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DONETSK, Ukraine The 28-year-old accountant with a bob of chestnut hair would
dash from work to meet her wide circle of friends at bars, restaurants and dinner
parties. Its not how you spend your time, but who you spend it with, Irina
Filatova, the accountant, said of her humming social life.
That now seems a long time ago, before Ms. Filatova and about three million other
people in eastern Ukraine were plunged into the strange vortex of former Soviet
politics known as a frozen zone.
Governed by Russian-backed separatists, the provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk
have no patron, neither the Western-leaning government in Kiev nor Moscow.
Instead, they exist in a state of limbo that for Ms. Filatova, her friends and many
others, has proved both spiritually and economically debilitating.
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And as hard as life has become for Ms. Filatova, others are afflicted far more by
Ukraines civil war and its aftermath, the subject of a New York Times virtual reality
film about children, resilience and survival. Many live in the charred ruins of houses

hit by rockets and artillery. Others are homeless, with the sharp winter winds of the
steppes beginning to bite.
Continue reading the main story
THE DISPLACED
War has driven 30 million children from their homes. These are the stories of three
of them.

Introduction

Ukraine: Oleg

South Sudan: Chuol

Lebanon: Hana

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Children and older people suffer disproportionately. There is little money for schools
and to pay teachers salaries. Many teachers have simply left. Food is also running
short, and hunger is a daily fear for many youngsters.
Many older people have nowhere else to go, and their pensions have been cut off by
a hostile government in Kiev. Russia, burdened by its annexation of Crimea and the
collapse of oil prices, has no interest in filling the void.
But the experiences of Ms. Filatova and the few professionals like her who have
remained reflect most clearly the sharp decline of living standards in eastern
Ukraine, where a building sense of hopelessness pervades.
The changes came fast for Ms. Filatova. Startled by the rebels takeover of the
regional government, her flock of friends and fellow young professionals scattered
like birds. Very few, if any, have returned. Some determined souls, like her, stayed.
Things went from bad to worse. The rebel zone rapidly sank into a chaotic and
lawless state that had no place for the tax auditing company where she had worked.
When the firm folded, Ms. Filatovas once-respectable salary for Ukraine of about
$750 a month turned to dust. She now earns a paltry $85 a month keeping the
books for a public school.
But the new job came with a catch. Ms. Filatova was required to join a separatist
youth group, the Young Republic, where she has been expected to volunteer her
free time for Communist-themed activities, like marching with flags on holidays.

Its all very morose, she said of her experiences over the past two years. All the
young people left. Its mostly older and middle-aged people. Life left this piece of
land.
If history is any guide, this frozen state of affairs in eastern Ukraine could linger for
a long time.
The war between the Russian-backed so-called Peoples Republics of Luhansk and
Donetsk and the Ukrainian government broke out in April 2014 and quickly
escalated in cruelty and intensity, killing nearly 8,000 people, according to the
United Nations. About 1.3 million have been displaced.
The guns went quiet in eastern Ukraine in September, wrapping up with a cease-fire
but with no final settlement. This is a common arc of post-Soviet conflict, visible in
the Georgian enclaves of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, Nagorno-Karabakh in
Azerbaijan and in Transnistria, a strip of land on Moldovas border with Ukraine.
In each case, the Kremlin intervened or provided arms on the pretext of protecting
ethnic Russians or local allies, then it installed pro-Russian governments that it has
used to manipulate events in the host countries. The contested borders of frozen
zones also effectively guard against any further expansion of NATO, since no
country with an unresolved border conflict can join the alliance.
It is an amazing injustice, to be honest, Ms. Filatova said of the Kremlins policy of
creating frozen zones.
You sit here and think, Why me? she said. Why my family? Why did my life at
one moment turn out completely differently? And its not just me. Hundreds of
thousands of people just fell through the looking glass.
Not just the people, perhaps, but the entire territory. In the frozen zone, they live in
ruins, amid a ruined ideology, in the ruins of the old empire.
In government offices here, portraits of Stalin, looking avuncular and kind, gaze
down at visitors. The secret police in Donetsk are called the M.G.B., separated by
one letter from the K.G.B. The government in Kiev is depicted as neo-fascist in the
local news media.
There is a lot of pompous celebration of the victory over fascism, a love for Soviet
abbreviations, symbols and monuments, Vladimir Solovyov, a journalist with the
Russian newspaper Kommersant who was raised in Transnistria and left when he
was 16, said of life in the frozen conflict areas, noting that the same trends were
emerging in Donetsk.
With the war frozen, the future of the young people left in these regions is also put
on ice.

Vitaly V. Antyukov, 28, interviewed in a hospital over the summer, lost a foot to an
artillery explosion. And now neither Ukraine nor Russia is willing to pay the $500 or
so that he needs for a rudimentary prosthesis.
Oleg Teryokhin, an 11-year-old resident of the village of Nikishino, returned after
fleeing with his family to find his village devastated.
To be sure, the cease-fire has greatly improved safety for the family, although mines
and booby traps remain a risk.
But the political status of eastern Ukraine makes reconstruction a distant prospect
and means that the way Oleg lives today may not change for years to come.
The first time I saw it, I was in shock, Oleg said of seeing his destroyed village.
The second time I was still under an impression, but when I came back for the third
time I was already used to it.
Aleksandr A. Prokhanov, the editor of Zavtra, a Russian nationalist newspaper, and a
strong supporter of the breakaway republics, said there is disappointment in
Donetsk, which separated from Ukraine, compared with the city of Dnipropetrovsk,
which did not.
In Donetsk, people live worse than in Dnipropetrovsk, he said. But in
Dnipropetrovsk, people live worse than in San Francisco. And in San Francisco, they
live worse than in paradise. The level of life is not decisive.
Ms. Filatova scoffs at such rationalizations.
Of course we live worse, she said, adding that the conflict caught her at a time
when she had been stepping out on her own.
Her apartment, her first, was in a neighborhood that was pounded continually by
artillery. She said she once lay in her empty bathtub, holding her head, while the
windows shattered. She was forced to move back in with her parents. Its now
home, work, home, work and nothing else, she said.
If you consider it is somebodys plan to freeze this war, the lives of ordinary people
are not really valued, she said. Its unlikely anybody is paying attention to us.
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