Education Consultant.
May 30
If someone asked me to describe what Nazis were like and how they behaved, I’d say it’s pretty much what those kids in the video are sharing. But here’s the thing: we tend to think that stuff is all in the past, like ancient history. Then reality hits, and we realize it’s still happening today, right here in our modern world. Two parallel worlds we all live in. Video: UNITED24
Stephanie Brandt:
Everyone of us has an obligation to help Ukraine win this war! Nobody can claim that they didn’t know. Please read:
‚I prayed I wouldn’t be next’ The secretive prisons where Russia hides and tortures Ukrainian civilians.
Ukraine
ethics
Reply from Yevgen R:
I was in ruzzian prison and wrote story about this:
Full text:
Occupation, Arrest and Rashka Prison
Yevgen R.
Pest Control Technician , Electrical engineer…
Published Jan 5, 2023
Dedicated to all
defenders of Ukraine
I woke up that day to someone frantically knocking on the front door of my house.
I was alone at home, since at the very beginning of the war my wife and children left for another city.
I looked out of the window and saw orcs. I understood that they came for me, so I put on my underwear and opened the door of another entrance to the house. Those doors, which the orcs tried to break into, did not open. Immediately an orc jumped out towards me, aimed an assault rifle at me and started to scream: “On the ground, hands behind your head,” he was probably afraid that somewhere in my underpants I hid an assault rifle or even a machine gun, or thought that I was stupid enough to attack with bare hands and feet several orcs with assault rifles. I lowered myself on one knee and raised my hands, because there was a real danger that this orc would start shooting out of fright. Then, apparently, the main one among them came up, because he had no assault rifle and bulletproof vest. He told me to go with them into the house. The search began. While the soldiers were going through the whole house, the chief immediately asked me where was my phone, took it, took two more old phones of my son he found in the closet, and the computer system unit. I was not left unattended even for a second. Even when I went to the toilet, I did not close the door, a big orc stood at the entrance to the toilet and watched.
“How can I address you?” I asked the main orc.
“Timur,” he answered.
“Oh f*ck, Timur and his team,” I thought.
“We know that you don’t like the russia,” the main orc Timur told me. “Get dressed, you will come with us.”
They also asked me if there were any weapons in my house. I told that there were not and it was true.
They also asked if there were any money, because “…then you will say that the russian military took your money.”
Of course, I had money but it was hidden in a safe place. As I realised that the search was already ending and they were not going to look further, I said that there was no money. There are no fools to show where the money is!
When I got dressed, Timur asked me:
“Do you have a hat?”
“Why do I need a hat? It is warm outdoors,” I answered.
“Put your hat on,” Timur said.
I was mostly worried about my cat.
“Don’t worry, you will be back soon,” Timur calmed me.
But since I knew that you cannot trust orcs, I poured all the cat food that was in the house into a big plate and put it on the floor. A bucket full of water was also on the kitchen floor. “It will be enough for some time,” I thought.
I asked their permission and took the remains of a pack of cigarettes from my car in the garage. I quit smoking two years ago and switched to IQOS, but I decided not to take the IQOS device, because I hardly could use it, most likely the orcs would take it away. And cigarettes will always be useful in prison.
The entrance gate to the yard was knocked out from the inside. Perhaps the orcs climbed over the fence and then knocked out the gate that had a print of a very large boot. There was a sledgehammer nearby. It was prepared to knock out the door, but there was no need because I came out on my own. Before getting into the car, I closed the gate and propped it up with a stone.
As soon as I got into the orcs’ car, a new Opel SUV, probably one of those the orcs had stolen at the Opel Kherson station, I was forced to put a hat over my eyes and tilt my head as if the route they were taking was a huge military secret. It was then that I realized what the hat was for.
Of course, I had no opportunity to phone anyone. “To make one call to a lawyer before arrest” is not about the FSB. The best thing would be to warn my mother. She had the house keys, and not long before the arrest I bought for her a phone card with the number +7, so I could communicate with my mother.
