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.
24 лютого 2022 - ДАВІ ЇХ ЛАДІМІР ЛАДІМИЧ, ВЕДИ НАС В БОЙ ЯК СТАЛІН ZOV СЛЬІШУ ZOV
2026 вообще-то украинцьі всегда тут жили и право имеют покупать жилье. Все же норм тут ебать нахуя вьі ото стреляете
Ультиматум до Київської міської влади стосовно кричущих порушень прав важкопоранених військових в Лікарні швидкої допомоги в місті Києві!
Маю черговий факт кричущої бездіяльності керівництва Київської Лікарні швидкої допомоги, що призвів до важких наслідків – смерті пораненого військового. Так, попри те, що протягом останнього місяця ми встановили чисельні грубі порушення прав пацієнтів в цій лікарні, київська міська влада проігнорувала цю інформацію і не вжила жодних заходів.
Читайте далі 👇
Дізналась, що польське посольство в Італії дзвонить деяким італійським активістам і волонтерам за Україну і кажуть, що якось ЗАНАДТО СИЛЬНО вони підтримують Україну. Україна ж яка погана, УПА, Волинь, і кококо. Просять перестати допомагати нам...
Ну піздець вони там дали йобу.
I once stumbled upon this photo of a 🇺🇦woman hiding in a bathtub with her baby. As 🇷🇺 attacked frontline regions tonight, many mothers likely did the same. A 22 yo pregnant woman in Chuhuiv did not live to see morning or meet her child. Another future stolen before it even began.
The Sinking City 2 hits different when you realize their air raid siren is real recording. Btw - ptsd warning it starts from very loud and long air raid siren.
Otherwise it is MUCH better in almost every aspect compared to 1st game. Please buy it
Russian pro-Kremlin propagandist Yuriy Baranchik called for the assassination of the wives and children of Ukraine's leaders.
He acknowledged that Russian attacks on buildings, factories, and airfields are not helping Russia win, and that its army is powerless against Ukraine. Therefore, he declared that the families of Zelenskyy, Budanov, Syrsky, and other Ukrainian government officials should be killed.
I’m loving this sort of thing.
For years, Russia has been yelling about “Ukrainian Nazis,” the “Kyiv junta,” the “protection of the people of Donbas,” the “NATO threat,” and “we didn’t start this war, Ukraine attacked us.”
And then, as if nothing happened, Russian officials openly and publicly threaten Armenia with a “Ukrainian scenario” if its pro-Western government, which has been confidently re-elected, continues moving closer to the European Union and European countries.