No, sweetie.
Donetsk was a city of a million roses when its own Ukrainian flag flew above it.
Back then, it was also the fastest-growing and most rapidly prospering city in Ukraine -- home to what was the finest regional airport in Eastern Europe, one of the world's best football stadiums, a state-of-the-art railway terminal, and one of the cleanest, best-maintained cities in the region.
Its elites were running Kyiv, and every time I visited Donetsk as a student, riding the famous trolleybus Route No. 2 through the city, I was amazed by how many new office buildings were appearing, how much money was flowing into the city, and how many international companies were opening their doors there.
Fifteen years ago, to us kids from Donbas, Donetsk felt like the center of the universe because it had everything one could possibly dream of. It was a young city of universities and libraries, where the overwhelming majority of boys and girls from across Donbas went to study, including those from my own small hometown an hour away by bus.
Names like Liverpool or Detroit Rock City may mean nothing to you, but our Ukrainian Donetsk was a city of great rock clubs and unforgettable concerts. We traveled there to see Western bands perform.
We bought rock merchandise at the legendary Right House store near Krytyi Market. Scorpions, Rihanna, and Beyoncé performed at the famous Donbass Arena. Schoolchildren from across Donbas were bused in to watch Shakhtar Donetsk matches. The city even had a famous monument to The Beatles.
It was a city where we sang songs on guitars in its beautifully maintained parks and along the Kalmius embankment before heading out to buy the famous "green Donetsk burgers." Our older friends moved there after graduation, formed rock bands, recorded full albums, and held wedding celebrations in the squares around Donbas Arena. We traveled there to visit the legendary Radio Market in search of films, music, and books.
And then you arrived.
And you turned the wealthiest, most prosperous Ukrainian city into a piece of shit.
You deceived many of its people with sweet promises of Russian oil-fueled prosperity broadcast from television screens, but what you brought instead was war.
You transformed a thriving city into a criminal wasteland ruled by ethnic gangs from Russia, into a kingdom of Stalinist terror straight out of the 1930s, complete with torture chambers in the infamous Izolyatsia prison camp. You turned the magnificent Donetsk Airport into lifeless gray rubble, while the vast stands of Donbas Arena have spent a second decade slowly being reclaimed by weeds instead of hosting Champions League finals and Metallica concerts.
You swept away an entire generation of the city's men through your forced mobilization and threw them against Ukrainian machine guns until there were barely enough people left to keep basic municipal services running. Because of you, prosperous Donetsk became a withered desert without reliable water, because your war destroyed the canal system that carried water from the Siverskyi Donets River into Donbas. For years now, people have lived with chronic water shortages and have been reduced shitting into plastic bags forever.
You dragged Donetsk back like seventy years in time. You turned it into a depressed backwater, devoid of hope and future. Even ten years ago, tens of thousands of people, the most active, the most talented, the most entrepreneurial, fled the city and found refuge in Kyiv and elsewhere in Ukraine. Many of them still remember our Donetsk with tears in their eyes, the Donetsk that existed before the arrival of the "Russian World."
You transformed it into something that even my pro-Russian acquaintances are shocked to see when they return after years of occupation.
It was you who trampled the million roses of our Ukrainian Donetsk into shit beneath the tracks of your tanks and the boots of your death troops, turning them into a foul swamp of death and despair.
And that stain will forever remain on the conscience of fascist Russia, which brings nothing but destruction, decay, and death wherever it goes.
Российский солдат признаёт, что его подразделение изнасиловало девочек в возрасте 10 и 11 лет в Украине + заставило матерей смотреть — сразу перед тем, как казнить всех троих по приказу его командира
Он признаётся, что это происходило несколько раз, поскольку они находили гражданских, прячущихся в подвалах. Русня такиеже чудовища как Хамас..
I'm completely amazed by the incredible quality of this post. l am very grateful for the opportunlty to see fantastic content like this one, shared here on X! lt's impossible to describe how thankful I am, within the limits of the human vocabulary. Many many thanks for sharing.
Saint Petersburg is often called the Venice of the North. Except it’s cleaner, safer, and cheaper than Venice. Having been to both: one stole my wallet, the other stole my heart! 💗
Meet the billionaire refugee “Zahwa Arafat” the only daughter of Yasser Arafat, the terrorist who led the PLO, launched the Intifadas, and built his empire through violence and fear.
She now lives in Paris, owns luxury real estate in London, and inherited billions that came from "Palestinian aid."
Despite this wealth, she still qualifies as a “refugee" under UNRWA standards.
A Russian bot farm tried to influence Armenia’s elections
According to researchers, the campaign closely resembled the tactics used ahead of Moldova’s elections.
In May, the number of anti-government and anti-EU posts in Armenian social media increased nearly tenfold.
Many of these comments were posted by the same accounts, which simply copied identical messages and spread them across different platforms.
The goal was simple: to create the impression that “everyone thinks this way,” even though the narrative was being artificially amplified by bots.
Por fin es verano. Llega el momento de disfrutar del sol y de la tranquilidad de un día de playa, pero no podemos mirar hacia otro lado.
Ningún Sionista debería disfrutar de la calma mientras siembran terror.
Por un verano libre de Sionismo.
🎶 Perché lui è un matto autentico
E io troppo spesso mi dimentico che qui…
Qui non è Hollywood
Qui non è Hollywood
Qui non è Hollywood
Qui non è Hollywood 🎶
J’enrage.
Encore un enfant assassiné par Israël à Gaza.
Il revenait de l’école, dans le camp de Jabalia, il portait son cartable.
Honte aux salopards qui ont fait ça .
Honte à la France, qui les a laissé faire.