Russia's War Against Ukraine
OP-ED
Julia Ioffe: My mind-melting week on the battlefields of Ukraine
Pro-Russian fighters of Vostok (East) battalion rip apart an Ukrainian flag outside a regional state building in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on May 29, 2014.
One morning in May, my photographer Max and I hired a driver and set off for the quiet, terrified countryside around the city of Donetsk in search of clarity. After a week in Ukraine, we had discovered that it was impossible to understand what was happening in this restive region from Washington, Moscow, or Kiev, and equally impossible from Donetsk: There was one building besieged by separatists, surrounded by a calm and indifferent city.
