The war in Ukraine: the mayoress of Ivankiv and those who died like dogs

On the morning of February 25, 2022, one day after the start of the war, a column of Russian troops

, 85 kilometers northwest of their intended destination, the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

They arrived at the main square and were surprised to discover that it was empty, the streets too.

The Russian soldiers knocked on the doors of the houses and asked why no one had come out to receive them.

The neighbors looked at them perplexed.

"Rather the question is,

they answered them.

“We have come to free you,” the Russians explained.

"Whose?"

"From the Nazis."

"Those who rule in this country."

"Look," the neighbors responded.

“There are no Nazis here.

You can go back to Russia in peace.

We don't need to be released."

Members of the Ukrainian territorial defense in the city of Ivankiv, kyiv region.

Photo Reuters

no flowers

This is how the first contact between invaders and invaded took place in Ivankiv (population 10,500), according to what the mayor, Tetiana Svyrydenko, told me.

As she spoke, sitting in her office, I thought she might have been describing the opening scene of a movie about the failure of the Russian assault on Kiev last year, about Vladimir Putin's colossal mistake in thinking his troops would conquer the Ukraine in a couple of minutes. weeks.

Fifty-year-old, short, with short black hair, smiling and, at the same time, tough, Mrs. Svyrydenko would be the protagonist and narrator of the film.

She would comment, for example, that

was not the only thing that perplexed the Russian soldiers.

"The quality of the roads," he told me, "the lighting of the streets at night, the bathrooms inside and not outside the houses and, above all, the air conditioning units in the walls: you couldn't believe it, the poor, almost all of them youngsters from the most distant and decrepit Russian provinces”.

So bewildered were they that they waited nearly two weeks before cutting off Ivankiv's access to mobile networks, allowing the creation of

that was enormously useful to those in the high command of the Ukrainian army.

A group of audacious neighbors told them that during the first 48 hours of the invasion, more than 700 Russian military vehicles passed through the highway that passes through their town on the way to the capital.

As we would see in the most dramatic action scene of the hypothetical film, one of the first disasters suffered by the invaders was at a roundabout about eight kilometers south of Ivankiv where about twenty Russian tanks stopped.

The locals gave the enemy's position to their own,

and Russian corpses.

The day after, the Russians cut off all communication between the town and the outside world and began searching for Mrs. Svyrydenko.

Possibly to retaliate, she told me, but most certainly to make him an offer he'd have a hard time refusing.

“They would have pressured me to collaborate.

To continue exercising as mayoress but in the name of Russia.

So that he would appear on Moscow television to thank the 'liberators'.

I was never going to do that and I was preparing to die.

I knew that when I told them not to,

.”

A satellite photo shows part of a military convoy south of Ivankiv, Ukraine, on February 28, 2022. Photo Reuters

He fled his home hours before the arrival of three Russian military intelligence agents and went into hiding.

Her children in her kyiv saw a report about her on Ukrainian television spreading a rumor that the Russians had captured or killed her.

It was not so.

As we would see in the film in 'thriller' mode, the stubborn Mrs. Svyrydenko would manage to evade her Russian pursuers for three weeks, until March 31, the date of the happy ending, the true liberation of Ivankiv by the Ukrainian troops and the

of the Russians towards the northern border with Belarus, Putin's ally country, mission abandoned.

no happy ending

Well, "happy ending" was not for all the inhabitants of Ivankiv.

Mrs. Svyrydenko showed me that tough side I referred to earlier, an aspect of her personality that she shares with enough of her compatriots to think that Russia will never subjugate her country.

"Fortunately," he told me, "only 48 people died here at Russian hands."

'Only'?

"For the size of our population it is not much

. "

I guess not…I answered.

"Well, six other people disappeared."

How did they disappear?

"They had collaborated with the Russians."

And what happened to them?

“One cannot be changing sides.

Are you with us or against us?

  Yes, but what happened to them?

"They were dogs and they died like dogs."

How did they die like dogs?

"This is war."

Yes, but… The little lady mayor gave me an icy look.

Her message: that she was not going to answer my questions anymore, that she stop insisting.

Ivankiv, Northern Ukraine

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