By the way, there were always problems with telecommunications in Kherson from the very beginning of the occupation.
They replaced television with Rashka TV almost immediately. Occasionally I watched those propaganda condoms. Because you must know what your enemy plans.
At first, although Russian troops were already there, all Ukrainian mobile operators were working. There was also fibre optic Internet. Then, supposedly as a result of damage to the trunk cable between Kherson and Mykolaiv, all operators stopped working. Then some of them resumed, but the Internet was already going through the Crimea and those sites that were banned in Ukraine (Odnoklassniki, VKontakte, etc.) started to work without VPN, while Facebook and Twitter worked only with VPN. Then the orcs turned off all Ukrainian mobile operators, and all their facilities were seized by the Seventelecom network. This is a network that you will not find in rashka phone directories, because most likely they have a Crimean registration and are under sanctions.
However, there were no other options and in the beginning there were long queues for these cards. All my life I try to avoid standing in queues. So I did not hurry. But one day I was lucky. In the evening, there was no one near the point of sale. I took the card, tricked the seller and eventually left, and the money… Money, as Ostap Bender used to say in such cases,
“Money tomorrow.”
Those crooks from Seventelecom have already reaped a lot of money! Later I bought such a card for my mother, and not for 240 UAH, as it used to be at the beginning, but for 70 UAH. Sometimes the fibre optic Internet went down. In such cases, I set up the Internet on the TV via my mobile phone and watched Ukrainian news because I had a rashka SIM card. Although some refused to use the +7 card out of principle. I asked such principled people:
Did Stirlitz become a traitor because he phoned the Reich Chancellery?
I was ready to be arrested one day. During the whole occupation, I stubbornly continued to speak Ukrainian language I switched to in 2000 or 2001. At that time, it was not yet a trend to speak Ukrainian, even then-President Kuchma was huffing and puffing when he tried to speak Ukrainian. I decided to prove by personal example that you can speak fluent Ukrainian, having only studied it at school. Besides, the Ukrainian language has much less aggression. If you want to tell someone to go f*ck themselves, you switch to Russian. I also wanted my children to learn their native language from the very early age. Sometimes I even spoke Ukrainian with orcs at checkpoints when they stopped my car for inspection. But in case of any controversial issues with orcs, I switched to Russian. For example, for six months I had been driving my car through the checkpoints almost every day, with a video recorder hanging and working on the windshield. But one day some too scrupulous orc picked on it, took the recorder, began to look at the records, even wanted to break it. Then I switched to Russian and defended my recorder, but I did not put it on the windshield anymore. Let it lie in the garage so that it will be safe.
Every time I passed through the checkpoint, I was haunted by the desire to pull a knife out of my pocket and stab the first orc in the eye. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to do something more useful.
Once an orc even answered me in Ukrainian.
“How do you know the language?” I asked the orc.
“I’m from Donetsk,” he answered.
But it was unlikely that it was my adherence to the Ukrainian language that caused my arrest.
They brought me to the temporary detention facility, a former sobering-up station.
With a hat on my eyes, as I was, I was escorted and placed into a room measuring 1.2 by 1.2 meters (4 by 4 feet). As I later found out, it was a so-called “glass.” I sat down on the floor and started to think over what orcs could have against me.
All Internet traffic in Kherson went through Crimea. I was in real danger if they managed to intercept and read my Facebook messages, because it was through Facebook that I corresponded with my friend in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, to whom I reported targets for HIMARS. The first hit was very successful. Exactly where we needed. There, according to the General Staff, more than a dozen orcs were killed. I had been looking at this orc lair for a long time, every time I passed by, whether by car or by bicycle, and was thinking how to cover this filth, and finally I succeeded. I couldn’t even resist and 3 or 4 days later I rode my bicycle past the place of the hit. Extremely nice picture! I really liked it. HIMARS is just awesome! The building where the orcs were based was destroyed to rubble, and in the neighbouring buildings even the windows were intact.
