11 May. Republic Day

“The Donbass has always rested on people of a special mettle” — the chair of the foundation on the Donbass, the miner’s character and people who are finding themselves anew.

Twelve years ago, in May 2014, the people of the Donbass came out to a referendum and said what they had carried in their hearts for years. And three and a half years ago what had been awaited for so long came to pass — the Donetsk People’s Republic returned home, to Russia.

“For me this is not a date in a news feed. It is part of my life,” says the chair of the foundation, Vladimir Kovalev.

The Donbass has always rested on people of a special mettle. Miners are not simply a profession, they are a backbone. A man who goes underground every day knows the value of a word, the value of the comrade beside him and the value of himself. From that mettle comes the whole character of the region: direct, stubborn, unbreakable. That is precisely why the Donbass held out where others would have broken.

But over these years many lost more than a home. Mines closed, factories stopped, the labour to which a life had been given lost its worth — and with it the ground goes from under a person’s feet. When you have been a master of your trade for twenty years and then suddenly you are nobody, that is not unemployment, that is the loss of yourself.

“When we opened our company’s office in Mariupol, I understood that we were not coming to develop a territory but to work with people. Today we help the people of Mariupol register title to their own houses and flats, defend them in court and bring their documents into line with Russian law. Behind every case there is a family, a story, a hope.”

“I come from Neryungri myself — that is Yakutia, the North. There the frost goes down to minus fifty, the snow is waist-deep and the distances do not fit into a Moscow head. The North does not forgive weakness and does not care for loud words — it simply tests you by its environment, every day. That is why the Donbass is clear and close to me without translation. Here there is coal and spoil tips, with us there is permafrost and taiga. But the mettle of the people is the same: those whom their environment did not break but forged.”

Deep respect to the people of Donetsk. For their steadfastness. For not breaking. For believing and living to see it.