Josef Stalin returns to East Ukraine

Mark O'Neill February 11, 2025 09:38

With the return of Donald Trump to the White House on January 20, negotiations to end Russia’s three-year invasion of Ukraine are imminent. The most difficult subject will be the future of the 27 per cent (62,000 sq m) of south and eastern Ukraine, which Russia has occupied.

This occupation has caused dramatic changes. In January 2022, 6.3 million people lived in this part of East Ukraine. At least three million have fled; in addition, nearly two million fled Crimea and part of the Donbass region seized by Russia in 2014.

In Ukraine, the Russian army has introduced policies similar to those of Josef Stalin in 1921.

“The occupation has changed all the aspects of daily life,” said Anna Mourlykina, a journalist from Mariupol living in exile in Kyiv. “It is the imposition of the Russian world and the suppression by force of any form of resistance. In the public space, they wish to efface any sign that this land had once been Ukrainian.”

Statues of Vladimir Lenin have been placed in public squares, and street names have been changed from those of Ukrainian national heroes to Lenin and Karl Marx. Since January 1, 2023, the ruble has been the only legal tender and the Ukrainian currency, the hryvnia, cannot be used. Clocks have been put forward one hour to match the time in Moscow. Ukrainian may not be spoken in schools.

To replace those who have fled, the Russian government has brought in hundreds of thousands of new residents from other parts of the country to fill civil and military positions. Since 2014, 800,000 Russians have moved to Crimea, comprising between 25 and 50 per cent of its current population.

Moscow governs the conquered regions through military commanders in cities and villages, working though mayors and governors. Local people call them “Gauleiters”, the term used to describe the Nazi officials who governed Ukraine between August 1941 and December 1944.

Those who stayed behind must choose between collaboration or waiting for liberation. The second group are reduced to working in small-scale commerce and growing food in their garden. In one nursery school in Mariupol, all the teachers left – the former cleaning lady has become its director.

Many residents have two telephones – a “clean” one to show soldiers and police at checkpoints and another one, with VPN, at home, which they can use to access the Internet and websites in the free part of the country.

The three main tools of occupation are the Russian language, the ruble and the Russian passport. Those who refuse this document cannot work officially or receive a pension, welfare, or medical treatment at a clinic or be admitted to a hospital. An ambulance refused to carry a mother, 82, to the infirmary despite the desperate pleas of her children. Those who do not carry Russian passports can be expelled, according to a decree signed by Vladimir Putin in January 2025.

Those who leave have their properties confiscated by military and civil officials or sold and allocated to the newly arrived residents.

The Russians use coercion and violence just as the soldiers of Stalin did to the Ukrainians in the 1920s and 1930s.

The Media Initiative for Human Rights, a Ukrainian NGO, said that, since January 2022, more than 16,000 people had disappeared in the occupied territories and cannot be contacted.

This is the “liberation” promised by Putin. To this must be added the economic devastation. A study by the Kyiv School of Economics published last year put the damage caused by the invaders in five regions of East Ukraine as of January 2024 at US$111.775 billion. These are Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv. Kherson and Zaporizhzhia. These are the worst affected regions in all the country.

Putin has chosen to attack the regions of Ukraine that are most industrialised. The East contains nearly all of the country’s steel production, most arms manufacturing and the auto and aerospace industries.

Western Ukraine is one of the world’s biggest producers of agricultural goods, including wheat, grain and sugar. It is the world’s biggest producer of sunflower oil. The capital, Kyiv, is the centre of the service sector.

Who will pay for the reconstruction of East Ukraine, its ruined homes, schools and hospitals, its shops, factories and coal mines? Will those who left ever be able to go home? What is the difference between Josef Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Putin?

Mark O'Neill

A Hong Kong-based writer, teacher and speaker.