But there was no direct indication of the target in any of my messages. The messages were veiled as if I wrote about feeding stray dogs that appeared in large numbers on the city streets. I wrote something like: “There is a whole pack of dogs, all so black, fluffy…” but I meant that there Chechens, more precisely Kadyrovites, located. However, I deleted all such messages right after I sent them.
Could the FSB monitor such correspondence? Theoretically, my messages could have been recorded by the ISP and then transferred to the FSB, but this is technically very difficult, especially since Facebook’s servers are far from the russia.
There was nothing in other messengers that could pose a real threat to me. I asked all my contacts not to send me messages like: “putin with his bare arse licks the boots of the Chinese leader.” After all, I am in the occupied territory, sometimes I drive through the checkpoints of orcs, and such a message can come just at the moment when my phone is checked and I just do not have time to delete this message. However, I deleted all the messages in all the messengers every evening and deleted cache. Some people say that there is supposedly some software that allows you to restore even the messages that were deleted a month ago. I believe that if you have deleted everything and (importantly) cleared the cache, then no trace will be left in your storage device. And I even had no Facebook installed on my phone.
Of course, they could have been watching me on CCTV. I did not miss the opportunity to look at the places of hits and to rejoice in my mind. But a lot of people walked or drove past such places.
Also, someone could have reported me. There were almost no supporters of the “Russian world” among my friends. Iura was the most likely candidate. I knew this Iura since the time when I was professionally practising Kyokushin karate. Iura did power triathlon (bench press, squats with a barbell and deadlift). He was not tall, not a heavyweight, but showed good results. During each visit to the hydropark, he, like me, swam across the Dnipro to the island and back, though, unlike me, without time control, but he swam fast enough. On Arestanka, he, like me, could swim from the first big buoy to the second one, and it is quite difficult, there is a crazy current, and not everyone is able to do that.
Now, this Iura brought sandwiches to the orcs standing at the checkpoints, he said that he had been waiting for the russia all the time of independence, rejoiced at the success of the rashka army, he was one of the first to receive a passport with roosters. At the same time, I said loudly on Arestanka that I was waiting for the moment when the corpses of orcs would drift down the Dnipro.
But the question remained: if he was the one who reported, why didn’t he do it earlier? And he does not look like a snitch. He is a nit, of course, but hardly a snitch.
I thought about all this for 30 or 40 minutes while I was sitting on the floor in the “glass” and came to the conclusion that most likely the orcs have nothing concrete against me, except for suspicions.
At that moment the door opened and they took me somewhere without removing the hat from my eyes. A brazen orc searched me, took my belt from my pants, my wallet with some money, not much, but still a pity, car documents, driver’s license, credit cards and shoelaces from my sneakers. This brazen orc also hit me several times in my chest. It is a very unpleasant feeling when someone beats you and you don’t even see who it is, let alone fight back. It is a pity that I never saw the face of that orc because I would have remembered it for the rest of my life. Maybe one day I would have the opportunity to repay the debt.
After that, they brought me to the door, took off my hat and pushed me into the cell. For some reason, they took my hat away. As my cellmates explained me later, orcs take away everyone’s hats, and then, when they take a prisoner out of the cell for any reason, they put the first available hat on him, and it may turn out that you will be wearing some bloody, smelly or even pissed hat. I felt a little sorry for my hat because it served me for 30 years and was still as good as new, but it was not time to think about hats, I would be happy to stay alive.
The cell was a room measuring approximately 5 by 7 meters (16.5 by 23 feet). It was designed for 4 people. Opposite the door, there was a large window with a metal and plastic frame. The window was behind strong bars and a metal mesh with small cells. You could open part of the window. Since there was no access from the camera to the window, there was an electric drive for the opening part (just imagine!). There was a switch under the window. If you turn it to the right, the motor will turn on and the window will open, if to the left, it will close. The bunks were two-tiered, a couple stood to the left of the window, a couple to the right. To the left of the cell door there was a sink and a toilet, separated by a wall 1.5 meters (5 feet) high. The toilet bowl was the same as in Soviet public toilets, not directly in the floor but on a pedestal 20 cm (8 inches) high. To the right of the door there were a table and a bench. Above the door there were two lamps with a metal grid that were never turned off. During the daytime they were not needed, in the evening there provided not enough light, and at night they were annoying and disturbed sleep. A TV used to hang above the table. It is unknown who and when stole that TV. A TV and a remote for it were painted on the wall with the inscription “Turn it on if you can.”
