How the people of Kherson helped the Armed Forces of Ukraine during the occupation
The story of Maksym Kovalenko’s family, prepared by The Ukrainian View team
Until February 24, I had worked as a waiter in Kherson and had been a part-time motion designer at the same time. On February 24, I got a phone call from a friend. Her parents live near Crimea. Roughly speaking, their village is on the border of Crimea and the Kherson region. She said, “It has begun.”
At first I did not understand what exactly had begun? It was around 5 in the morning. Then I heard that she was hysterical. I went outside and saw that Chornobaivka Airport was on fire, I had never seen such a fire before. I opened the news — indeed, the war has begun.
I called my parents, they lived with my sister and her husband near Skadovsk, in the village of Ukrainka. They did not know what to do. They did not want to leave right away and said that as soon as it got hot, they would leave immediately.
The first month was very stressful. My sister has a child, it wasn’t even one year old at that time. There was no food or diapers, everything was sold out, it was difficult for them to even find some food. A month passed like this, then everything stabilized a little. Products from Crimea began to appear, as far as I understood. It was calm in the parents’ village until June. The only thing was that there were problems with the Internet and connection. My dad is quite an active person, a volunteer and a military reservist, so I was very worried about him all the time.
Everything was more difficult in Kherson. My friend and I went out once a month and looked for places to buy food. During the period of living in the occupation, I realized that being a vegan is quite possible, there was no meat at all. I lost a lot of weight, about 12 kg. I also learned to cook 22 dishes from only potatoes.
At the beginning of May, billboards began to appear in Kherson that Kherson is a city with a “Russian history”. I began to notice that some of them were covered in paint, but not all of them. I found ordinary light bulbs in the house, unscrewed them, and filled them with paint and eggs. My friend and I went to the center, it was risky. However, we threw paint at 3 billboards and almost got caught. It was a good feeling that we had done something.
I published a lot of pro-Ukrainian things, and my Instagram is open. I was aware that if not today, then tomorrow they will come for me. They started coming for my friends and they simply disappeared, no one could contact them.
There was no work, I lived on savings. I set Easter as the date when something would need to change. I thought that if the war would last so long, I would have to move somewhere. I was also afraid that many acquaintances had disappeared.
When I started looking for options to leave, all possible ways were closed. For a month, I had been monitoring the groups that had information about departure. I started telling my parents that it was time to leave, because we had been waiting for 3 months. They told me that it was calmer in their village, so they didn’t want to.
On June 20, I was able to contact the carrier and we agreed that we would leave on the 14th. It wasn’t free, I paid $700 for one person. Roughly speaking, I was traveling with one bag, and it contained my whole life, everything valuable that could be sold. I stayed in a hostel for a week and then looked for an apartment. When I found an apartment, I started looking for a job.
In the meantime, a local gauleiter appeared in the parents’ village. No one knew him, except that he was a relative of some woman who once lived there a long time ago. He walked with two guards, Russians, they were armed with assault rifles. There were Russians who looked like homeless people: ragged, dirty. And those two were probably FSB officers, because they seemed to have just come out of a military store: quality weapons, quality uniforms.
It started with the school. The occupiers called the principal, and this is my wonderful first teacher. She made something incredible out of the school. A physics teacher, actually a tractor driver, was appointed a new principal. He loved and loves everything Russian, it was noticeable even when I was in school. All employees of the school were told, if they didn’t not support it, they should leave.
My sister decided to leave on August 29. She packed her things and went with my friends in 3 cars, they had the opportunity to take more things. In order not to be interrogated at the checkpoints, they emphasized that there was a child. They stood in line to leave for four days and immediately went to Ternopil, because Zaporizhzhia was being shelled.
Parents decided to stay. They said that they did not hold on to material things, but they had been working for the house all their lives. In fact, the construction had finished just before the war. My dad is also a farmer, he has fields and makes a living from it.
One evening I had a video call with my parents, because the Internet appeared, albeit Russian. I was so happy to finally see them. The next morning, my sister called and said that dad had been kidnapped.
The day before, we laughed that the Russians had forgotten that he was a patriot. But he was kidnapped. My mother didn’t want to say anything to me or my sister. However, when a person goes missing, a rumor spreads throughout the village, somebody told my sister.
About 20 people, professional soldiers, not those homeless people, came to our neighborhood. They started shouting, “Kovalenko, come out, are you here?” The man who lived there said that he was not Kovalenko, and they started hitting him in the stomach. His wife said that Kovalenko lived in a neighboring house, that is, in ours…
They arrived at my parents’ house, but my dad had heard those screams. He had 2 phones, one of which he used to transmit information to the armed forces. So the first thing he did was go and hide it in the hay. He came out, they were already at the door, talking to my mother. My father is also a hunter, so they wanted to check the rifle and the documents. Those who stayed with my mother said, “You are well off, I see you have such cool wallpaper, when I am well off, I will have the same for myself.”
When my mom went outside, she saw dad being dragged to the car. Before that he was hit. She asked where he was being dragged, and they answered, “We’ll talk, and, if he’s lucky, let him go.” She heard the sound of tape from the car and realized that father was being tied up.
In the morning, she went to the military administration, asked what to do, where my father was. She was told that no one knew and that she should wait for a few days.
Dad returned in the evening, however, he could barely speak, he was scared and shocked. The Russians knew everything: that he was a volunteer, that he went to military training, that in the first days of the war he organized a patrol in our village. My godfather, with whom I do not communicate, supported Russia and betrayed my dad.
The father was thrown out behind a checkpoint in Skadovsk, and it is 20 km from the village to Skadovsk. His phone was taken away, his documents were returned. They said that if he wanted to live, he should leave. He was forced to apologize to this local gauleiter for his pro-Ukrainian views, he was threatened. Dad agreed with everything.
He was walking to the village, beaten, and then his friends gave him a ride. At home, the parents began to pack quickly. It just so happened that there was a power outage that night. There is a grandmother and her husband who live across the street from my parents. For them, the USSR is forever. They supported Russia and were watching my parents while they were running around at night with a candle to pack what they had earned in 20 years. No one went to sleep that night. At about 4 am, mom and dad drove out into the field so he wouldn’t be taken again, and there was a car at the corner, following them. The Russians wanted my dad to leave. We were very lucky that they didn’t want to kill him.
My parents stood in the field until 6 in the morning, and then left the city. My sister gave them a good idea. To explain why they were leaving, they took my nephew’s belongings, which were left there: a children’s bicycle, a small bath. On the way out, they said that they were going to see their daughter because the baby was born.
The next morning they were already in Zaporizhzhia. Then they waited for my grandmother, she lived in a nearby village. My godmother put her on a train that was transporting people from the occupied territories. Together, they all came to see me in Kyiv.
Dad didn’t talk about it openly, but until the last day of the occupation, he transferred data to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which motivated him to stay. He did not know if anyone else in the village was helping us, he was our “eyes” there. I also transferred data in Kherson, it was nice to do something useful.
My father had never cried, but when he saw me in Kyiv, he did. I understood that something terrible had been happening to him.
Now, when we learned about the liberation of Kherson, we cried tears of joy. Now we are waiting for the liberation of our village, so we monitor the news around the clock.
My aunt in Nova Kakhovka has already started celebrating. She said that she would personally expel the Russians, but most of my acquaintances have not contacted me yet.
