Shock, Disruption, and Reorganization in the Donetsk Region

Four Ukrainian individuals submitted written testimony about their experiences with the March 2022 invasion of Ukraine. All four are from the same region, the Donetsk region. All four submitted their testimony within five days of each other between June 3rd and June 8th 2022. Despite the similar location, similar times, and experience of a similar event, each individual has a unique experience. They each suffer a unique shock caused by the initial attack in March of 2022, their lives were disrupted in unique ways, and they began to reorganize their lives and perspectives in unique ways. This exhibit seeks to explore four distinct and iconoclastic testimonies from the perspective of three categories: The shock of the initial attack, the disruption caused by this attack, and the way that a life and perspective begins to get reorganized. For example, although the data as to movement is not listed, each of these individuals was forcibly displaced due to the attacks on the Donetsk region. Based on a few of these individuals discussing a disorganized and individual method of flight from their initial location, it can be inferred that their flight was a distinct experience, not prompted by an organized retreat from the region. One of these individuals reorganizes their perspective through intellectual reflection on the geopolitics of the invasion. Another recounts a story of fleeing with her children, the disruption caused to her psyche, and her struggle supporting her dependent children through this event. A number of these individuals have, in the span of months and despite their traumatic experience with displacement, ascended to a hopeful and prideful view of the Ukrainian military, expressing the sentiment that Ukraine will gain glory. Two of these individuals reflect on their experiences with a Ukrainian conflict with Russia in the Donetsk region in 2014, signifying that the shock caused by the 2022 invasion was not a shock to a perfect relationship between countries. Each of these individuals has a distinct account of the way these events affected them, despite their shared location and temporality. An event of this magnitude causes a wide degree of individual reactions, even though each was caused by the same event.

Testimony 124

This individual, a married woman, has two themes in this testimony. In the first, she is describing the raw shock and impact of the attack on her life, her husband’s life, and her daughter’s life. In the other, she reorganizes and intellectualizes her experiences. She states that she is a “scientist, a professor in uncertainty.” She then reflects on the motivations and actions of Russia, and on how this conflict has changed her view of the nation.

Testimony 140

This individual, a married mother, spends the majority of her testimony discussing the shock of conflict. However, not the shock of the 2022 war, but the shock of the conflict in 2014. She recounts the many movements that her and her family had to make, moving between three different cities. She then discusses how the events in March of 2022 caused her family to have to move between three different cities for the second time. However, she reorganizes both her family and her psyche, ending her testimony with a hopeful message in support of the Ukrainian military.

Testimony 218

This individual, a married man, discusses the impact of the 2014 conflict on his and his families’ occupation as railway workers. At a point, his employer stopped paying him and his family, along with other workers, and offered for them to be moved to a controlled area of the country. After the shock of that conflict, he reorganizes, however he discusses the horror of having his life disrupted again in 2022. He ends his testimony with an additional similarity to testimony 140, in that he holds hope for the glory of Ukraine.

Testimony 246

This individual, a single mother, describes her experience with being displaced and having to provide security for her two children. She is incredibly vulnerable in this testimony about the psychological shock she felt, providing a description of how she felt compelled to hold herself together for the sake of her children. She has a long narrative of the shock caused by the initial attack in March of 2022, and the disruption of displacement. After recounting her regrets with misplaced anger, she, similar to others, provides a hopeful message for the resistance, showing a way in which she has reorganized mentally.