Very few ordinary people living in the Donbas combat zone can see any sense in the continuation of Russia’s stalled war on Ukraine, which has killed over 10,300 people since 2014.
And neither does Aleshka Simkic, the outgoing deputy chief monitor of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) Special Monitoring Mission in Ukraine.
After three years spent going on patrol with the mission in the Donbas, the Slovenian diplomat knows the embattled region well. As Simkic winds up her posting in Ukraine, she describes the war as an “unnecessary conflict” that has caused the country grief for way too long.
From her perspective, the violence has never had any justifiable cause.
“There is no division among the people in the country,” Simkic said in a farewell interview with the Kyiv Post.
“No ethnic, or religious, or any other differences within the country. It comes from a lack of political will to find a solution.”
“All the contact line has done is to divide communities and families, not different religions or ethnicities. People don’t hate each other.”
Nonetheless, the Kremlin-instigated war is continuing, with no end in sight – and it is still claiming lives.
According to fresh OSCE estimates, in the last few months of 2018, at least 29 civilians have been killed and more 129 have been wounded. Fifty-one of those injured were hurt by unexploded ordnance and landmines scattered in the combat zone.
Aleshka Simkic, Deputy Chief Monitor of the OSCE Special Monitoring Mission to Ukraine.
Growing frustration
The tense situation in the Donbas has changed little over her time in Ukraine, Simkic says.
The worst killing zones are still the areas stretching to the northeast and east of Mariupol, the triangle of land between the Donetsk Airport, Avdiyivka, and Yasynuvata, and the zone between Horlivka, Debaltsevo, and Svitlodarsk.
The civilians trapped in these areas have faced the same set of problems for years: restricted freedom of movement, constant firefights and shelling, lack of access to basic utilities, and environmental threats.
But despite the continuing violence, life there goes on, and people get used to hardship, Simkic says.
In many war-affected areas, notably in Luhansk Oblast, the organization’s monitors observe repair work during rare halts in the fighting.
“We’re heavily involved in monitoring these so-called windows of silence,” Simkic says.
“But what is frustrating about this…is that there is no immediate readiness to (stop the fighting) for repairs. And it still continues.”
As a result, scores of settlements still face the dire shortages of water, gas, or electricity.
The situation near the Donetsk Filtration Station, a vital part of the region’s water supply system, located just west of the key city of Avdiyivka, remains particularly tense.
At least 300,000 people living on both sides of the frontline, primarily in Avdiyivka, as well as in the Russian-occupied cities of Donetsk and Yasynuvata, are critically dependent on water supplies from the station.
But it remains trapped between the respective front lines – between the hammer and anvil of war.
“It’s constantly being shelled,” Simkic says. “And its workers are still there, (the station) is somehow functioning, but it’s on the brink of breaking down.”
Amid the never-ending violence, the mission’s monitors still often encounter grim pictures of despair among war-weary civilians.
“You see (the people) come to you and start complaining,” Simkic recalls her experience of monitoring the war zone.
“You can see them striving to get humanitarian help for the people they care for. You can meet a teacher or a school principal, who will tell you that she goes to the commanders of armed groups or to the army to say ‘Please stop shooting when the children are in school.’
“Then you see children playing around but being very careful, and not really daring to go anywhere because they are aware of the danger from mines.”
On both sides of the contact line, regular people say they simply want jobs and a peaceful life for themselves and their children, Simkic adds.
Creeping offensives
Over the past months, Ukrainian troops have made a series of small advances – the first minor changes in years to the shape of the front, which has remained largely frozen since the decisive battle of Debaltseve in early 2015.
In recent months, the Ukrainian army has managed to retake a number of settlements trapped in no-man’s land. As a result, the “gray-zone” towns of Verkhnyotoretske, Travneve, Gladosove, and Zolote-4 have again come under Ukrainian control.
Ukrainian forces have also made few minor advances in the combat areas of Novotoshkivske, Maryinka, and Dokuchaevsk, with the army retaking hundreds of square meters of no-man’s land and installing new defenses closer to enemy lines.
But these new Ukrainian tactics are frowned on by the OSCE, as the monitoring mission would rather see the warring parties as far from each other as possible.
“We have always said in Minsk and elsewhere that there should be some zone of peace and disengagement,” Simkic said.
“Whenever any side moves closer to the other that just increases the ceasefire violations. So for us, the OSCE, (mutual withdrawal) would be an absolutely ideal solution.”
In mid-May, the army’s 24th Mechanized Brigade entered the town of Pivdenne some 5 kilometers from the key Russian-occupied city of Horlivka, having pushed Russian-led forces away from its outskirts.
The sight of the Ukrainian flag over another contested town raised new hopes of improving humanitarian situation for local civilians.
“I’ll be very honest and say that on the government-controlled side, based on what we see, the overall humanitarian situation is slightly better because of the access of humanitarian actors,” Simkic said.
“But of course, if the Armed Forces are present, it increases the risk of retaliatory fire towards (the retaken gray-zone towns).”
Difficult to access
The war zone of Donbas remains an inhospitable place for international monitors, including those from the OSCE.
The fighting in combat hotspots usually picks up at night as soon as OSCE patrols leave the area, according to numerous reports from Ukrainian soldiers.
The organization is aware of that, but launching night patrols is still impossible as no security guarantees can be granted to monitors when darkness falls on the war zone.
Furthermore, in addition to numerous denials of access, the organization has faced even more restrictions since the tragic death of Joseph Stone, a U.S.-born OSCE monitor. He was killed on April 23, 2017, when his armored patrol car struck an anti-tank mine on a road near the Russian-occupied village of Pryshyb in Luhansk Oblast.
Following the incident, the mission imposed a ban on patrols using non-asphalted roads in the war zone.
Simkic said this is a serious restriction of the mission’s ability to keep tabs on the security situation in Donbas.
“As you can imagine, there are some roads that have never even asphalted,” she said.
“This effects access to some villages and civilians… Neither can we check some of the weapon holding areas, because they are sometimes off the road and inaccessible because of that.”
Spy spat
Recent weeks saw the OSCE suffer another serious setback.
On July 17, Germany’s ARD media outlet published claims that Russia’s FSB secret service had obtained some of the OSCE mission’s internal paperwork, including data on the communications of the mission’s principal deputy monitor, Alexander Hug.
The stolen documents also reportedly include dossiers on the mission’s employees, providing information on their personalities, temperaments, financial standing, alcohol consumption, relationship preferences, and much more.
ARD said the documents could have been given to the FSB by an OSCE mission member. There were 37 Russian members of the current OSCE mission as of July 9.
The allegations triggered a fresh wave of accusations against Russia of spying on Ukrainian territory.
While U.S. envoy to OSCE Harry Kamian on July 19 called for the organization to be protected from external attempts to challenge its objectiveness, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry that same day directly accused Moscow of trying to undermine the mission in the Donbas.
The alleged leak is a concern for the mission, Simkic admitted. She said the organization needs to conduct an internal inquiry to find out if there really was a breach of sensitive data, as the OSCE does not even know what documents may have been leaked.
“We actually don’t know which documents these are,” Simkic said. “So before we verify (this report) it’s difficult to go to the next page.”
But she said organization would have to check its information handling practices.
“This isn’t something that we haven’t worried about – information security, in terms of hacking and things like that,” the official said.
“I don’t think we’ll make any major changes in the way we do things, but we have to look internally at the procedures we use for saving data,” she said.
