Report: Escaping the occupiers and the threats
part 1/2
Ten years ago, russia occupied parts of eastern Ukraine. As a young girl, Tia experienced the russification of her homeland - and fought back for a long time. Now she lives in unoccupied territory of Ukraine and is fighting for her identity there too. - By Andrea Beer, ARD Kyiv
Tia is sitting in Taras Shevchenko Park in Kyiv and drinking a coffee. When russia occupied her hometown near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine in 2014, she was still a little girl of eight. She went to kindergarten and primary school in Ukrainian, then she was surrounded by the aggressive propaganda space of the so-called "russian world", which she could not escape at home either: "My family lives under russian occupation and supports the regime that rules there."
Orange-dyed medium-length hair, silver earrings, a beige T-shirt tucked into wide trousers and a pronounced stubbornness: She is an unusual young woman who describes her way out of a repressive world of thought. She loves the Ukrainian language and rejects her parents, which contributes greatly to her breaking away from the system. Her father and mother were alcoholics and were not authorities for her. "If you live in a crisis for ten years, you either break down or become stronger."
Tia is 16 years old when she is politicized by the Belarusian democracy movement, which takes to the streets against the electoral fraud of ruler Alexander Lukashenko. She discovers independent media and identifies with people she believes to be russian oppositionists. She still locates herself in the russian space: "I realized that my home was completely dependent on russia."
Despite russian occupation pressure, she also speaks Ukrainian in public. This makes her stand out in her russian-occupied homeland, where lawlessness, arbitrariness and corruption reign. In order not to endanger her family and friends in her hometown near Donetsk, she does not name them publicly. The living conditions there are bad: inadequate water supply, no work and the mass mobilization of Ukrainian men into the russian occupation army.
to continue
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