How eight years of occupation changed a girl from Donetsk: ‘I no longer considered myself as Ukrainian’
In 2014, the childhood of many children in Ukrainian Donetsk changed forever. The war that came to their city brought fear and the loss of their familiar world. Eight-year-old Evelyn, like thousands of other children, did not understand what was happening around her. She remembers only fragments – long hours in the basement, when every time she went outside it seemed like a rebirth, and a sense of relief when all her friends were still alive.
The occupation gradually changed everything: the school, the city, the environment. Friends left, and those who stayed gradually got used to the new reality. Along with the childhood memories of Ukrainian books and folk dances, the children’s Ukrainian identity was disappearing.
Evelyn, like many of her peers, gradually began to perceive herself as part of the “Russian world” and Donetsk as a Russian city under the influence of Russian propaganda.
Now aged 19, Evelyn tells the story of how she escaped, first from the influence of Russian propaganda and later from the occupation, and what happened to her childhood friends whom Russia tried to re-educate.
Donetsk 2014: ‘The strongest emotions felt by the children were fear and misunderstanding’
In 2014, when Russian hybrid military forces captured Donetsk, Evelyn was eight years old. She was in the third grade of a Ukrainian-language school and, like all children, did not understand what was happening. Evelyn doesn’t remember much about how the war started, she only has “childhood memories”.
During the first year of the war and the occupation of Donetsk, Evelyn’s family spent most of their time in the basement, hiding from the shelling. Back then, there were no air raid warnings, and people did not know when to take cover.
“And always when you come out from the basement, you’re kind of in a renewed world and you have to check all the characters that are around you to see if they’re all alive. And when they were all still alive in the end, it was wonderful,” says Evelyn.
Some of her classmates left for free Ukrainian territory. Some later returned and continued their studies in a school seized by the pro-Russian government. There were new students from those areas of Donetsk where it was dangerous to live because of the shelling.
“Probably, as a child, I can say that the most important emotions that children felt at that time were fear and misunderstanding. We didn’t realise what war was, we couldn’t understand it. And this lack of understanding made it even more frightening,” says Evelyn.
Not all adults were in a hurry to explain to children what was happening, and of course, not all were in favour of Ukraine. So, children absorbed what was happening around them.
“Of course, they picked up on the opinions that were around. From the TV or an authoritative friend. And you’re like: ‘Well, I’m not going to object to him, because he’s probably right.’ As for me personally, my mother tried to keep me away from the war altogether. She had a more neutral political view, and I personally had no hatred,” she says.
How the school has changed: ‘So smoothly that you didn’t feel it’
Evelyn’s school was a Ukrainian-language school. After the invasion of Russian militants, the school obviously changed. But everything happened so gradually and slowly that the children did not feel it.
Two teachers taught Ukrainian language and literature at Evelyn’s school. One of them later died. Under the new rules, Ukrainian language and literature lessons were taught in Russian.
“She couldn’t say many things against Russia, and she had to teach the lesson in Russian, which is the most important thing,” says Evelyn, “But the teacher still spoke to us in Ukrainian in class, which I am very grateful for. “
It was difficult to prepare for classes because libraries were banned from issuing Ukrainian books.
Ukrainian language and literature was taught in Evelyn’s class until 2020. And then it was completely removed. Younger students who entered first grade in 2014 did not study these subjects at all.
“Russia is just imposing its own. The same songs. After three or four years, we sang them in Russian. It was all so smoothly replaced that you didn’t feel it,” she recalls.
Evelyn also practiced Ukrainian folk dancing.
“We were dancing with wreaths, and at some point, they brought us kokoshniks [a traditional Russian headdress]. We had to dance with the kokoshniks on our heads. Our teacher refused. She said she would not teach in such conditions and left. The circle closed, but the fact is that no one forbids you to dance, but only in Russian clothes. And then you’ll switch from Russian clothes to Russian moves, and then you’ll do it to Russian songs,” she explains.
New subjects were added to the school – including a “lesson on citizenship and morality of Donbas”. Evelyn passed the class with an A.
“I used to joke that I was a bad citizen. We were told the history of our native land, but because of how much it was connected to Russia. The only thing we had about Ukraine was that it was serfdom. The information there is extremely limited, there is no alternative view. That’s probably why I didn’t develop a pro-Ukrainian position back then,” Evelyn says.
‘More powerful than Russian propaganda is propaganda in the occupied territories‘
Evelyn was preparing for a history Olympiad and decided to do some research on the Internet. What she read was very different from the school curriculum. It was then that Evelyn realised for the first time that what she had been taught at school was not real. And what was around her was not true. That’s when she started studying history on her own.
“I cannot say that I had a clear position before the occupation of 2022. Because of school and the influence of the environment I was in, I can say for sure that I was very much affected by the ‘great Russian disease’ and imperialism,” says Evelyn, “I did not consider myself Ukrainian and the territory that was occupied that is now under Russian control. I thought I was already in Russia, because everything around me said so. And I am very ashamed of that.”
This is how Russian propaganda worked in the occupied territories.
“To create a whole generation that thinks it is Russia is extremely powerful. I was such a person myself, and it’s really hard to reflect on it all, to reflect and realise that I am not. When everything around you tells you that you are blue, it’s hard to realise that you are green,” says Evelyn.
