An the Old Arbat, one of Moscow’s best-known pedestrian zones, there has been a photo exhibition for a long time: It’s called “The Children of the Donbass”. Black and white portrait photos show seriously looking children, short texts introduce them: Katja, ten years old, was in kindergarten when the war broke out and had to run for her life with her grandmother on the way home; Dima, six years old, has been living in the basement with his mother for years. The stories, the truthfulness of which cannot be verified, are intended to show why Russia allegedly had to attack its neighboring country at the end of February: because children in eastern Ukraine have been under fire from Ukrainians since 2014. Until recently, the exhibition was something special in Moscow, namely one of the rare cases when war intruded into the everyday life of Russians. For almost seven months these were two neatly separated worlds: there the “special operation”, which was carried out by professional Russian contract soldiers and went “according to plan”, here normal life. Then, on Wednesday morning, President Vladimir Putin announced “partial mobilization.” And the war suddenly arrived in Russia.
A few hours after Putin’s mobilization speech, most pedestrians carelessly stroll past the photos of the Donbass children. But some stop and read. Pawel, a tall, lanky man in a hooded jacket and cap, is also looking at the pictures. He was born near Donetsk in eastern Ukraine, but has long lived in central Russia’s Perm, where he works for a retail chain. He is on a business trip in Moscow, he is supposed to find new business partners: because of the sanctions, some suppliers have lost their jobs, for example for German tools.
