Ukraine closes Kherson to identify Russian collaborators

Kherson is an officially closed city, cut off from the rest of Ukraine.

Entering and leaving it is only possible with the authorization of the Army.

The provincial capital, liberated last week from Russian occupation, is gradually returning to normality, as shown by the fact that the first passenger train arrived at its station on Saturday in more than eight months, the time the city was under the yoke of Russia.

But the priority of the military administration is to find the collaborators that the occupier had, informants who would have betrayed hundreds of people related to the Ukrainian forces.

Many of these people are missing or have been victims of torture by Russian units, according to testimonies collected by EL PAÍS.

Vitali Smirnoff was beaten up for saving lives.

His body is bruised from the blows he received on November 11 from a group of Russian soldiers in a basement in Kherson.

Smirnoff was a technician for the city's television tower.

On November 10, one day before the Russian troops left the city and the west bank of the Dnieper River, Russian military planted explosives in and around the tower.

Smirnoff, according to his story, managed to get some 300 residents of the area to be warned and get out of there.

The tower was brought down on the night of 10/11. In the morning, a vehicle stopped Smirnoff on the street.

The occupants of it hooded him and transferred him to one of the 11 detention and torture centers that, according to the Ukrainian Interior Ministry, the Russians used in the region.

The ministry has specified that they are investigating at least 436 possible cases of war crimes in the province.

“They gave me such a beating that I lost consciousness.

I got it back hours later, when they had already left me abroad”, says this man, still under the trauma of the experience.

“Someone ratted me out,” he adds.

Kherson was taken on March 2, just six days after the start of the Russian offensive, with virtually no military opposition or civil resistance.

The Government maintains an open investigation to clarify the level of internal collaboration that Moscow had in its lightning advance in southern Ukraine.

The most prominent names in the Ukrainian civil administration who supported Russia have fled to the other side of the Dnieper along with the occupying troops.

Those who did not flee are those who are now sought by the kyiv secret services.

"The priority is to secure the city, so that no information is leaked to the enemy," says a spokesman for the Ukrainian military command in the Kherson province.

The Army severely restricts the work of the media in the area, alleging security reasons.

In the city of Kherson (southeastern Ukraine) 75,000 people remain, 25% of those who inhabited it before the war, according to Yaroslav Yanushevich, head of the Kherson military administration.

In the image, a child receives humanitarian aid in the center of the recently liberated Ukrainian city, last Friday. BULENT KILIC (AFP)

Thousands of residents of Kherson crowd these days in the Plaza de la Libertad to collect humanitarian aid distributed by the authorities and non-governmental organizations.

In the photo, an elderly woman checks a food canister, Thursday in the center of Kherson.Chris McGrath (Getty Images)

Outside of the square and Ushakova Avenue, Kherson is a town with little traffic, patrolled by security forces and accompanied by the pounding of Ukrainian artillery: Russian positions are just a kilometer from the city, on the other side of the Dnieper river.

In the image, a woman waits her turn to receive humanitarian aid on Friday, in the city center. BULENT KILIC (AFP)

Kherson is an officially closed city, cut off from the rest of Ukraine.

In the image, residents wait for the supply of aid, on Friday. BULENT KILIC (AFP)

Entering and leaving the city is only possible if you have authorization from the Army.

In the picture, a boy holds several loaves of bread and other supplies, on Thursday. BULENT KILIC (AFP)

Kherson, capital of the province of the same name, liberated last week from Russian occupation, is gradually returning to normality.

In the image, residents of the city wait for help, this Saturday. BULENT KILIC (AFP)

The Spanish chef José Andrés, founder of the NGO World Central Kitchen, distributes food to the residents of Kherson, last Thursday.Bernat Armangue (AP)

The first train, dubbed the "Victory Train," arrived in liberated Kherson on Saturday while the city's infrastructure is being restored.

In the image, residents of the city charge their phones at the station, one of the few buildings with electricity, on Saturday.GENYA SAVILOV (AFP)

The priority of the military administration is to find the collaborators that Russia had during the occupation, informers who would have betrayed hundreds of people related to the Ukrainian forces.

In the picture, a man collects blankets during the relief supply in the center of Kherson on Thursday.

BULENT KILIC (AFP)

Distribution of humanitarian aid in the center of Kherson on Friday.

