the times | Monday February 21 2022 11News
“We’ve been travelling all night and
we’re not going any further,” sighed the
young woman, stroking the head of her
six-month-old son. They were sitting in
a vast indoor sports hall in southwest
Russia that was providing temporary
accommodation for people fleeing
separatist-held areas of Ukraine. “But
we don’t want to stay here either.”
Yekaterina, 24, is among an estimat-
ed 30,000 people who have left Krem-
lin-backed breakaway republics in the
Donbas region of eastern Ukraine and
gone to Russia since Friday, when the
separatists insisted that an impending
attack by the Ukrainian army made it
too dangerous for women, children and
the elderly to stay.
Western countries fear that Russia is
preparing to launch a false-flag attack
that would let it claim an invasion of
Ukraine was justified. Ukraine has
denied it is planning to try to retake the
coal-mining Donbas region by force.
Russia said on Saturday that two shells
fired from a Ukrainian government-
controlled area landed on its territory, a
claim that Ukraine denied.
Yekaterina and her son, along with
her mother and her younger sister, fled
Debaltseve, a town in the separatist-
controlled Donetsk People’s Republic,
on Saturday, packing their possessions
into suitcases and plastic bags. They
travelled overnight on a bus provided
by the separatists before eventually
being taken to the sports centre in
Taganrog, a seaside town near the
Ukrainian border.
“The journey took 14 hours, when it
would usually take five at the most,”
Yekaterina said. “We parked up for
hours because it turned out there was
nowhere for us to go. They had assuredus that everything was organised but I
got the impression that they didn’t even
know we were coming. We slept in the
bus.”
The arena was filled with almost 350
fold-out beds covered with shabby
bedding and plastic disposable sheets.
A huge Russian flag hung on the wall.
Soon after they arrived, the evacuees
were told they were being put on trains
to take them to Nizhny Novgorod, a city
in central Russia that is 830 miles to the
north.
“We travelled all night on a bus to get
here and now they want us to travel
another 17 hours by train?” said Yekat-
erina as her mother used her phone to
try to find a flat to rent in Taganrog.
International monitors from the
Organisation for Security and Co-Donbas
regionApproximate
line separating
Ukrainian and
Russian-backed
forces LUHANSKDONETSKROSTOV
OBLASTSea of AzovUKRAINE50 milesRUSSIARostov-
on-DonTaganrogThe escalating tensions of war ignited a
brawl in a television studio in Kyiv dur-
ing a live current affairs programme
when a Ukrainian journalist slapped an
MP from a pro-Russian political party.
Video clips showing the two men
slap, scratch, punch and wrestle each
other have since gone viral.
Amid reports of a dramatic increase
in shelling by pro-Russian separatists in
the Donbas region, the atmosphere in
the studio began to curdle soon after a
special edition of the channel’s Wa r
Cabinet programme went live.
The MP Nestor Shufrych, 55, ap-
peared to try to contextualise the vio-
lence rather than condemn it. Asked by
a fellow panellist on the show if he
would describe President Putin as a
murderer or criminal, the MP replied
that the question was one for the
Ukrainian authorities.
Fresh back from reporting on the
front line in Donbas, the response was
the last straw for the journalist YuriyButusov, 44, who strode from his seat
on the panel to strike Shufrych in the
face. The MP rose and starting punch-
ing, and the two men then fell wrestling
to the floor for more than a minute as
panellists including the former
president Petro Poroshenko, a far-right
politician Andriy Biletsky and Yevhen
Murayev, the man recently accused by
Britain of being a Moscow stooge, grap-revives Cold War alliance
become closer in recent months,
declaring this year that their relation-
ship would be upgraded to one of “stra-
tegic partnership”. Russia has been a
prominent donor of humanitarian aid
to Cuba during the Covid pandemic
and Russian tourists have been among
the first to visit the island since it
loosened Covid restrictions.
Trade between Russia and Cuba is
weak at present, totalling only about
$100 million a year, a fraction of what it
was during Soviet rule, when Cuba
would exchange its cargo ships laden
with sugar for Russian oil. Cuba’s main
exports to Russia now are gold and
cigars.
During the Cold War, Cuba briefly
became the front line of a stand-off
between the world’s then two super-
powers, the United States and the
Soviet Union.
