DIY Country

In spring 2014, following the annexation of the Crimea by Russia, groups of armed pro-Russian rebels in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk seized local administrative building, called for a referendum and eventually declared independence from Kiev. Antony Butts first came to Donetsk in April 2014 and met people who became the work-a-day rebels at the barricades while building a new country. As they gradually let him into their lives, he began working on an extensive record of what has been happening in the region - chaos, adventure, geopolitics, opportunism, heroism, and broken lives, revealing the psychology and motivations of these men and women creating a “new country”.