But before all these events, Kiev will have a chance to change its name, at least on the American maps, or rather its transliteration, the way the word is spelled. The US made this decision after numerous requests of the Ukrainian ambassador.
Washington pays much less attention to the requests of the Donbas residents, who report that the attacks of the Ukrainian military are getting more frequent. It's all happening despite Vladimir Zelensky's promises of peace.
Sergey Zenin visited the frontline villages and recorded all the testimonies.
72 shells over the last 24 hours, 30 of them were 120-caliber. Multiply that by 7 and you get a week's average. Attacks never cease.
Eduard Basurin, deputy militia chief: "We're attacked every day. Every day. Today, they fired 20 152-caliber shells at Dokuchaevsk".
The Donetsk suburbs, southern regions of the Republic close to Novoazovsk and Gorlovka suffer the most. While people weed their gardens, they have assault rifles and machine guns (or worse) pointing at them from the forest located 400 yards away.
Even a graveyard in Zaytsevo got hit. The tombstones are all mangled. Fire can be opened any minute from those houses. It's the part of the graveyard where priests are buried. Surprisingly, or even miraculously, no shell has hit this area. Blessed Starets Timofey is buried here. It's probably the safest place in the entire Zaytsevo.
The DPR military respects the ceasefire regime. Violations are punished with detention or even discharge by military court. However, wounded soldiers are still often brought to the central hospital and the Institute of Emergency and Reconstructive Surgery. The Institute has recently turned 90. It's a world-class medical and scientific institution. It performs the most complex operations.
For reasons of safety, the filming crew has to stand behind this glass. I'm wearing a heavy apron; it's not a bulletproof vest but still weighs a couple of kilos. A surgery can take several hours. The patient is constantly monitored by an x-ray machine.
- Look, some of these books were written by us.
- How do you even find time to write?
- Well, I don't know how but we do. We're always working. The reputation of the Institute is so great that Russian doctors come here to validate their professional level. Last week, they were having their Ph.D. defense.
"Being able to defend in Donetsk was a great advantage for me".
A doctor whose last name is Ukrainsky lives in the most dangerous area of the city, 500 yards away from the airport. He's never abandoned his home. That's courage.
Vasily Ukrainsky, doctor: "I traveled to Moscow in 2016. I went to a museum dedicated to the Siege of Leningrad. I began browsing through journals. I was shocked to discover that our situations were pretty similar".
The Spartak district gets shelled every day. Vasily Ukrainsky is a rare permanent resident, others don't stay for too long.
Yelena Borisevich, local resident: "The situation's got more complicated. I arrived here later but my neighbor had to hide at 8 AM. Splitters were flying all along the street".
Sergey Zenin, Dmitry Malyshev, Alexey Yaldin, Andrey Rudenko, and Oleg Bondarenko, Vesti, Donetsk.
