Dear Readers:
Continuing my review of this piece by reporter Yury Vasiliev. We saw that the residents of Donetsk (and surrounding towns) have been mostly (not completely) cut off from running water, due to the spiteful actions of the Ukrainian authorities.
We learned that the residents use these cisterns (water trucks). This truck is equipped with 6 taps. People line up, with whatever containers they have. The water is free, and they can take as much as they can carry. The writing on this particular truck reads: “To the people of Donbass, from the Moscow region”, but the reporter notes that the truck is local: It has a local (DPR-issued) license plate, and parks in a nearby municipal parking lot. The sign probably just means that the money to buy it was donated by people in Moscow.
Alexei Kulemzin, whom we met yesterday (he is the head of the Donetsk municipal administration) explains that the people of Donetsk have to make do for now: “All of our transport, however small, is over there [at the front]. Everything that we possess has been mobilized. Everything is for the front, everything for the victory. This is an objective moment that we are living through. We can state with certainty that the city does not have enough cisterns. The ones that we have, are working in three shifts. But it’s not enough.”
Liubov Alexandrovna fills her very old (by appearance) five-liter container with water from the cistern. “It’s drinking water!” she rejoices. “Not water for the toilet!”
By toilet water, she means “technical water”, water that people can use to wash clothes and even bathe in, but not drink. Liubov had heard the news from her neighbors, that the water truck had arrived [in their neighborhood]. There is supposed to be a regular schedule for the truck’s arrival, and it is posted in the neighborhood. For example: 3 times every 10 days, “technical water”, then once every 5 days: drinking water. Unfortunately, Ukrainian army would get wind of the schedule and the location where the truck was supposed to park; and they would try to shell it, as well as the people coming to use it. So that now, for reasons of safety, news of the truck’s arrival is spread mostly by word of mouth, in a telephone-tree type network.
For example, there is a woman named Angela Alexandrovna Dolina. She is responsible for several hundred private homes, and it is her job to inform them about the water truck. Some people she communicates via chatrooms, others she has to call on the phone. “Not everybody knows how to use a Smartphone,” she confides. She communicates to some, they communicate to others, in a kind of pyramid scheme. In Russian, this low-tech method of spreading information was traditionally called the “Sarafan”, or “gossip” network.
[to be continued]
Awful Avalanche 
Well, I am a little confused. Before the SMO “all” water to DNR was cut off by Ukraine. I think LDR had their own water before the SMO. There is a certain canal through what was then the Ukraine controlled part, which was dammed with concrete to block flow. One of the first things the Russians did in the first few days of the SMO was to take control of the canal and destroy the dam, to the great celebration of the people of DNR. How DNR managed before that I am not clear, but I think there was a little water piped across the Kerch Bridge, and maybe this or that besides. I seem to recall there was a period before the Kerch was finished that the watersituation got pretty desperate.
So while the situation described is not nice, lets remember that (as I understand) it was much much wworse before the SMO.
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Hi, BM, no I think you are getting confused with the Crimea situation.
Before the SMO Crimea had been cut off from water that used to flow from the Seversky-Donets canal. (Which was a man-made canal built in Soviet times.) Very early in the game (I think it was 2015) the Ukrainians built a dam across that canal, effectively cutting off the fresh water supply to the Crimean peninsula. (Which has always had problems with aridity.)
Crimea, as a result, over the next 7 or 8 years, became very arid, agriculture/irrigation was affected, water was a real issue. Russians did a lot to try to mitigate, like digging more wells, bringing in water, building the Bridge, etc. This went on for YEARS.
When the SMO happened, within I think 2 or 3 days (this was obviously a #1 priority!) Russian soldiers captured the Ukrainian dam and blew it up, which was blocking the canal. Water started flowing to Crimea again. So, Crimea is actually okay now, water-wise.
Donetsk is a separate issue. They always had water piped in from (as I understand it) the same water network that fed Mariupol. Things were more or less okay there until just a few months ago. After the Ukrainians lost Mariupol, they cut off Donetsk from water, but this is a separate issue from what they did to Crimea; and the Russians can’t fix it yet, I’m not sure exactly why; the guy in the article said the pumps are still on Ukraine-controlled territory.
