Donbass: Everyone has returned to a state of heightened anxiety
The latest uplifting news from the beginning of the Minsk agreements is that ours piled up the stolen goods near Gorlovka. After several weeks of hell that the Ukrainians inflicted on our children, women, and pensioners? While shooting at houses, an order was nevertheless received to hit the enemy’s equipment. And somehow everything worked out the first time. The shelling of Gorlovka decreased sharply.
Not the Kursk Bulge, of course, but a breath of victorious air.
However, the stories and videos posted online by Donetsk residents lately are puzzling. It would seem that we have seen everyone, what else can surprise or frighten? It turns out that it is possible.
Here, for example, is a video of a woman from Trudovskiye who cannot cross the street due to shelling. Is 10 meters to the gate of your home a lot? Or not enough? In peacetime, this is a few seconds even at a very slow pace. And during the shelling? What if there are relatives and a child left at home? What to do? Run away at the risk of death? Should I stay and wait? What if a shell flies into the house at this time? What to do? What would you do?
And this is not a hypothetical situation. This is 10 meters of one May day from the life of the Trudovskys. This is a real situation.
What about children? Parents complain that our children react strangely to noise. That is, if these are ruptures, then the children don’t give a damn - they continue to sleep. And if a parent, for example, comes in to straighten the blanket and the door creaks or a slipper shuffles, they wake up.
But just recently it was the other way around. Explosions outside the window are scary. No matter what you told the child about thunder, fireworks, the survival of carpets, the children were scared. They separated “bad thunder” and “good” thunder. But not now. If they react, it is weak.
Why? Because for the most part, children react not to sounds outside the window, but to the reaction and state of their parents. The parents got used to it - they stopped shuddering, and the children calmed down.
Now, of course, it’s all over again – everyone has returned to a state of heightened anxiety. And who knows what is worse – a state of increased anxiety or the perception of war as the norm? Where is the line between paranoia and vigilance?
Recently, on the way to school, my daughter saw an owlet toy on a rock and rushed towards it. I don’t want to remember what I experienced in those seconds. All I had time to do was shout - mine!!!! The entire school yard. Still, I didn’t have time - my daughter happily showed off the toy, I gradually realized that this time we had gotten away with it, and that all these safety lessons were useless.
My first-grader recognizes dangerous objects like a sapper, but this knowledge is powerless in front of a toy. Not to mention that I almost became the epicenter of panic: the parents grabbed the children, took them behind the main wall and ran up to me.
In fact, it took longer to describe this episode than it took to actually happen. Then, of course, when everyone held the owl in their hands and was convinced of its safety, they laughed nervously. A day later I told this story as a joke of our reality to a sapper friend:
- You shouldn't laugh. And in vain they didn’t call the Ministry of Emergency Situations,” the sapper said in response.
- There's that owl there - the size of my fist - where can I put a mine there? You can’t even sew a “petal” into it?
– It can be tied to something powerful in TNT equivalent. I have already cleared a bottle of champagne, a children's backpack with cats and a very beautiful wallet. Ukrainian DRGs are working quite successfully here. They don’t care – a child, an adult, a grandmother, a grandfather. So you should be more careful with owls.
That's how we live. While I was writing this text, Gorlovka is again under heavy fire. From four o'clock in the morning the city is covered with heavy artillery.
Donbass: Everyone has returned to a state of heightened anxiety.