I was immediately warned about the nuances of using the toilet. There was a plastic bottle with water in the toilet bowl. This is to prevent spreading of urine smell. You had to pull out the bottle, use the toilet, flush it not only with the button, but also from a small bucket that stood nearby, then put the bottle back in place and fill the bucket with water. There was a whole battery of plastic bottles with water near the toilet wall. As they told me, it is for the case of lack of water in the water supply network. Fortunately, during my stay in the temporary detention facility, water was available 24/7. Previously, water was not always there.
There were the following people in the cell at the time of my arrival:
Vadym, the senior cellmate, born in 1974, once or twice already served a sentence for criminal offences, had distinctive tattoos.
Roman, about 35, worked in a taxi service.
Andrii, about 27, worked as a car repairman.
Valerii, my age, born in 1967, a former officer.
Radyk, it is impossible to find out his age even approximately, of Gypsy nationality. He was imprisoned 5 or 6 times. Probably, a drug addict.
Valerii. I cannot write anything about him. He was released the next day after my arrival.
Ievhen, 18. He was arrested when he and his friend were trying to steal either non-ferrous metal or some devices at the Vadym railway station. The station was not working at that time and was partially destroyed as a result of combat operations.
Roman and Andrii had beards and relatively long hair. My first thought was that they were representatives of Caucasian ethnic groups. It was exactly the appearance of the orcs who lived in the dormitory next to the Polytechnic College. These orcs were so brazen that they went out freely not only for a walk in the park but even played volleyball on a sports ground that was built in the days of Mayor Kolykhaiev near the “Mashinka.” It would be nice to hit them with HIMARS, I thought all the time as I cycled through the park. By the way, I sometimes met Kolykhaiev near this sports ground. Of course, this was before he was captured by orcs. We also joked with him about the fact that it is easy for the former (or still current) leaders of the region to make clever remarks from the free territory. So let them come to Kherson and show here how smart they are. Some “smart guys” asked questions, “Why did we all run away, and Kolykhaiev is in Kherson and is not arrested?” Does he cooperate with the occupiers? I think now not many such “smart guys” would want to change places with Kolykhaiev. There was information that Kolykhaiev was also in the temporary detention facility, but he was not released. People say he was taken together with others and is being held in one of the districts on the left bank. I hope everything possible will be done to release him.
As it turned out later, Roman and Andrii were in the cell for a long time, during which they grew hair and beards. Although there was a hair clipper in the temporary detention facility. One day the guys even asked for it from the jailers. But this clipper worked poorly and was only good for trimming beards.
At any time when the cell door is opened, all detainees had to stand in two lines, keep their hands behind their backs, not to look towards the open door and shout,
“Glory to the russia, glory to putin, glory to shoigu!”
If someone did not take his place in the line quickly or did not shout loudly enough, he could be hit with a stick or a stun gun, and the cell could be left without cigarettes. The same if you do not know the anthem of the russia.
All the detainees had to know the anthem of the russia. And not just to know but to be able to continue it from any place where the checker has stopped. The anthem of the russia was in the cell everywhere: on a separate sheet, on the wall to the right of the door, even on a rag hanging on the door of the “toilet room.”
I asked Vadym,
“And if the door opens, and I will be sitting on the loo at that time, do I have to shout right from the loo ‘Glory to…’?”
“No,” Vadym answered. “You better sit quietly where you sit.”
Since the toilet was separated from the rest of the cell space only by a low wall, the process of defecation could be heard throughout the cell. In order to somehow muffle the sounds, I pressed the drain button when the gases came out.
