An Interview with Irina Sibagatova
Sloviansk [Russian: Slaviansk], a city with more than 100,000 residents, lies in the part of Donetsk Region currently under Ukrainian government control. However, the front line of the ongoing military conflict is only 50 miles away. Visiting the city in late 2018, the editor of the East-West Church Report was shown a center for displaced people set up by a large local Pentecostal congregation, Good News Church. [For an interview with Pastor Petr Dudnik about how this church fared during several months in 2014 when Sloviansk was controlled by separatist forces, see the East-West Church Report, vol. 27, no. 2 (2019), 6-11.] At Good News’ Center for Displaced People, its director Dmitry Nazarenko—another of the church’s pastors—described how the building had previously housed the church’s rehabilitation center for people with drug and/or alcohol addictions. When fighting reached Sloviansk, the building was evacuated. Once the congregation was able to resume its previous activity, its members renovated the building as a refuge for up to 70 displaced people and reopened it in January 2015. One such person displaced by the conflict, Irina Sibagatova is now administrator of the Center. An Evangelical originally from Makiivka [Russian: Makeyevka], a town near Donetsk city, she briefly described to the editor her experience fleeing hostilities. The original conversation took place in Russian.
How did you come to be here?
We left after the war began in 2014. To begin with we thought our situation might be like Slaviansk, which was occupied [by separatists] for two months but then liberated. So at first we stayed where we were. But the children were due to go back to school on 1st September, and there was still shooting and bombing in August. I brought them away so they could go to school. We left still expecting to return home in a few months—but it went on and on and on, so we stayed here. I will not return for the time being—there are no prospects there, as it [the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic] is not recognized, and it is not safe. But it is safe here.
Volunteers helped us. First we were taken to Kurakovka [Ukrainian: Kurakhivka] and then volunteers from Dobropole [Ukrainian: Dobropillia] met us and took us by car to Sviatogorsk [Ukrainian: Sviatohirsk], where Good News had a camp for refugees. We stayed there for five days.
One of the volunteers there was Sergei Kosyak, a pastor from Donetsk who had been held captive [by the separatists]. After he was freed, he opened up a camp for displaced people at Beriozka, a children’s summer camp near Lyman [another settlement in Donetsk Region under Ukrainian government control]. There were 70 of us there—mostly mothers with children. We stayed there in the woods for three months. Then this center for displaced people opened up here, and we were invited to come to help organize it. We began to receive people who had been evacuated from Debaltseve and Donetsk city.
Apart from shelter, what kind of needs did you have when you left?
When we lived in the woods it was complicated, as everyone only had their summer things—people left thinking it would be just for a couple of months. We did receive medicine, and doctors visited us—mostly volunteers took care of us, not the state. We left in August and the [Ukrainian] state only started to register displaced people and issue support payments in October. We parents sent our children to school and didn’t know what to do next. As the situation dragged on, we began to understand that we needed to find work. Now, those in Ukraine [i.e. people who have fled the separatist-controlled areas] mostly live like locals.
Before the war, how did you relate to the fact that you are a citizen of Ukraine?
I just lived without thinking about it before the war. Then I saw everything change before my eyes. At first they turned off the Ukrainian TV channels. Then they introduced [separatist] militia channels. They began to broadcast many Soviet films from the Second World War and patriotic Soviet war songs like, “Arise, great country! Arise for a fight to the death!” [Russian: “Vstavai strana ogromnoe!”] [Editor’s note: Accompanied by this song, a short montage of Second World War and recent footage produced by the Ministry of Information of the Donetsk People’s Republic may be viewed at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=63sAVcf2klc.] They put up banners in the streets saying, “We will defend this land from the fascists.” This was clearly propaganda—everyone had been living in Ukraine and no one had ever seen these “fascists” face to face. But this information had a very powerful effect upon people’s consciousness.
Does that depend upon a person’s age?
No, it depends upon whether you watch the TV or not. It affects even people with higher education. Once I had come here to Slaviansk, a neighbor—a schoolteacher—telephoned me: “Ira, is it really true that everything is okay where you are? Is it really safe?” I said, “Don’t be silly, it is ordinary Ukraine here, just as it used to be in Makiivka. There aren’t any fascists.”
Why do you think you resisted this propaganda when you encountered it?
I just couldn’t watch it. Perhaps because I was also reading the Bible. Then you draw parallels; you understand the technology of how it is all done.
Do you mean that you were in the habit of comparing things?
Of thinking critically, probably. I am not sure, because I knew one very educated woman there, an Orthodox believer, who believed everything—that there were fascists here. Some people take it in, and it shapes their worldview. Some local people there support the [separatist] authorities. Others have not left because they have homes and jobs there, or because their mother is sick, for example. Also, it is frightening to move to a place you do not know. Not everyone is in enough despair to enter a void.
What happened to your congregation near Donetsk?
Divisions began due to the war. We had some people who even went to demonstrations calling upon people to join the [separatist] militia. Several people wrote regular reports to the MGB [separatist secret police, analogous to the Soviet KGB] about everything going on inside the church. The situation became very complicated. You didn’t know who was on whose side. When it all began, our pastor was arrested and told to leave if he wanted to live. He and his family were able to leave, but he cannot travel back there now.
Does your former church have its own building?
Yes. It functions; people meet; it passed re-registration. In Donetsk Region the situation for churches is not like it is in Luhansk. There, it is like walking through a minefield. But the question is, will this last or not? Everything there is unstable and unclear. On the outside everything looks the same, but inside it feels as if you are under a kind of dome. When you are there, you breathe in, brace yourself, and await the moment you leave. When you come out, you breathe a sigh of relief.