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Western Ukraine repeatedly shelled pumping and filtration stations after 2014 e.g. https://www.osce.org/ukraine-smm/183151
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Reconstructing the liberated territories, including those parts of the DPR/LPR that have been such intensive recipients of freedom shells, is going to be a mammoth task, no question. Odds are we’ll see something like a 21st Century Kruschevka, yeah? (Though, in all fairness, the pics from Mariupol are pretty nice, really, but you have to expect more production pressure may depress quality and especially longevity)
Still, I think the RF has, ultimately, the wherewithal to do it, albeit this is likely to be a tough winter in the Donbas
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True, the Reconstruction is going to rival post-WWII in some areas. Most of the $$$ will be coming out of the Russian budget, but don’t feel too bad, Russia is rolling in money. A bigger challenge is finding all the skilled construction workers that will be needed. I heard that people are talking about bringing in lots of North Korean construction workers, that sounds to me like a great idea, it would also help the North Korean economy a lot; except I don’t know if the language barrier will be an issue.
With all the construction and investment opportunities, this rebuilding could actually be quite a big boondoggle for Russia-friendly countries who want to get in on it.
The other positive thing about this war (if one can find a silver lining) is that Russia, when the dust settles, will emerge bigger and wealthier than before. All those new people, new lands, new natural resources, new assets. A fixer-upper, to be sure…
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About north Korean workers if we compare with Senegal, they didn’t speak a word of English nor French not wolof. Only the management staff knew English. Korean foreign workers help bringing in foreign currency and are mostly stolen from their wages earned abroad for that reason (allegedly one has to pay for their accommodation abroad). Being isolated from locals, they work following the plans very well. So it would be good especially since the Slaviansk area is where most of the water for Donetsk area is pumped from there. The Ukrainian authorities are as we say poetically in French the butt split on two chairs.. they kept on providing thr minimum level of water as to pretend complying with the duties of a sovereign state while damaging and devastating any network, pumping station, power grid when they withdraw – proving they don’t act as a sovereign state acting for the good of its people -. DNR authorities made it clear that this autumn and winter will be hard when it comes to water or gas supplies. I guess how tough it is to decide for the Russian leadership to slow down the liberation of donbass- to keep all networks working during winter time in the major cities like Kramatorsk or Slaviansk or free the territory but face à humanitarian disaster worth than in Mariupol where the nazi garrison was cut off from supplies. Or move on and demilitarizeby eliminating all threats from there but with a heavy price for local Russians.
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I think the North Korean workers could help out a lot. From what I have heard, they are very smart, and very hard-working people. Accurate and not sloppy!
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“this rebuilding could actually be quite a big boondoggle for Russia-friendly countries”
I was confused for awhile until I realized you meant “boon” instead. A “boondoggle” is bad, a costly mistake or wasteful blunder, like a “Bridge to Nowhere” (such as https://www.nytimes.com/1977/03/06/archives/new-jersey-weekly-the-bridge-to-nowhere-the-bridge-to-nowhere.html that uses the word boondoggle).
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oops, you’re right. “Boondoggle” was not the word I wanted. I don’t even know how that word came into my head, I must have heard it somewhere!
😦
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I wonder if there is some way to raise funds and send a bunch of some kind of new technology sort of devices to people in the greater Donetsk area for purifying water.
Earlier in the year I was intermittently gripped with low key fears about rolling blackouts and losing access to drinking water from the faucet, and also the feeling that if such a situation arose I *must* be able to avoid the crowds swarming stores for remaining bottled water (I think the last bit is stubborn ego for me more than fear), so I was looking online at various water filtration devices that are rated highly for going hiking/camping, there are so many possibilities out there that can be reused up to 1000 liters of water or more! I read in one place that using them alone is only safe somewhere “like the u.s.” but traveling abroad one also needs to worry about removing viruses from water and so I think basically using them in combination with iodine tablets will take care of that. Basically they can be used just dipping some container into stream water and then pushing it through the filter.
