It's exam time. Both my students have blackouts, then I. We catch moments when we can connect. If you look at it from the outside, the situation is absurd: there's a dirty dog sitting in a bunker, doing harm to millions of people, confident he's the most important person in the world. For some reason, in books and films, villains are much more interesting than positive characters. Perhaps the artist simply has more opportunities to put his talent into the complex and controversial image of the villain. Only here in life the real villains are primitive to disgrace. Yesterday, such a villain was going to defeat NATO, threatened with a nuclear war, and today he is playing dirty tricks in impotent rage. What a petty nature! He is not even worthy of a feeling of disgust, those who believe him are disgusting.
Suddenly the lights flickered and then went out, which means that it was not just a planned shutdown, but an accident, and it could be for a long time. It's nighttime, and the only thing left to do is to meditate. When it's dark, damp and cold outside, and you find yourself locked in the darkness of home, you discover the simple truth that you can't wait for the future, for example, like when they finally give you the light, otherwise reality will become unbearable. You can just feel alive in the present moment, whatever it may be, without waiting for anything. It's hard to do, because when you're sitting in total darkness, you can't help but wait for the light to come on, and your thoughts tend to drift off somewhere else. However, true freedom is only possible when you build such a self-sufficient state within yourself regardless of external circumstances. Because life is the present moment, and the constant preoccupation with waiting for something is the denial of the real for the sake of something that does not yet exist. It is this denial that makes life unbearable.
Still, our conditions are still tolerable, we have gas, water, electricity is regularly restored. I know from those who are under occupation that in other cities it is much harder. For instance, in the occupied Lisichansk there is no electricity or water at all, although the gas supply has been restored - it is necessary for the occupiers themselves, who have settled in other people's apartments. Only elderly people remained in the city, who were afraid to go into the unknown. The occupiers announced that they would confiscate any apartments if their owners did not present themselves with property documents within a short period of time. At the same time, it is difficult to get into Lisichansk even from the direction of Luhansk, from time to time it is completely closed for entry and exit. However, the soldiers do not even comply with these formalities - they can break into any apartment, not paying attention to the owner. Some apartments were broken into several times.
If you drive away from the frontline deep into the occupied territory, somewhere beyond Donetsk and Luhansk, it is quiet there, and the locals have no idea what the shelling looks like. The locals are mostly women, as the men are either already mobilized or hiding, afraid to go out. Unless in case of an extreme necessity early in the morning or late at night, as they can be stopped and sent to the front at any time. And it’s dangerous for women to walk around, especially for girls - there are drunken soldiers who can make sexual advances. This distinguishes the cities on the other side of the front from our frontline cities. In the summer, when the front was only ten kilometers away, there were also a lot of military men in Slavyansk, but you feel safe around them. At no time did I see drunken soldiers or hear them swearing, which is the usual thing in the occupied territories. Riding through the city on my bike, I constantly met girls walking alone or mothers with children. In the occupied cities, people don’t just walk around, they go only on business, and mostly where it’s crowded.
Life in such cities seems to have stopped in 2014 and is slowly degrading. The roads have not been repaired, in some places they have become completely impassable. Young people are infantile in their masses; a twenty-year-old is psychologically equivalent to a fourteen-year-old. There are no special places for them to meet and communicate. Many do not have the slightest idea about life in the free territories of Ukraine a few tens of kilometers away.
There are many pro-Russians among the locals, and even round-ups of men cannot change their minds. They can admit that, yes, it somehow turned out badly: people just went to work, and were caught and sent to the front, but they immediately correct themselves that they are being protected from the Nazis, therefore have to tolerate. They live in their nightmare world and are absolutely persuaded that it cannot be better. When they are told about a normal life in a free Ukraine, they simply do not believe that this is possible, being convinced that the Nazis walk the streets with swastikas there, and don't listen to eyewitnesses. I remember in the Soviet Union people also believed that there was poverty in the West, while their own life in poverty, with shortages and queues, was perceived as the only possible world, which could not be better. Back then, too, people supported the government because they believed that there was no other way.
Despite everything, there are a lot of adequate people in the occupied territories who support Ukraine. What surprised me most from the stories of those who are from there is that they can immediately see who is for Russia and who is for Ukraine. These are anthropological differences that are immediately apparent. For example, when you see a person for the first time, you immediately understand that you can say, "Glory to Ukraine!" despite the fact that for any careless word in a public place you can be arrested and thrown in the basement.
If a person is some kind of unpleasant with the seal of aloof unsociableness, behaves as if everyone owes him, then he will be for Russia anyway. In fact, this is the seal of that hellish world, which he perceives as the only possible reality. Because of this, he is unable to adequately understand normal people. At first I wanted to call it the loss of the ability for social communication that allows us to understand each other. Thanks to this communication we perceive the world adequately, distinguishing what is possible from ridiculous fakes and propaganda. However, they communicate perfectly well with each other, and it is we who seem to them to be unsociable in their perverted perception. It would be more correct to call it a loss of the ability to communicate on the basis of empathy. They can communicate, but they are incapable of feeling the interlocutor, and for this reason they become unpleasant. Instead of empathy, they have such a common emotional wave, which is produced by the mood of their hellish world. On this wave, they understand each other perfectly, but at the same time they cease to understand normal people. In contrast, normal people who are for Ukraine easily recognize each other by the empathic connection that naturally establishes between people, makes them open and inspires a sense of trust.
