calm and restraint duly followed.
Instead, the menacing sound of heavy-duty artillery is again being heard along the front.
Under the internationally brokered peace agreement, all firepower with a caliber over 100mm should have been pulled far back from the frontline. But international monitors say the heavy weapons may be getting brought back — recent trips to holding points for the big guns found weapons that had once been there to be gone.
At the intersection of a country lane leading out of Dokuchaievsk, about 12 miles south of Donetsk, separatist militiaman take turns on guard by an anti-tank rocket propped on concrete blocks.
Across the road stands an Orthodox crucifix pocked with bullet holes and the words “save and protect” written on a crossbeam. The roof of a dilapidated warehouse nearby bears signs of a shell strike.
“So they fire at us at the checkpoints. Fine, we’re fighters here,” said a bespectacled rebel militiaman, who adopted the nom de guerre Odessa in honor of his native city. “But there are civilians living near here. They just hurl stuff at them, too.”
One shell last week fell onto Yelena Ignatova’s roof, but spared her meticulously tended garden plot of tomatoes, peppers and cabbages. Residents like Ignatova pray desperately for peace, but have little faith that diplomacy is the way to achieve it.
“What did we need the peace agreement for?” she said. “Just to give the Ukrainian army the chance to reinforce here?”
The diplomatic path’s prospects appeared to further dim this month when the latest round of talks between rebels, Russia and Ukraine ended with no visible progress.
On Saturday, the talks’ moderator, Swiss diplomat Heidi Tagliavini, resigned.
And Dokuchaievsk is only one of multiple potential flashpoints.