Some are pretty expensive (I think $200 was one of the most expensive) but will pretty much last forever and require little to no upkeep/maintenance whatsoever. Others are more like $30 and last for 1000 liters (as previously I referenced) but do need to get cleaned regularly to prevent them being clogged from whatever they’re filtering out of the water.
I don’t know if this sort of thing would be helpful for the people in Donetsk and surrounding area?
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Maybe that could be a solution for them, I heard about those filter systems. At one point I also (vaguely) thought about getting one, but never did anything about it. (My own Oblomovism.)
During the height of the covid here where I live, I never worried about water. Our biggest problem was toilet paper and cleaning supplies. This was the first time in my (pampered) life that I had ever experienced any real shortages, and it gave me the tiniest taste of what it must be like.
For a period of about 2 months, the only place in my neighborhood you could buy toilet paper, paper towels, and cleaning supplies was at the corner Dollar store (not at the Supermarket). These dollar stores are a key survival point of the local Puerto Rican/Mexican community. I am not one of them, of course, but just by accident, keeping my ear to the ground, I learned an important secret: that the supply trucks come in every Wednesday evening. So the following morning, Thurs, if you were there promptly at 8:00 AM, store opening, you could line up for (rationed) supplies. Sure enough, I started doing that. The line to the front door was quite long. All of the sales clerks are young Puerto Ricans, some of them just teenagers. But they quickly adapted to their new role as “the most important people in the community” – LOL! The arbitrors of who gets to stay clean!
These kids stepped up to the plate, ran an efficient operation, courteously controlling the customers, keeping everything orderly, and rationing the supplies in a fair manner.
Eventually the crisis abated, supplies returned to the regular supermarkets, and the line outside the Dollar store became shorter ever week. But I kept thinking that those kids who ran that store, should have been given some kind of community medal for their work!
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Cutting off the water is not unlike economic sanctions or blockading enemy ports in war to prevent imports. Skullduggery on civilians. And, if you feel personally affronted and aggrieved, like Slow Joe Biden, nominal president of The Hegemon, starving Afghanistan of the means to buy food just because you can is fair game. It’s all the work of criminal minds.
Speaking of strange minds, I see some complete Polish nutter name of Adam Glapinski, Central Bank Governor no less, sees a deep plot and suspects Germany of wanting to reclaim Polish soil it “lost” after WW2. This outburst is reported everywhere except in Western MSM. Well, kind of spoils the general plot to have a loose cannon spoiling Western “unity”, eh? Especially when some semi-prominent person thinks the SMO is really a Russo-German plot to seize sacred Polish soil!
https://oopstop.com/head-of-the-polish-central-bank-germany-wants-to-recapture-polish-soil/?amp=1
Europe is still, in its mind’s eye, fighting wars from hundreds of years ago, from even before the Hapsburgs strode the Earth and knocked unwilling heads together into a forced unity. Neighbouring countries fundamentally hate each others guts, while the continent consistently claims to be the seat of artsy and philosophical refinement. Anywhere else just ain’t got it, from dour Russia to braggart America to impassive China. Nope, only Europeans have exquisite “taste”. And the best wine and design, naturally. But they still hate each other, don’t trust the fellow next door, and wanna have a fight.
At last report, Glapinski was in a strait-jacket in a padded cell, with bread and oh yes, water, to sustain his vital signs, while deep state American psychiatrists focus the brain retraining ray machine on him. Should be fine by Tuesday next week. And likely to break out in full deep-throated song he’ll be so happy.
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I hadn’t heard of this guy Glapinski, but he sounds like a typical Polak – it’s all about ME ME ME ME! Personally, I don’t think Germans have any such urges any more, all the Hitler was knocked out of them a long time ago, and now they are just an American gelding puppet.
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Well, we europeans are a bunch of many different peoples. We have different languages, traditions, religions, history and cuisines (some delicious, some not so much). We have many different identities. Different identities put us against each other, but mostly is the normal enmity between bordering nations, which flares up only when there is a real clash of interests (such as in the economic/political sphere, or in football [soccer for americans]).