And once one of the young guys complained to Vadym that he had a crazy boner at night.
“You should have jerked off on the toilet,” Vadym advised with knowledge.
So, I tried to learn this, by the way, absolutely incoherent and meaningless, poem (the anthem of the rashka). I seemed to have learned it, but the next day I could not remember anything. Moreover, I could not remember a single name of my cellmates although I had all their names yesterday. As it turned out, such cases of temporary amnesia caused by stress happened to almost all detainees. The next day I came up with various ways to study: highlighted the first words of each line in bold to engage visual memory, taught verse by verse, even translated this anthem into Ukrainian. Finally, I have learned it. Fortunately, they never asked me to sing it.
Orcs took away all the cigarettes that the relatives passed to the prisoners, and then, during the distribution of food, they gave a limited number of cigarettes to each cell, depending on how many smokers were in the cell. There were not enough cigarettes, so we cherished every crumb of tobacco. We collected all the cigarette butts into a box, then removed the remnants of tobacco that had not yet burned, and made self-rolls. Although, fortunately, the weather was not yet cold and the electrically operated window was open almost all the time, there was a constant stench of tobacco in the cell. I do not smoke at home but anyway I start every morning with airing by fully opening all the windows and doors. The air in the room is completely replaced, but the house does not cool down during that time. Smoking tobacco did not bring me pleasure, even disgusted me. It left a bad taste in my mouth. I had already got used to IQOS, but it was out of the question, so occasionally I asked my cellmates for a cigarette, took one deep puff and that was enough for me.
I even had breakfasts in the cell. The food, in my opinion, was not so bad. Earlier, as they told me, the detainees in this temporary detention facility were not fed at all. Everyone survived only thanks to parcels from relatives. But at the time of my stay, breakfast consisted of porridge, an egg, bread and some kind of drink. It is hard to say what kind of drink it was, whether it was tea or compote, or something in between, but you could drink it. Lunch: soup or borshch, without meat, of course. It was good for me, because I have not been eating meat for many years. Also, porridge, bread, drink. Dinner: porridge, salad, bread, drink. In spite of such a menu, I, like most prisoners, was constantly haunted by the feeling of hunger. Most likely, it was caused by the “limited resource syndrome.” This is a situation when there is food, but not what you would like, not at the time you want and of limited quantity. But thanks to the parcels we received twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays, we could arrange our “evening tea.” However, instead of real tea, we used a drink saved during the day, but there was always something tasty sent from home.
About a couple of hours after my arrival to the cell, the door opened and someone called my surname. I had to go out backwards with my hands behind my back. They put a hat on me, not mine, but fortunately not the one pissed on. They brought me to a room where an orc who looked like a representative of either the peoples of the North or the Far East, smeared my hands with something black and forced me to roll out not only fingerprints but also the entire palm. The orc asked me a few times,
“Will you go to serve for the mother russia?”
“No fools,” I thought. And I said loudly, “No health.”
After I returned to the cell, the guys immediately squeezed a large strip of toothpaste on my hands. The black filth the orc smeared on my hands with is best cleaned with toothpaste.
After a while, I was taken out of the cell for the second time. This time in the room where I was brought there were two young men in civilian clothes. “FSB officers,” I thought. They also took my fingerprints, but without any filth, they used a device: you press your finger and the fingerprint is captured.
During both “exits” from the cell, I learned nothing about the reasons for my detention.
The bunks were occupied by those people who had been in the temporary detention facility for a long time. Newcomers like me slept on the floor. We spread a blanket and used a plastic bag with some rags as a pillow. We slept with clothes on, because it was still cool. A blanket on the floor is much less effective than even a striped mattress. It was simply impossible to sleep well there. And those damn lamps above the entrance.
I have decided for myself that I will live these days as much as possible as I used to in my normal, everyday life, even if these days will be the last for me. So, the very next day I started with exercises. Warm-up, stretching, shadow fight, but no strength exercises. It is better to do strength exercises in a while after breakfast.