‘They died for not supporting us’
About a week before the full-scale invasion, schools in Donetsk closed. Evelyn was just preparing for her 11th grade exams and felt something was coming.
On the morning of 24 February, 2022, Evelyn received a call from an acquaintance in the Cherkasy region.
“And she tells me: ‘The war has begun’. I said: ‘I know, it’s been going on for 10 years’. I thought it was a joke,” says Evelyn, “and she said: ‘No, it has really started.’”
“I formed my position very quickly, in a matter of weeks. I realised that I had no future as such. In Donetsk, I reached the maximum. I was promised a state-funded place at Moscow State University, one of the best in Russia,” says Evelyn.
But even before the full-scale invasion, Evelyn had a different dream – to go to Canada to study. Because of the full-scale invasion, this dream became almost unattainable for her – now there is no direct connection between Donetsk and Kyiv, and evacuation routes are expensive and not always safe.
“And I think: ‘Well, it can’t get any worse.’ And then my friend comes to me and says: ‘Do you remember Denis?’ I said: ‘Yes’. And I have childhood friends who are a couple of years older than me. And she said: ‘Well, he died’. I said: ‘How? Where, when?’ She said: ‘On the 24th, they were all taken away early in the morning. They were mobilised. They don’t train them practically, or they train them for three days at the training grounds and then let them go. And Denys died’,” Evelyn says.
Mass mobilisation began in Donetsk, and students were no exception.
“Every week you hear the name of a person who is no longer there. And the best cases were when you find out that the person died, the body was taken away and buried. And there were cases like Nikita’s, for example. He was also mobilised on the 24th. It’s hard to say how they mobilised him. They come, break our arms and take us away. Nikita ended up in the infantry. All Ukrainians are from the infantry, they were and are still being used as meat,” the girl says.
Nikita’s parents called the administration to find out where their son was, but he was not listed in the databases as mobilised, so they had no information.
“And at some point they send them his teeth,” Evelyn says.
Unlike in Ukraine, the parents had to do the DNA test in Donetsk at their own expense. These were indeed the only remains of their son.
“And this is the person you used to joke with since childhood, climb trees, go to ‘abandoned houses’. And this is all that’s left of him,” she says.
Later, another friend of mine, Zhenya, was mobilised. A little older, red-haired and kind. Evelyn called him “sunny”. On the day Zhenia was mobilised, the girl was passing by his yard. She heard a woman screaming and sobbing.
“And I see Zhenya being taken away – he’s beaten up, everything is covered in blood. They take him out with his father. And the only thing I remember from that whole moment is him just smiling at me. And that’s it, they are taken away,” Evelyn says.
A week later, Zhenya and his father died in the war against Ukraine. Their bodies were never brought back.
“It hurts me deeply to lose my friends, because I’m sure they died simply for not supporting it. And they couldn’t leave, because the guys weren’t being allowed out. It would have been much easier for me to know and hate them if they had gone willingly,” says Evelin. “But knowing that people so important to you are gone, and they were killed just because they were Ukrainian – that’s hard. I still haven’t forgiven it, and I don’t think I ever will.”
So, Evelyn had almost no one left.
“And you just hope to the last that at least someone will be alive, that at least you will be able to hug someone when it’s over. And you realise that no, not any more. You will never have a moment in your life when you sit down at school and say: ‘Oh, do you remember how we used to…’ Only you remember. And every spring is the hardest for me, because I don’t even know the exact dates when they all died.” Evelyn says, “The first stage is to realise that my life is destroyed, and then to realise that the past has been taken away from me.”
Either I go or I cry’
One day, Evelyn’s TikTok came across a video about North Korea, how people were leaving there.
“Many people wrote in the comments: ‘Oh my God, to pay that kind of money to leave? It’s just horrible. Who would do that?’ And there was a girl in the comments who said that her sister paid $5,000 to leave the occupation. When it comes to freedom, you’ll pay anything,” says Evelyn, “So I decided that I was either going or crying. I don’t like crying very much. So I decided to leave.”
At the time, Evelyn was a minor. She shared her decision with her mother, and she agreed to let her go to Ukraine. The only condition was that she save up the money to leave on her own to prove that she could live independently.
The girl saved money for the trip for less than a year – she worked in the beauty industry.
“In fact, I’ve been working since I was 13, saving money for a car, and I really wanted one. To be cool at 18 with my own car. But I ended up spending all the money on a trip to Kyiv and I don’t regret it,” says Evelyn.
In the summer of 2023, Evelyn left Donetsk and, although she had options to stay anywhere, went to Kyiv. It was a difficult decision for a 17-year-old girl: to leave everything she had and leave her native Donetsk.
“I would like people to stop condemning people under occupation. We must respect the fact that not everyone can be a hero. People have to be people. And we must understand them and not condemn them. Of course, some of them are collaborators,” says Evelyn, “But there are people who have simply become hostages of the situation.
This story was written in collaboration with The Reckoning Project, an initiative that brings together journalists, researchers, data scientists and legal experts to document war crimes, build legal cases, and combat disinformation by using reliable media outlets. The European Union has recently reinforced its support for The Reckoning Project.
Author: Yuliia Khimeryk
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