Photographs by Paolo Pellegrin/Magnum, for The New York Times The New York Times Magazine 35
A family from downstairs was cleaning, car-
rying out buckets of debris. Another neighbor
mopped the blood from the landing. A local offi -
cial interviewed Larisa and wrote a report. He
told her he had contacted the Red Cross, which
would bring medicine. Getting help fi xing the
apartment was another matter. If it was deter-
mined that she qualifi ed for state assistance, he
told her, ‘‘the government may take ownership
of the apartment.’’
She told him the government already owned
the apartment, technically. In the Soviet Union,
citizens were given state-owned apartments. Her
mother originally got this one. When Ukraine
became independent, the new government
encouraged people to take ownership of their
homes. Larisa had never gotten around to it.
She looked back on those days before inde-
pendence with longing, she told me. Moscow
had taken care of people. You had to work hard,
of course, but in return the state gave you housing,
food, medical care, schooling. On its own, Ukraine
had been a disaster. Like just about everyone she
knew in Krasnohorivka, Larisa was an admirer of
Viktor Yanukovych. She had opposed Euromaidan,
just as many in Donbas had. They had also opposed
the mass demonstrations, known as the Orange
Revolution, that arose in 2004, when Yanukovych
fi rst stood for the presidency and lost. When I asked
her when things started to go wrong, a neighbor of
Larisa’s who was keeping her company interjected:
‘‘When Gorbachev started Perestroika.’’
The neighbor hinted that she suspected the
rocket may not have come from the D.P.R. at all
but was, in fact, Ukrainian. That’s what people
were saying on Russian social media.
Outside, her neighbors were of the same opin-
ion and less demure about it. A local news crew
had arrived and was fi lming a Ukrainian soldier
who had salvaged the bent fi n of the rocket. He
held it up for the camera. The reporter directed
him to walk away and then walk back toward the
camera dramatically. Watching this, the neigh-
bors grew indignant.
‘‘Donetsk has never shot at us, ever!’’ a woman
yelled at the soldiers. ‘‘They haven’t fi red for
two years!’’
‘‘Look at them, taking pictures of themselves,’’
an older, gnomish woman said. Between the
thick lenses in her glasses, which made her eyes
immense, and her small size, she had a prophetic
air about her. She confi rmed her friend in slow,
enigmatic phrases. ‘‘What is there to take pictures
of? A person will be saved, or he won’t be.’’‘‘Good for them,’’ the fi rst woman said. ‘‘How
many people can they kill? The bitches. Go shoot
your parents. And they congratulate us on our
liberation. Liberation from what? From gas? From
light? Water? From everything. From normal life.’’
‘‘From civilization,’’ a man added.
‘‘And they say it’s the D.P.R., always the D.P.R.,’’
she said. ‘‘We hear who’s shooting. We know how
much you’re shooting!’’
‘‘We’re not deaf,’’ the older woman said.
‘‘They mock us,’’ the fi rst woman said. She
insisted she knew where the off ending rocket had
come from — a Ukrainian tank near her building.
She had seen it, parked there plain as day. There
had also been a personnel carrier, she said. It ran
over tomatoes she had planted with her grand-
mother. She would have fi led a complaint about
the tomatoes, but she didn’t want to be jailed.
‘‘Ruins, our city,’’ she said. ‘‘We used to live
beautifully and wonderfully. There were shops,
there was everything.’’
‘‘When we became Ukraine,’’ the older woman
said, ‘‘that was the goddamned end.’’Donbas was once a refuge for ethnic Ukraini-
ans, Russians and others who wanted to escape
the reach of the Russian Empire. ‘‘Ukraine’’ is