By ANATOLY DUBOVIK in Dnipro, eastern Ukraine
A facebook post from 22 March. The shops that sell manufactured consumer goods are starting to open now. Most are still closed, but the process is underway. Shops selling expensive clothes, on the other hand, are covered in signs saying “final sale” and “this shop is closing”.
Companies are also, bit by bit, starting work again. In the building where I work, there are nine or ten offices on our floor. We first opened up again a week ago, and today three offices are already functioning. These are all industrial companies, not trade or retail outfits.
Private businesses are obliged to accept payments by bank card, they can not do cash-only. Breaches can lead to a fine of 3400 hryvna [105 euros].
Yesterday the evacuation of the Dnepropetrovsk Historical Museum got underway. It opened in 1849, on the initiative of a local schoolteacher. In 1942-43 the Germans looted it, but it was restored and is now one of the best in Ukraine. It has several hundred thousand artefacts, dating back to the paleolithic. There is even an Egyptian mummy. Where all this is being taken to is a secret, of course.
It’s a shame that it’s a long way from where I live to the museum. I don’t know when I’ll be able to go and find out whether they have taken away the “stone women” that stand (stood?) in front of the museum. Several of them are in the photo. My late first wife, Anna Dubovik, was involved in discovering the one on the left. That was when she was a student in the faculty of history, and did a practical summer course on archaeological digs.
For the first time, I met people in Dnipro who had been driven out of Mariupol: a family with children. Gloomy, exhausted. I offered to buy them whatever they needed. At first they didn’t accept, but I convinced them – because I was in a position to help. I took them sausage, bread, cheese, ryazhenka [a type of plain yogurt], apples and oranges.
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