Larisa Kozova21:47, 05/16/23

In the occupied city, the man tried to avoid meeting with the Russians, but he failed.

An American, English teacher Timothy Morales wrote a book in which he told how he survived in occupied Kherson for more than 8 months .

As an UNIAN correspondent reports, Morales noted that he had been living in Ukraine for 17 years, 15 of which were in Kherson, where he taught English. On the eve of a full-scale invasion, the man was in the United States, where acquaintances warned that the Russian Federation was preparing for an attack.

“I didn’t expect Putin to be so stupid as to go for this. I thought they were bluffing, as they used to be, but I was wrong,” he said. The writer added that on February 24, 2022, his son was in Kyiv, and his daughter was in Kherson with him. 

Trying to leave occupied Kherson with his daughter, Morales saw how battles between Ukrainian and Russian tanks were going on on the Berislav highway. Then they did not dare to go further, but then they managed to transport their daughter to a safe place, and the teacher himself remained in the city. 

He explained that he understood that with a US passport and a not very good Russian, he would not be able to pass through the checkpoints that the invaders had set up around. 

In the occupied city, the man tried to avoid meeting with the Russians, but he failed – he was detained by the FSB and interrogated for several hours. As Morales explained, the day before he managed to hide his foreign passport, money and the like, and pretended to be Irish. 

“Then they let me go, but I immediately moved to another place and almost didn’t go outside until the city was liberated,” the writer said. 

He lived in occupied Kherson for 8.5 months, of which the last 10 days were without electricity, communications and water. 

“Once I saw a car with a small Ukrainian flag through the window, and I thought, some daredevils (local residents – UNIAN), but then I saw another car in which there were many people and Ukrainian flags, and I realized that Kherson was being liberated,” Morales said.

The situation in Kherson

Since the beginning of March 2022, the city was under temporary occupation of the Russian Federation, but on November 11, 2022, as part of a counteroffensive in the south, the Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated it.

However, the invaders constantly terrorize the inhabitants of the city with shelling. So, on the morning of May 15, the Russian army attacked Kherson with drones. As a result of the blow  of the Russian invaders,  the building of one of the educational institutions was seriously damaged. According to local authorities, there were no victims or injured as a result of the attack.

(C)UNIAN 2023