About an hour or an hour and a half after breakfast, I started strength training. It included push-ups from the floor, not regular ones, but with the transition from one hand to the other in the lower position. Then pull-ups with a narrow grip, holding the corner of the upper bunks. The bunks were not high enough, so I had to bend my knees. A bit uncomfortable, but what could I do? It’s a prison.
After the workout, you have to take a shower. Showering right after training increases the efficiency of the training by 10–15% and the pleasure of training by all 50%. But it was not easy here. You fill a PET bottle with water, of course cold, from the tap, then stand over the toilet bowl, pour water over yourself, then soap yourself and rinse it off. The most difficult thing was to collect the water spilt after bathing, wash and wipe everything almost dry. It took even more time than the bathing itself, but what can you do, it’s prison! A day later, we found a cork with holes for a PET bottle, like a small shower, and the procedure became a little easier.
Detainees were not allowed to have watches. We determined the time by the sun outside the window and by meals. The approach of the tray with food was easily recognized by the cries of “Glory to the rus…” from the neighbouring cameras. But, as I found out later, Roma somehow managed to keep or received the watch with the parcel and hid it so that the orcs would not take it.
The first day in the cell I tried to speak Russian, after all, it was a rashka prison. But later, when I settled down a bit, I returned to my native language. I had been speaking Russian for 30 years of my life and I can use it much better than most of those who claim it as their native language. But even here, in prison, I spoke Russian only with orcs.
In free time, and I had a lot of time, I played chess with Zhenia. Fortunately, there was a chess set in the cell, though such a small one, with pieces that stick into the board. It was the so-called travel set. My opponent was by no means a grandmaster and lost almost all games to me, but at least I had some opponent and that was good!
Nobody played chess except Zhenia but they organized the entire backgammon tournaments. Valera and Roma were leaders. I also remembered how to play backgammon but compared to chess any other game seemed primitive.
None of the detainees ever told why they were held in the temporary detention facility. Everyone kept to general phrases. Of course, I did not tell either. After all, only two people knew about my messages about the targets: me and my friend in AFU. And it is correct. Not only because anyone could turn out to be a traitor but also because under torture everyone tells everything they know and sometimes even things they do not know. The torture chamber was located somewhere nearby. Screams from there were heard from morning to evening. The torture methods were very diverse, ranging from ordinary beatings through immersion of the head in water to passing electric current through the body. Medieval inquisitors are just children compared to rashka’s executioners. Almost all the detainees passed through torture. I tried to prepare myself for the fact that it was waiting for me too. But I was firmly determined: to hold on to the last, because if I lose control for even a second, if I let out even half a word and that’s it, everything is lost, prison and torture will never end.
The main supervisor was a big, two-meter-tall orc nicknamed Bear. On about the 5th day, he came into the cell with words:
“You’ve been here too long, old man.” Then he moved Vadym to another cell.
I do not know what happened to Vadym later, but it could have been a part of the operational combination. He, like anyone else in our cell, would tell under torture or threat of torture everything that other detainees told each other. Therefore, my decision to keep my mouth shut was very correct.
Radyk, as I was told, was detained for violating the curfew. He was looking for hidden drugs and apparently lost track of time. Or he was very eager. After 4 days, they told him,
“Take your things to the exit.”
And then we heard screams. Radyk shouted,
“For what?”
He was badly beaten before being released. Just like that, for no reason whatsoever.
Valerii was a well-known person in Kherson. He had been in the cell for a long time, several times they took him for “investigative experiments.” Valerii was charged with quite serious, in the understanding of rascists, “crimes.” His wife and children were abroad. I memorized the phone number of Valera’s wife. If I am released before Valera, I will phone his wife and tell her that Valera should be included on the exchange list. For him, this is the only way to escape from captivity. Valera told me that he, like me, knew that he signed up for and he consciously made his choice. For some time before the arrest Valerii was hiding in the apartment he rented, but one day he went out to buy some beer and encountered the patrol.