Denise Brown, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine, explained that responding to the psychological damage suffered by the local inhabitants, especially children, is one of the priorities for the UN teams that are deploying in the area. .

Bernat Armangue (AP)

"The utter trauma that this population has experienced over the last eight months is very much at the center of our agenda with the World Health Organization and UNICEF," Brown said at a news conference via video link from Ukraine on Monday.

In the image, a girl cries while she waits for help in the city, last Friday. MURAD SEZER (REUTERS)

"These people have been going through this for eight months, so I think there is a cumulative effect," Denise Brown, the United Nations humanitarian coordinator in Ukraine, said of the psychological impact of the war on Kherson residents.

In the image, a group of residents of the city wait to collect supplies, on Thursday. BULENT KILIC (AFP)

According to information to which Brown referred, there are children in this area who have stopped speaking after months of asking them to remain silent in the midst of attacks, which set off alarm sirens almost daily. MURAD SEZER (REUTERS)

Despite the dramatic situation, the diplomat said that the international aid convoy that entered Kherson on Monday was received with great joy by the city's population, which is now trying to return to a certain normality.

In the image, a woman picks up a box with help, on Thursday. BULENT KILIC (AFP)

Brown explained that the aid that entered the city on Monday is "just a drop in the ocean" of all that is needed and that he will try to get there over the next few weeks.

BULENT KILIC (AFP)

The UN and the Ukrainian authorities, Brown pointed out, have spent months preparing a campaign to support the population in the face of winter.

The diplomat said that the situation that most worries her before the arrival of the cold is that of the elderly in rural areas or with mobility difficulties.

In the image, taken from inside a car, residents of Kherson queue to collect supplies in the city center on Thursday. BULENT KILIC (AFP)

A volunteer from the NGO World Central Kitchen distributes food in Kherson's Freedom Square on Friday.

OLEG PETRASYUK (EFE)

An elderly woman collects a bag with humanitarian aid from the NGO World Central Kitchen of chef José Andrés, in the center of Kherson, on Thursday. Bernat Armangue (AP)

75,000 people remain in the city, 25% of those who inhabited it before the war, according to Yaroslav Yanushevich, head of the Kherson military administration.

Thousands of them crowd these days in the Plaza de la Libertad to collect the humanitarian aid distributed by the authorities and non-governmental organizations.

Shortly before their withdrawal, the occupying forces sabotaged the electricity and water supply.

Outside of the square and Ushakova Avenue, Kherson is a town with little traffic, patrolled by security forces and accompanied by the pounding of Ukrainian artillery: Russian positions are just a kilometer from the city, on the other side of the Dnieper.

Vladislav Nedostup is a sociologist by training but in his pre-war life he ran a company that sold car parts online.

On Friday he was waiting in Freedom Square for some journalists to bring him some bottles of Zhyvchyk, a Ukrainian soft drink, his favorite drink, from Odessa.

People came up to be photographed with him: Nedostup was a member of the network of partisans who, during the occupation, risked their lives giving the Ukrainian Armed Forces all possible information about the movement of the invading units, also about the collaborating Ukrainians. with the Russians.

“By collaborator we clearly understand those who passed information to the Russians, or the companies that collaborated with them to curry favor with them,” Nedostup explains, “but not the small business that needed to get ahead.”

Vitali Smirnoff, victim of torture by Russian troops in Kherson, in front of the television tower dynamited by the invader. Victor Reis

Igor Ochorski almost never left his apartment for fear of being arrested.

He was lucky, he says, because no neighbor betrayed him and because he did not appear in the regional government census as he was registered in kyiv: Ochorski served in 2016 in the Ukrainian Army in Donbas, during the war against pro-Russian separatists.

Hundreds of these Kherson veterans have disappeared during the months under Russian control, according to Nedostup.

“The real collaborators are the ones who were in charge and are still in charge here,” says Ochorski, and continues with a question that invites reflection: “Can you accuse the little citizen who was jobless, hungry and with a family of collaborating? what to keep?

On February 24, when Vladimir Putin ordered the start of the invasion of Ukraine, Nedostup and his father volunteered to be part of the Territorial Defense Forces, the paramilitary units formed by civilians under government orders.

Some 600 men from Kherson made up the local Territorial Defense, according to Nedostup.