I will say that western european dont’ really hate each other, at most they dislike each other. In the east, it’s another matter. Here there is a long, bloody history and it’s still alive. More obviously in the Balkans, but not only there.
Polish are a special pain-in-the-ass. They really hate both germans and russians; germans and russians despise them, and they are always willing to make a deal at Poland’s expense; even the Nord Stream pipeline (the first, not only the second) was made to cut off Poland. History wise, Poland is either dominating or dominated. There is no good-neighborhood option.
So there is nothing surprising in what Glapinski said, it is exactly what polish elite thinks, only that usually they dont’s talk so openly.
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I come from an area in France where workers from Poland and Italy mainly rushed to work in the mines and Poles have the worst reputation. Of course the grandkids mostly identify now with the country of birth but I had a couple of classmates of polish origin who kept deeply ingrained hatred towards anything russian German but also French (“they betrayed us”). In other word they made theirs the German motto: its Poland über alles. Very hard to have a decent conversation with them. And when you tickle them with their anti Jewish pogroms after WW2 (so they targeted people who had just freed and saved by the red army but remain vulnerable), then you have a full spectrum of their hatred of anything that is not Polish.
At a political level, if Europe follows the lead of Poland or Lithuania even Estonia to deal with Russia, we are in a worse than ever situation. The current problem is that their century old hatred against Russians coincides with the interest of Bruxelles’ interest. So we are on the wrong path of history and the soil is made even more slippery for Europe as the east european incapacity to go beyond their complex of inferiority towards the Russian brother will pour more distorted vision on the global issue (that is nato is to keep Europe under control )
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Unfortunately it is not true that the Germans had all the Hitler knocked out of them, as the current situation well shows. Many of the elites are third generation nazis – their grandfathers were nazi officials, nazi soldiers nazi war criminals, and the nazi ideology has been passed from one generation to the next. The elites today seem to be the same old crowd from 80 years ago (with US-UK help of course). Take Ursula von der Liars – granddaughter of one of the nazi war criminals who committed genocide at Babi Yar in Ukraine. And what is her role in this war today? Scholz is also said to be the grandsone of an SS nazi war criminal.
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Absolutely, apart from the show in Nürnberg, the entire nazi apparatus remained. The US recycled tens of thousands former war criminals not only in the US , in Canada, South America but also Syria or Egypt. They also put Kurt Waldheim at the head of the UN, who had been one of the few Germans awarded for their crimes against Yugoslavians.. even in France, former president Muterrand was a former far right who joined the left and pushed for right wing policies once elected.
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Alas, you are both right. I reckon it’s the worst of both worlds: The German elites are still nazis, but they don’t have any patriotism left in them, since they have to bow to the Hegemon. At least Hitler, despite his faults, ran an independent foreign policy.
[a little bit of sarcasm there, please don’t hate me!]
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“they don’t have any patriotism left in them”
Nazis aren’t German patriots. They are imperialist pan-Europeans and globalists, defenders of “Western Civilization” from “Russian Asiatic hordes”. They said so themselves.
Martin Niemöller was a German patriot. Martin Bormann was not.
Hitler didn’t give two shits about German people. During his final hours, he said that it’s irrelevant what happens to them – the best Germans were already dead and what’s left of Germany will be destroyed by the “stronger people from the East”.
“This is your brain on drugs”, ROFL. This is what too much meth does to people.
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Hey, I don’t do drugs, man. If I did do drugs, it wouldn’t be meth, that’s the worst. I heard it rots your teeth – LOL!
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I was referencing Nazis in general and Hitler in particular. Meth was a drug of choice in The Turd Reich, LOL.
Goering was also a morphine junkie. How fitting for a Nazi degenerate.
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It doesn’t surprise me that Nazis were junkies. Despite their fondness for athletes and pretensions to a healthy vegetarian lifestyle!
🙂
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“but also Syria or Egypt”
Or Israel. Walther Rauff? Otto Skorzeny? C’mon man, don’t remove Zionists from illustrious company of Nazis.
“one of the few Germans”
Austrians. If there’s anything worse than a Kraut Nazi scumbag, it’s an Austrian Nazi scumbag.
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