During one of our conversations, Valerii explained why he, an officer, is not in the ranks of the AFU. Because of a sore back, he, like me, was not able to wear even a bulletproof vest.
On about the 5th day, a young man named Yevhen was brought to the cell. He was arrested somewhere in Chornobaivka. They pulled him out of his house just like me. Yevhen was already badly beaten when he was detained. He had only a few hours to rest in the cell, and then they took him out again and tortured him again.
Days passed by, and they did not touch me.
A pleasant event for me happened on Friday. I received a parcel. Judging by its contents, my mother handed it over. This meant that someone had warned my mother, the house was now under surveillance, and most importantly: the cat Dunia will not be left hungry and lonely. My mother did not know and could not know that what I needed most of all was not food and clothes. Toothbrush, toothpaste, soap, rubber slippers, towel, and toilet paper, this is the list of essentials. I especially missed a toothbrush. In everyday life I brush my teeth after each meal.
During the first days I brushed my teeth with my finger. Better than nothing. Then it turned out that Vadym had a spare new toothbrush. They also found a towel for me. My cellmates provided me with toothpaste and soap for which I want to thank them. I was annoyed because of the lack of a belt. My pants were falling down. I took a plastic bag and tied two adjacent straps on my pants. The issue was resolved.
The senior detainee cleaned the cell personally. All others helped him as needed: removed things from the floor, fetched water… We cleaned every other day.
Each detainee had his own cup, spoon, and plate. Nobody ever used someone else’s stuff. Even cups that looked the same had their owners’ marks. If someone was released, his tableware was inherited by newcomers. I washed the dishes just like I do at home. After eating the dish, I got up, washed the plate and continued eating.
From the very beginning of the arrest, I was surprisingly calm. I knew what I signed up for, I knew that they could come for me at any moment and I understood that I was dealing with a ruthless and fierce enemy. It was impossible to escape from the temporary detention facility, so the only option was to deceive this enemy.
On the sixth day of my stay in the temporary detention facility, before breakfast, the cell door opened and a guard called my name.
They also took me out with my hat on eyes and put me in a car. It seemed to be the same Opel they brought me in.
We arrived at the very centre of the city, on Freedom Square. They led me to a room that used to be a medical laboratory, and now there were only bare walls, although there was an air conditioner hanging on the wall and even in working condition. Then the FSB officers found the instructions for the air conditioner on the Internet using their mobile phones and turned it on to make the room warmer.
The main civil resistance against the occupation took place on Freedom Square.
On February 24, the day the war started, people woke up to the sounds of explosions. Around 10 am I called to Henichesk.
“The Russian military is already here,” they told me.
A few minutes later I called Nova Kakhovka and heard the same thing.
Just the day before the 24th I was driving from Chaplynka to Skadovsk and got into a long traffic jam. It was caused by some military exercises in the area. It was rumoured that the Commander-in-Chief himself came.
How could it happen that the enemy marched from Crimea to the entire left bank in just a few hours, at the speed of a car ride? How did they manage to cross the Crimean Isthmus almost seamlessly?
They say, high-ranking traitors are guilty, who allegedly had to blow up the routes on the Crimean Isthmus, but have not done so. And who assigned those traitors?
The whole south was captured by the enemy group that came from the Crimea.
When will the traitors be punished for their treason and the one who appointed them at least for criminal negligence?
During the first days of the war all residents of Kherson heard the sounds of the battle on the Antonivskyi bridge. Glory and everlasting memory to the heroes who defended this bridge. But why did they not blow up this bridge? They did not want to restore it later? All the same, the orcs when fleeing to the left bank blew up the bridge. However, the bridge was not of decisive importance, because the Kakhovka dam quickly fell under the control of the enemy. Before the war, there was a checkpoint at the intersection of the road to Melitopol and the road to Nova Kakhovka. A soldier with an assault rifle was standing there. Maybe someone expected that this soldier would deter a column of enemy tanks.