“On March 1, when the Russians surrounded the city and we had already defended the withdrawal of the 59th [Motorized] Brigade at the Antonov Bridge, we received the order to demobilize, then survival began,” Nedostup recounts.

arrests daily

A rule of the partisans was to know the less information from their companions, the better, in case they were captured by the Russians, Nedostup details.

While he was attending this newspaper, this 28-year-old also exchanged messages with agents of the Security Service of Ukraine (SSU).

The SSU was interrogating a colleague of his from the Territorial Defense Forces: "he is a person who was detained and released by the Russians, and the SSU wants to know why, if he provided information."

Nedostup corroborates that arrests like his colleague's are made every day.

“Police work to ensure the safety of the city has only just begun,” Governor Yanushevich declared.

Suddenly, an old woman appears in Freedom Square, rebuking the Ukrainian soldiers, accusing them of being "Nazis", as Russian propaganda repeats: "I was born in 1943 and in the Soviet Union we had everything, not like now" , the woman shouts: "You bomb our people in the Donbas, in Russia there is a future and here only misery, the girls of Ukraine only expect to be prostitutes in Europe."

Nobody rebuked the woman and Nedostup reminded the journalist that something like this in the reverse case, during the Russian occupation, meant disappearing from the map.

Oleg Timkov, journalist and poet, recounted last Monday from Freedom Square that several veterans of the Ukrainian Army in Donbas were arrested in his building, without anyone knowing where they are.

Timkov also provided EL PAÍS with details of a murder that went around the world, that of Yurii Kerpatenko, conductor of the Kherson orchestra.

Kerpatenko, who had publicly spoken out against the invasion, refused to work at a concert organized by the occupying forces.

Russian soldiers went to his house to arrest him and he refused to open the door, Timkov explains: the military opened fire to break down the door and fatally wounded him.

It is unknown where his body is located.

looted schools

Anya Alexandrovskaya secretly taught drawing classes for her students at a Kherson primary school.

The classes were online and she shows the place in her house where she hid the school supplies.

“Working for the Ukrainian administration meant getting arrested, so just in case, nobody in my building knew that I was still giving lessons, there are a lot of people here who were born and raised in the Soviet Union, you know what I mean,” Alexandrovskaya explains.

The facilities of her school, which specializes in children with physical disabilities, were looted and Ukrainian books destroyed.

Alexandrovskaya has a second home on the eastern bank of the Dnieper;

She went one day in early November to check the condition of the house, and what she saw she will not forget: “My

It is on the road that goes to Crimea [the peninsula illegally annexed by Russia in 2014] and convoys of escorted trucks with all kinds of cargo stolen from Kherson, from public works metal to tons of grain, kept passing by.”

EL PAÍS also confirmed last Thursday the looting of the main collections of Kherson's cultural heritage, transferred to Crimea.

Alexandrovkaya's rules of survival were basic but fundamental: let yourself be seen just enough on the street, and never after two in the afternoon, to avoid random arrests;

Never carry your cell phone with you, in case it was confiscated, and avoid having any Ukrainian symbol or identification.

One of the most detailed testimonies of torture that have appeared in the Ukrainian media is that of a sympathizer of

a political group with origins in the extreme right, today incorporated as a battalion in the Ukrainian Armed Forces.

This person was possibly betrayed and in his house they found symbols of

.

He was locked up in a building on Teploenergetikiv street and suffered savage mistreatment along with another dozen prisoners with whom he shared confinement.

Dmitro Lubinets, the Ombudsman in Ukraine, denounced this week that in the detention and punishment centers set up by the Russians in Kherson there were even cells dedicated to adolescents.

On the northern outskirts of Kherson there is a supermarket where dozens of residents queue up, waiting to refill water jugs to drink and wash.

Among them they shared on Friday morning experiences of terror, especially psychological, that they suffered.

Yevhenii Babich, 30, has two missing friends: one is a former police officer, his name was included as such in the City Hall records;

the other was an activist who in the first days of the surrender of the city demonstrated in the street against the Russian soldiers.

“Our lives were worthless in the months of occupation,” says Babich.

Sasha Medvedev, 33, was waiting at the supermarket to help carry someone who needed it.

He is a refugee from a village in the Russian-occupied Zaporizhia province.

“I don't know anyone who has disappeared, but they could shoot you without warning, I know that firsthand,” says Medvedev.

Asked about the risk of Kherson being invaded again with local support, Medvedev affirmed that many collaborators fled the city, "and many others have been killed by the partisans."

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