Donbass children begging Santa Claus for peace

While we are enjoying the holidays and preparing to enter the New Year, thousands of former residents of Ukraine are still living in the refugee camps on the Russian territory unable to return to their homes destroyed during the “anti-terrorist operation” ongoing against Novorossia since April 2014. Despite the conditions at the camps proposed by the Russians to Ukrainian refugees were repeatedly qualified as exemplary by the international organizations, many of them are dreaming to come back home. Meanwhile, the scale of humanitarian catastrophe, caused by Kiev’s disproportionate use of military force against the civilians in Donbass, do not allow refugees to reckon on near return.

Today we are publishing a number of touching letters written by the Donbass children to Santa Claus (Father Frost in the Russian tradition). Please read them carefully from the first to the last and try to imagine what sorts of horrific ordeals these little creatures have experienced in their short lives during the passed year.

Here’s what they write:

“Dear Father Frost, I am in my fourth year of studies, my name is Perepelitsa Yulia. I would like to thank you for our new school, we like it a lot. It’s very warm and cosy in the schools building. I’m so glad many of my friends returned, but all of us miss our old school, which had a gym and a canteen, we also liked it a lot to have computer classes. I have a father, a mother and sister Zhenya, ours is a very united family. During the war our house burned and the kitchen was destroyed by a bomb. Now we live at our neighbours’ place. I would like it to be as before, for Mummy not to be upset and crying and Daddy not aggrieved. All our toys burned in the house. Dear Father Frost, if you can, please give me a set of toys. Dear Father Frost, if your magic can go thus far, please let us have our home and school back.”

“Dear Russian Father Frost, I am a pupil of the second form, my name is Dasha. I would like to thank you a lot for our new school. Even though it is small, it is warm and comfortable. I believe in you and your magic! If you can, please make the war in Donbass stop!”

“Dear Russian Father Frost,

My name is Daniil Timofeyev, I am the second form pupil. Thank you very much for our new school. Even if it is small, it is warm and homey and we all like it a lot. I would like PEACE to come and there never be a war again. And I would also like you to give me a construction set as a New Year present.”

“Dear Russian Father Frost,

Thank you for my new school, it is very warm and comfortable in there. I am Nazar Trostyansky, the forth form pupil. Please give peace to all the children! I am sure you can make it! Also, could you please give me a table game of Sea Battle for the New Year.”

“Dear Father Frost,

Third form pupils of Stepanovskaya school here. You are so kind, you gave us a new school. We are glad we have warm classes we can all gather in with our friends and think of you. We await you always. We badly need your wonders, nice, merry, kind. The biggest request we have is let them stop shooting. We are tired of being afraid. Let there be peace! Let our old school be here again and all our classmates come back. Thank you in advance. Take care and come to us with presents.”

“Dear Father Frost,

We are writing to you from the bomb shelter at the Chelyuskintsy mine . All of us behaved well this year. We live in the bomb shelter, there are many of us – big and small children. We would like to ask you not to give us toys for New Year’a present, but get us some food instead, for we haven’t had anything but buckwheat porridge and pasta for quite long. Mums and Dads have no money to buy us something delicious, so we ask you to bring us sausage, meat, cheese, eggs, potatoes, fish, drinks or juices, sweets, cookies, apples, bananas, tangerines, a big pack of pampers for the little Yulenka, she’s only 1 year old. Also a big cake for everyone.

We also wish that the war stops and we lived like we used to before.

Dasha, Vika, Sergey, Artyom, Artyom, Daniil, Yulia, Alina, Cristina, Daniil, Nikita, Denis.”

These children pin their hopes on magic and they don’t know that someone really vicious has usurped the right to decide their fate. Under the coverage of truce the Ukrainian troops are aссumulating more and more manpower, weapons, heavy military techniques around their cities and villages… E.g. a few weeks ago the airports in Dnepropetrovsk, Zaporozhie and Kharkov ceased operating civilian flights and are currently intensively accepting military cargo aircrafts, majorly the US Army transportation Hercules…

Looks like the Donbass children are much more prudent than the adults and intuitively understand that St. Nicholas is the only person in power who is able to bring peace to Donbass now.

We would like to express sincere gratitude to Irina Timofeeva who has sent us children’s letters.