The 1962 Cuban missile crisis was
triggered by the stationing of Soviet
nuclear missiles on the Caribbean
island, which prompted the United
States to impose a naval blockade toprevent Moscow shipping in more. The
event, widely seen as the closest the
world has come to a nuclear war, was
defused when Nikita Khrushchev
agreed to remove the weapons in
return for a pledge by John F Kennedy
not to back a re-invasion of Cuba and
the discreet removal of US missiles
from Turkey.
Before his visit to Cuba, the Russian
deputy prime minister visited
Venezuela, where he received effusive
support from President Maduro, who
said that the two countries had made
plans for a “powerful military co-opera-
tion”, without giving any details.
Borisov also visited Nicaragua,
where he met President Ortega, its
hard-left-turned-pro-business leader,
who secured a fourth presidential term
last year after jailing most of his
significant opponents. After that
meeting, the Russian deputy prime
minister said that his country would
continue to offer its technological
and military co-operation with the
Nicaraguan army.TV opponents come to blows on air
pled to separate them. “I was just back
from Donbas. I’d seen people getting
ready for death tomorrow, or to fight for
their country, and beside me I had a
Ukrainian MP, receiving money from
our taxpayers, soldiers among them,
being so obnoxious and assuming the
right to lie outright and spout Russian
propaganda,” Butusov told The Times.
“It was unbearable. So I slapped him. It
seemed more a logical reaction than an
emotional one.”
Butusov, editor-in-chief of Cen-
sor.net, a Ukrainian news platform,
joined Ukraine’s Territorial Defence
Force a month ago in preparation to de-
fend his country against Russian attack.
Shufrych, who denied he had insinu-
ated that Ukrainian forces had pro-
voked the escalation in shelling in Don-
bas, claimed the nuance in his approach
to the crisis merely came from a desire
to avoid full-scale war. “Do we need
hype, or do we need to try to avoid trag-
edy?” he asked. “Butusov is escalating a
conflict he’s paid to cover! I’m an MP in-
terested in saving lives, not escalating.”Anthony Loyd KyivNestor Shufrych and Yuriy Butusov
came to blows during a live TV showNews
will stop ‘irrational’ Putin’s war
Families flee the conflict zone
... and step into the unknown
operation in Europe said over the week-
end there had been about 2,000 viola-
tions of a shaky 2015 ceasefire deal in
Donbas. The Red Cross said a surge in
the amount of shelling had disrupted
water supplies for more than a million
people in the disputed region.
Officials in the separatist territories
have said they could evacuate up to
700,000 people, about one quarter of
the total population. Some have
already been sent to Voronezh, a city
about 400 miles away. Others could
eventually be housed in Murmansk, a
city north of the Arctic circle, or in
Russia’s far east region.
Abbas Gallyamov, a Russian political
analyst, accused President Putin of
exploiting the evacuees for political
ends before a potential incursion into
Ukraine. “Crying babies are especially
good,” he said. The Kremlin has said
that every refugee will be paid 10,
roubles (£100), but many evacuees were
confused about how they were sup-
posed to get the money.
At the train station in Taganrog,
police officers ejected journalists who
tried to speak to the evacuees. Not all
the travellers appeared to have been
told where they were heading. “I’m not
going to Nizhny Novgorod,” shouted
one woman with a small child. Others
appeared to be in no state to make a
long journey. Two women who looked
to be in their eighties, one with a metal
walking frame, had to be helped to the
train by emergency services officers.
Near Avilo-Uspenka, a village close
to the Donetsk People’s Republic’s
border with Russia, lines of pensioners,
women and small children waited to be
put on buses. Many were also confused
about where they were going. About a
dozen inflatable tents had been set up
amid the flat Russian steppe to provide
temporary shelter.
“It’s frightening in Donetsk because
of all the shelling,” said Olga, a middle-
aged woman who was clutching a red
sports bag. “But I have no idea where
they are sending us. Wherever they tell
us, we’ll go. I just hope it’s not for too
long. We all want peace.”Thousands have left
separatist areas but now
they face an uncertain
future. Marc Bennetts
reports from Taganrog
Families have been taken to a shelter
in Taganrog but may have to move onEMILIO MORENATTI/AP