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No.36 JUNE 12, 2018
DAY AFTER DAY
WWW.DAY.KIEV.UA
By Volodymyr KOSTYRIN
Photos by Mykola TYMCHENKO, The Day
This is only the first part of the
project, which has already
found a broad response among
viewers, particularly on
YouTube. Although the subject
the author broaches is rather
complicated, the audience reacted
approvingly. The film’s author
himself, who was born and raised in
Luhansk, stayed behind in his native
city until September 2, 2014, and
saw the dramatic events of Russian
aggression against Ukraine. Later
on, Valentyn Torba wrote a book, I, an
Eyewitness. Notes from the Occupied
Luhansk, on the basis of his reminiscences
and diary. The film is sort of
the author’s video reproduction of
his reflections on those events.
“My book, published by the newspaper
Den, must only be viewed in the
reference frame of two other books in
the ‘Contemporary History for Dummies’
series,” Den’s journalist Valentyn
TORBA says. “A prolog of
sorts to it is Ivan Kapsamun’s book
‘The Trap,’ or A Case without a Statute
The harsh reality of war
Last week Den’s journalist Valentyn Torba
presented his film Luhansk:
Occupation at the Kyiv House of Cinema
Indeed, it is impossible to find
the causes and effects of the current
war without sinking into history –
both the domestic history and the
history of our country’s relationships
with the neighbor that eventually became
the enemy.
“The main conclusion for me is
that this film has a cause-and-effect
relation,” says Ivan KAPSAMUN,
controlled the city. Let me tell you
how he began cooperating with Den.
As early as during the so-called ‘Russian
spring’ in the spring and summer
of 2014, Valentyn’s biting and meaningful
posts and blogs in Facebook,
where he described what was going on
in his city and region, drew the attention
of Den’s editor-in-chief Larysa
IVSHYNA who invited him to contribute
to our newspaper. He agreed,
sk: Occupation is a very serious work.
Valentyn in fact adapted to the screen
what Den had been writing about for
many years. I wish my colleague success
and want as many people as possible
to watch it because, before occupying
our territories, the Kremlin
‘occupied’ people’s brains. To ward
this off, one must know contemporary
history on the basis of the Den’s Library
and the presented film.”
300 years ago and even earlier. The
war is permanent, and it did not begin
in 2014. We were being exterminated
and manipulated in 1933 and well before
that. And, instead of forming
state institutions, the authorities
palmed off certain individuals upon
us, who were just ruining these institutions,
ruining the groundwork
for the restoration of our statehood.
And why are governmental officials
indifferent? Let me say an objectionable
thing: I am convinced for some
reason that the political elite seems to
be feeling good even without Luhansk,
Donetsk, and Crimea.”
“It was about the Ukraine-Russia
border,” civic activist, journalist,
and political scientist Oleksii PODOL-
SKY said after watching the film.
“The first negotiations on this matter,
in which I took part, began in 1995.
Before that, we and Russia had never
negotiated the border question. I was
a diplomat at the time and first came
to Luhansk, when we were trying to
persuade the leadership to follow the
Estonian way. I took part in the
closed-door negotiations about the
Black Sea Fleet, as well as in the talks
about gas with participation of
AT THE SCREENING OF THE FILM LUHANSK: OCCUPATION, THE FUTURE OFFICERS WERE DEEPLY MOVED NOT ONLY BY THE FOOTAGE AND CONTACTS WITH GUESTS, BUT ALSO BY BEING GIVEN THE
BOOK “THE TRAP,” OR A CASE WITHOUT A STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS, A TEXTBOOK ON UKRAINE’S TRUE CONTEMPORARY HISTORY
of Limitations which tells the prehistory
of the political ‘trap’ into
which this country fell. My film is sort
of a video illustration to the trilogy
Den published as far back as 2015.”
Torba said after the screening:
“I’ve brought some books and would
like to gift them to the military present
here. Here is the book ‘The Trap,’
or A Case without a Statute of Limitations
by Ivan Kapsamun, editor of
Den’s politics section. Note the phrase
‘without a statute of limitations.’
Our current problem is that we think
in the terms that call us for artificial
reconciliation. We think: well, OK,
let’s forgive, forget, make friends,
hug, and things will be all right. Do
you remember, by the way, the fake
photograph in the internet about how
the Ukrainian-Russian border must
look like? It shows people drinking,
eating, etc., at the table. The killing
of us begins with this illusory reconciliation.
