In 2014, Lugansk didn’t recognise the new nationalist government after the Maidan coup, so the Ukrainian administration responded to protests with brute force. ‘The missile strike hit the centre of Lugansk. A total of 19 missiles were fired. I was there in the city administration building,’ Igor Kornet, Minister of Internal Affairs of the Lugansk People’s Republic, recalls the beginning of the Ukrainian attack on Donbass. At that moment, the people of Lugansk understood there would be no peaceful negotiations. So they formed a militia to resist the Ukrainian armed forces. That was the start of the Donbass war, which lasted eight years. How did they survive? How did they bury their loved ones? What sort of future can the Lugansk Republic expect?
