AVDIYIVKA, Ukraine — It was bitterly cold as we approached the tent in Avdiyivka, the Donetsk Oblast city of 22,000 people 700 kilometers southeast of Kyiv, where people had come to warm themselves and recharge their mobile phones.
Inside the tent, an elderly woman told us of how her grandchild’s education was suffering because of the continuing violence: with temperatures plummeting and no heating, it was impossible to continue classes, and in any case, the artillery and mortar rounds all around meant getting to school was far too risky. In the near distance, we could hear the sound of non-stop overlapping incoming and outgoing fire. The air was loaded with the smell of cordite.
It was the first night of a week-long trip to Donbas. We would see much and hear from many people, but this woman stood out for me. Resolute and stoic, she was focused, understanding that nothing mattered if the needs of children were not met.
Not everyone, of course, shared her perspective. All along the contact line, but especially in the Avdiyivka and Yasynuvata area, men in uniform squared off against each other in an effort to gain a few hundred metres of ground. They had been firing off thousands of artillery and mortar rounds for a few days by now, with civilians inevitably getting caught in the middle. Even ambulance crews were hit, with a driver in Avdiyivka dying and others wounded in nearby Donetsk city. We in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe’s Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine have in fact confirmed 50 civilian casualties in Donetsk region – on both sides of the contact line – nine of them fatalities, from 29 January to 9 February. There is a shared suffering that transcends any divide.
The scale of the violence, although shocking, had not come as a surprise. We had seen escalation many times before: Donetsk airport, Shyrokyne, Pavlopil, Debaltseve, Popasna-Pervomaisk, and Svitlodarsk. We in fact had seen it coming, and had warned about it in our daily reports. The signs were always the same, and were no different ahead of the events in Avdiyivka-Yasynuvata. Every time, the same two factors were at play: proximity of the sides and the presence of heavy weapons.
Even the sides recognize this dynamic. It’s the reason they agreed in the Minsk agreements to withdraw mortars, tanks and artillery, including multiple launch rocket systems, to areas beyond agreed lines. It’s the reason they signed up last September to the Framework Decision on Disengagement of forces and hardware. Where they have disengaged – in Petrivske and Zolote – there was relative calm last week.
On that cold night in Avdiyivka, however, that understanding seemed to have vanished. Collective insanity seemed to have taken hold as lives were lost and disaster on an enormous scale threatened to unfold.
The disaster in the making centred on the water filtration plant in nearby Yasynuvata. Disruption to its operations spelt economic cataclysm as the giant coke plant in Avdiyivka depended on its electricity; humanitarian distress unseen before as heating for 22,000 people in Avdiyivka and drinking water for 400,000 people on both sides of the contact line would be cut if the plant stalled; and even environmental disaster as damage to chlorine tanks at the plant could see poisonous gas released into the air.
Perhaps it was this realization that prompted a re-think: that even by the shocking standards of the conflict in Donbas to date, this time the sides had gone too far.
With facilitation from the SMM in coordination with the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination, the sides stopped fighting around the plant, at least long enough to allow repair crews to go in. With remarkable courage those crews and staff of the plant averted disaster. Over six days accompanied by SMM monitors, they attempted and finally succeeded in undertaking repairs.
Our efforts and those of the Joint Centre for Control and Coordination not only allowed for these repairs but have led to a sustained all-round de-escalation. Violence still persists but at much lower levels; a return of sorts to the abnormal normal.
We are not naïve. Our efforts have primarily been directed towards treating symptoms. So long as the root causes remain, we are sure to see this happen again.
And the root causes – proximity and the presence of heavy weapons – clearly do remain. Every day, our monitors see the weapons in violation. Just this Friday, for instance, they saw, on both sides of the contact line, 12 howitzers, two anti-tank missile systems and four tanks. Every day, they see the positions, perilously close, so close in fact that in some places the opposing sides can see one another.
If the events in Avdiyivka and Yasynuvata teach us anything it is that we clearly need more than a Band-Aid approach. We need the sides to provide the baseline information on weapons and positions so that an SMM-verified withdrawal can be conducted. Without baseline information, it is impossible to verify the withdrawal of weapons – and crucially verify that they remain withdrawn – and without verification, neither side has the confidence that the other side has actually withdrawn. Verification builds trust, without which the process cannot work.
Anything short of this – anything short of what the sides have already committed to do – risks yet more escalation, more violence and more loss of life.
It will leave people all along the contact line – including that elderly woman I met in Avdiyivka – with an uncertain future, one full of fear, risk and worse. The sides know what needs to be done. They know they must cease firing. They know they must disengage. They know they must withdraw heavy weapons. Perhaps if they had the same clarity as the elderly woman in Avdiyivka, the same focus on what is important – a child’s education and the future of her generation – then perhaps they would do it. I can only hope those making decisions about firing and silencing the guns, about life and death, have grandchildren, too.