Nobody wants to ‘fraternize’
with us. They want to exterminate
us, Ukrainians, wipe off our
memory, and turn us into an eternal
second-rate satellite. The aggressor is
taking advantage of our weaknesses to
this end. Therefore, we must not forget
both the foreign and the domestic
enemy.”
editor of Den’s politics section. “This
is the most important point. For what
we have in the information space today
is just a picture, sometimes a
conclusion, with no explanation of
what caused one problem or another.
And many fall for this. This film
practically shows the contemporary
history of Ukraine, including the way
the occupation of the Luhansk region
was prepared and finally carried out.
The film also recalls the Holodomor
period and emphasizes that our country
found itself in a very difficult situation
in the early 1990s because it
had a postcolonial and post-genocidal
society. Such difficult times require
very strong efforts to build the state.
But, we saw in the film that, instead
of building state institutions, the
leadership of this country formed a
clannish oligarchic system, in which
we are in fact still living. The revolutions
we had can hardly be called
revolutions. Society was doing very
much to break this system but, unfortunately,
failed to do so. For society
itself is sick and was unable to organize
– neither after the first nor after
the second Maidan.”
Kapsamun also added: “Valentyn
stayed in Luhansk to the last moment,
when Russian troops in fact
and then, on the chief editor’s instructions,
I came into direct contact,
as I edited many of his texts. We
thus began to receive on-the-spot information
and analyses of events.
Later, when it became dangerous to
stay on in Luhansk, Valentyn had to
leave the native city. He moved to
Kyiv, and the newspaper offered him
a job on the staff.
“In 2015 Den prepared a trilogy of
books compiled by me (‘The Trap’),
Torba (I, an Eyewitness), and Maria
Semenchenko (Catastrophe and Triumph).
The first is about why this
country got into a ‘political trap’ on
the example of high-profile murders of
Yevhen Shcherban, Borys Derevianko,
Vadym Hetman, and, as the apotheosis
of the system, the attempt on the
life of Oleksandr Yeliashkevych, the
attack on and kidnapping of Oleksii
Podolsky, and murder of Georgy
Gongadze. Consequentially, the second
book is about the living and dead heroes
who went to war in the east and
covered with their bodies the mistakes
politicians had made.
“To launch Den’s books, we in
fact traveled all over Ukraine, doing
the educational work the state is normally
supposed to do. The film Luhan-
“This is really a story that touches
one on the raw, and I would like the
people who have nothing to do personally
with our Luhansk region to
watch the first and the next parts of
the film,” civic activist Maryna ZOLK-
INA said during the film presentation.
“I am often asked, because of my
work, why certain decisions are not
made. All I can do is give a not-soprofessional
explanation of why we
show this kind of reaction to this procrastination.
In my view, this happens
because those who must, by force of
our choice, make decisions are indifferent.
You, Valentyn, are not indifferent.
You, as a journalist, a writer,
and a person who makes no decisions,
are not indifferent. So where should
the central authorities draw strength
to regain the temporarily occupied territories?
Where is the source of the
strength that will help us achieve
this?”
“In my opinion, our first source of
strength is to be able to understand
that the war will never end,” Torba answered
this question. “Terrible words
indeed, but we are now in the state of
a permanent war. And if we try to persuade
ourselves that things will be different,
we will be wrong. Things won’t
be different. They were not different
Lazarenko and Turkmenistan. I finally
saw that our leadership was the
No. 1 traitor, that the agent of Russia,
who was selling our state out, was
the head of our state. So I, chief of the
Russia department of our Foreign
Ministry, deliberately joined the opposition
to Kuchma. I was busy writing,
running around, keeping a secret
print shop, and so on. All this resulted
in the Gongadze case. You should
know that Gongadze and other likeminded
people also participated in
this. Do you remember
Yeliashkevych? And Yurii Orobets?
Many of them have already passed
away. I am a person who took part in
all of this and saw everything with my
own eyes. Do you remember the Black
Sea Fleet negotiations, when Crimea
was being surrendered for a gas bribe?
Such entities as RosUkrEnergo were
a feeding trough for the families of
our presidents. Torba was right to say
that the war will go on. The film is
about this, about how cynically
Crimea and the Donbas were surrendered.”
The author also plans to show the
film in Sievierodonetsk, Luhansk
oblast, which was lucky enough to be
liberated as far back as the summer
of 2014.