As Schastia in #Donbas #Ukraine comes under heavy fire I remember an internally displaced person I met in that small city in 2015. She was twice displaced. In her uni days she married a Syrian who was studying in #Luhansk and moved to his country. 1/
More or less in time for the war to start there. She fled with her children when Assadist tanks entered their town. In 2013 she moved back in with her parents in Luhansk, and in 2014 fled that city under shelling as Ukraine tried to wrest it back from RU/separatist troops. 2/
She fled just across the river with her family to Schastia, where her apartment house was struck by a RU/separatist shell. Her apartment was mostly spared and she said "we're staying put. No more." I wonder, is she still there and will she stay? 3/
Among the IDPs and frontline civilians I met were ethnic Georgians displaced to UA from Ossetia and ethnic Russians from Chechnya in the early 1990s. Ethnic Turks displaced to UA by pogroms in central Asia in 1989 after their parents were expelled from Georgia by Stalin. 4/
Many of my friends and coworkers fear their second #Donbas displacement, first from Luhansk in 2014 and now from Severodonetsk or Kramatorsk ahead of #Russia's irredentist push. END
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
