For eight months, the Ukrainian town of Cherson was occupied by the Russian army. Knack spoke with residents about resistance, collaboration and the power of a thumbs-up.
The soft morning is interrupted by sharp whistling, then a bang. We take cover in a coffee house. Sitting next to us is Dasja, a 21-year-old journalist. She wears a bulletproof vest and nervously puffs on her electronic cigarette. "I'm afraid I've become addicted to adrenaline," she says. Followed by that piercing sound of artillery fire hitting once again.
The inhabitants of Cherson are already quite used to it. Shelling and bombing are the order of the day here. Six months ago, the Ukrainian army drove the Russians back across the Dnipro. Since then, Cherson has been on the front line. But what intrigues us is the period before liberation. For eight months, Russian soldiers held sway here. The inhabitants had to make a choice: collaborate, resist or keep quiet. None of those options was quite permanent. In this frontline café, a motley mix of humanitarian workers, civilian activists and journalists gather every morning. Day after day, we listen again to tribal guests with their stories about the dilemmas of war, which leave their mark to this day.
Defectors
“One dead and six wounded.” Dasja shows us the Telegram message with the sad outcome of this morning's attack. It would involve two 120-millimeter mortars. The last one hit the market during rush hour, about 300 meters away.
Dasha is back in Cherson for the first time since fleeing the city of her childhood. 'Ever since the annexation of Crimea in 2014, I had nightmares about the Russians coming,' she says. On 2 March 2022, that nightmare became a reality for her and some 300,000 fellow citizens of the city. Russian tanks drove ridges in the streets of Cherson, soldiers and planted a white-blue-red flag atop the town hall. They would stay for eight months, until 11 November. One day before taking the city, Dasha decided to flee.
'There was hardly any work,' she says. Those who worked in the public sector before the invasion faced a dilemma: resign or continue to work under Russian rule. Some succumbed to the higher wages paid by the Russians, but others were also really won over by the Russian narrative. 'There was a history teacher in high school who had strange ideas,' says Dasha. 'He had studied in St. Petersburg and preached archetypal conservative ideas about gender and lgbtq+ rights. He wanted to blacklist Ukrainian books. At school he was an outsider, but when the Russians came he started working for them as a propaganda journalist.
Just before the liberation of Cherson, he fled to Russia. I suppose he is happy now. Dasha moved to north-eastern Kharkiv just before the capture of her city, where she had previously served an internship as a journalist. She never expected it of herself, but she emerged there as a war journalist. Her mother and demented grandmother stayed behind. She regularly sent them money. 'During the occupation of, food prices in Cherson were hallucinatory,' she says. 'One day my mother asked me to transfer 1,000 hryvnia (about 25 euros, nvdr) for a pack of coffee. Normally such a pack costs less than a third of that in the store.
Residents had to choose: collaborate, resist or keep quiet.
Snipers
The bell of the café rings. A bulldog enters the room barking, followed by a broad grinning man. 'I haven't had breakfast yet and I've already had to throw myself on the floor.' He was near the market when he was bombed, he says. To the bartender: 'Filter coffee, Colombian blend.' He sidles down on a bar stool. Shakes hands with us. Introduces himself as Nikolai*, former sailor, humanitarian aid worker, coffee fanatic, heavy smoker, partisan. 'Do you have a cigarette for me? 'His phone is fused to his hand. Every so often it rings, followed by a short conversation, sometimes peppered with Russian swear words. As in most cities in eastern Ukraine, Russian is the main language here. Nikolai deals with the logistics of relief efforts. Donors from all over the world send vital supplies to the liberated city, but they must also reach their destination. 'Twenty electric lights? Where? For Antonivka? Give me an hour. ''You guys have a a car? Can you give me an ride?' Half an hour later we have to duck when we drive our Volkswagen van under the blown Antonivka bridge. A week later, at the pillars of the same bridge, Ukrainian journalist Bohdan Bitik will be killed by a Russian sniper.
"Logistics is the biggest challenge for the relief effort," Nikolai says on the way back.That becomes clear on our next destination:Alexandrivka. Alexandrivka used to be a village of fishermen and farmers, but is now largely bombed to the ground.There was heavy fighting here during the Ukrainian recapture of the province of Kherson. The damage is enormous.Villages in red zones, such as Alexandrivka, are rapidly becoming isolated. Humanitarian aid is getting through with difficulty. We meet Andrei, a 16-year-old boy. He visits people's homes and lists what they need. Mostly construction equipment, generators and cars to transport the goods, it turns out. In small villages like this one, humanitarian aid often falls back on people like Andrei, who take care of the remaining, often elderly residents.He takes us to his old school, which is completely in ruins. Remarkable are the many Soviet monuments in the city. Among the broken buildings stand statues commemorating the victories over Nazi Germany. A giant Soviet mosaic adorns the facade of the shattered school.Under the debris of that school, according to Andrei, Russian corpses are now rotting.
'Under the rubble of the school lie Russians rotting.'
Torture
Vika got into trouble because of her resistance. 'I worked as a volunteer in a center that offered humanitarian aid to victims of the war, together with my mother. Someone there must have snitched on me, because suddenly the Russians were at the gate. ‘I was taken to a cellar in Bilozerka (a village an hour and a half's drive from Cherson, nvdr).' Her mother was released the same day, but Vika was held for 24 days. They searched her home and found yellow ribbons and other patriotic materials, including a homemade postcard with an illustration of Himar missiles falling on a Russian position, with the caption underneath: 'Make a wish, dreams come true.'
In the days that followed, Vika was tortured and interrogated, but she did not utter a word. She was subjected to multiple electric shocks and beaten. 'At one point, the electric torture lasted so long that I thought I would not survive.' Finally, Vika and four fellow prisoners were released just before the Ukrainian army liberated Cherson. 'They said to me, "If you go back to Cherson, we know where to find you." But I replied, "Sorry guys, I'm going home.” ’ She brings up the tangible memories of those days. The bloodstained slippers she stepped home with. The burlap sack pulled over her head each time she was tortured. A picture on her phone of a finger without a nail - she had pinched it during the torture.
Her torturers were separatists from the Donbas regionin eastern Ukraine. She wants justice. 'I don't want them to just die,' she says. 'I want them to suffer as much as I did. I want them to cry "Glory to Ukraine "to me on their knees.''And I would shoot their knees to pieces,' Nikolai adds from a beach chair. Then the company falls silent to listen to the whistling in the distance. 'That's the Ukrainian response to the shelling of the center,' Nikolai says. It takes about 40 seconds for the fired mortars to reach the other side. That means the Ukrainian army is aiming deep into enemy territory in retaliation for this morning's death. We drive back to the café at the front. Dasha is still sitting there, editing a video about dogs in the Ukrainian army. She slams her laptop shut. Her work, too, is done for the day. The sun is sinking behind the Soviet housing blocks of Cherson. We have to hurry: curfew here starts as early as 7 p.m. Come, one last gin tea as we watch Nikolai drive away from us with his bulldog.
Text by Johannes Decat
Knack 31 May 2023 - Full article