by Lorenzo Cremonesi
In Kherson, where Ukrainians who have changed their shirts are traitors to be tracked down. The advance along the Dnieper continues, cutting off about 30,000 Russian soldiers
In the areas liberated by the Ukrainian army, yesterday’s hunters have become today’s refugees. Ukrainian citizens, sometimes also relevant figures such as mayors and police officers, who, with the arrival of the occupying Russian army in early March, decided to change their shirts and work with the Moscow agents. “For us, they are traitors, in some cases they helped the enemy capture our partisans and anyone who tried to remain actively loyal to the national resistance. They must be sought, brought to justice and punished,” argue the commanders of the Ukrainian units that are gradually advancing along the Dnieper, with the increasingly clear intention of fleeing the approximately 30,000 Russian soldiers in the city of Kherson and in the region to be shortened west of the great river. We also spent ten days with them on the battle front beyond the village of Dudchany, and it was clear that the issue of hunting down “collaborators” is destined to grow in parallel with Ukraine’s military successes.
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«Together with the soldiers of the assault units, intelligence patrols consisting of locals and officers sent directly from Kyiv arrive. They almost always already have lists of names, telephone numbers and addresses and know whom to look for. But they also stop by to ask for information from the few of us who are left. We are the only ones who can provide accurate updates,” says Oleg Potapov, 32, who lives in the village of Mirolyubivka, among other places. It happens that the police only stop the people they are looking for for a few hours. The central commands’ order is to be careful not to confuse those who spent a quiet life coexisting benevolently with the occupiers, who in many cases were Ukrainians from the pro-Russian Donetsk and Luhansk Autonomous Republics, with spies and activists who openly side with Moscow instead. . “The restaurant he cooked for Russian soldiers shouldn’t be punished, but the mayor, who deliberately didn’t tear down the monument with the names of our dead in the fighting since 2014 to facilitate the persecution of their families, must at least be thrown into the cell.” , explains Sergei , a 26-year-old graduate of the special forces in the tiny urban center of Mylove.
The subject opens up a myriad of tensions and suspicions that risk poisoning the celebration of liberation in small communities. “The Russians captured and tortured me in the last two weeks of March. I know they had lists, they were looking for me,” explains 42-year-old mayor of Novooleksandrivka, Aleksander Levechko. He was replaced by a former community worker, 50-year-old Tatiana Evghenj, who has since gone into hiding. “We are actively researching it. But I want to stress that he really was a fringe person. It was a constant. The best of us immediately fled to the areas controlled by our government, and they were the majority. Russians have found support among the frustrated, the failed, and those who previously didn’t matter because they weren’t worth anything. We had 1,500 residents, about 500 stayed and only 25 of them fled with the retreating Russians,” says Levechko, who has since returned to his office.
The approach of the bombing raid on the capital Kherson raises the problem. Before the war, more than 320,000 people lived here, apparently fewer than 100,000 remained, who the Russians now want to transfer en masse to the west bank of the Dnieper. Kyiv wants to capture Vladimir Saldo, the former army major whom Moscow appointed regional governor, along with his deputy Kirill Stremousov as soon as possible. It was they who, aided by a plethora of local administrators, oiled the occupation machine with great fanfare up until last month’s farce referendum and on September 30, Putin’s announcement of annexation to the “Russian mother” of Kherson. , Zaporizhzhia, Lugansk and Donetsk. Meanwhile, the entire Kremlin-designed building is falling apart, but in the liberated areas there are those who are demanding justice. asks 48-year-old Alona Kovalec loudly from the ruins of her yard in Mirolyubivka. “My husband Oleh was a partisan. Every evening he reported the Russian GPS positions to our artillery by telephone. But there were so many spies among us. I know who I am, I also know that they gave our names to Russian agents. So they captured him, tortured him and killed him,” he says in one breath. For them, liberation is yet to come.
October 19, 2022 (change October 20, 2022 | 08:14)
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