When the tanks entered Kherson, the Kherson self-defence unit met them in Dubky near the bus station. Our guys were armed only with firearms and Molotov cocktails. They could not cause any damage to the tanks. They were noticed through the cameras (and now almost all armoured vehicles are equipped with thermographic camera, night vision equipment, etc.) and shot from a machine gun. Glory and everlasting memory to the heroes!
The regional authorities did something smarter. They all fled before the enemy arrived. One day I asked a store manager if they had any pests: cockroaches, mice, rats? I was hoping to get an order for pest control work. He replied that no, because Lahuta (the former head of the Kherson Regional State Administration) fled and took them all with him.
From the very first days of the occupation, Kherson residents have been constantly gathering on Freedom Square. They were holding flags of Ukraine and shouting: “rashka, go away!” and demonstrated their rejection of the occupation in all possible ways. I also regularly participated in such actions. On YouTube there are many videos of protests in Kherson. It was for this civil resistance, after the beginning of the occupation (on March 06, 2022), that Kherson received the title of Hero City.
But gradually the occupiers started to “tighten the screws.” First, they shot in the air, then they even started throwing grenades at the protesters. Some people were injured. The protest actions gradually came to naught. A huge force of gendarmes from the rashka was brought to Kherson. The people from the LNR and DNR were especially damned. One day they almost took me to the jail just because I said something to them in Ukrainian.
Gradually Kherson turned into a dying city. In the parking lot in the city centre, near the Silpo, where it was difficult to find a free space in the past, now there were 5–6 cars, including mine. In the afternoon, I could even ride my bicycle on the main street, Ushakov, right in the middle of the road. There were almost no cars.
On Freedom Square, instead of protests, they were distributing rashka humanitarian aid. Once I recorded a video of this crowd and posted it on my Facebook page. The faces of people wishing to receive porridge from the United Russia are typical. The characters of Fellini and Pasolini cannot be compared with them.
After the de-occupation of Kherson, they again distributed humanitarian aid on Freedom Square, only this time it was Ukrainian. The queues were very long. There were both new faces in this queue and already familiar “professional” recipients of humanitarian aid who did it during the occupation. People in expensive SUVs came to stand in line for 2–3 hours to get a few large bottles of drinking water. You could get the same water 1 km away from Freedom Square, but you had to pay money there, a whole hryvnia per litre. That is why the SUV people did not go there. Mostly old ladies with their bottles on wheelbarrows went there.
It also turned out that there were plenty of cars in Kherson. Once again, it became difficult to find a parking space in the centre. I wonder where all these cars were hidden during the last months of occupation?
When I was being interrogated, nothing was distributed on Freedom Square. The centre for distribution of “gifts from the rashka” was first moved to the Cinema and Concert Hall “Iuvilenyi” and the queues there were so long that no film or concert had ever gathered. And then the distribution of food rations was completely stopped.
I only noticed that we were on Freedom Square through the window of the room where they brought me, because only there I was allowed to remove the hat from my eyes. It was cold in the room, and I was only wearing a T-shirt and pants. For about 30 minutes, I and two FSB officers have been waiting for someone. I asked permission and started walking around the room instead of sitting on the chair. This way I warmed up a little, and I have not yet done morning exercises. To keep me warm, Timur even brought an orcish jacket from somewhere, but it did not warm me much. Orcs even offered me tea or coffee from a nearby coffee shop. Of course, I refused. Who knows what they could have put in that tea or coffee. Soon, as I later figured out, a polygraph examiner came. He was the only one of all four FSB officers who had an open face. He told me his name was Andrei. Andrei was of medium height, athletic build, with a beard, hair on top, and temples and back of the head cut short. He said that they would interrogate me using a polygraph device. Andrei explained that he had an open face as follows:
“Either you will successfully pass the test and be released, or you will go back to your cell, and no one will know anything about your fate.”
“Not a great start,” I thought. Any attempts to negotiate, to “settle” through someone here were doomed to failure. When I saw that we were on Freedom Square, I said something to the FSB officers about the Saldo.
“Who is it?” they asked.
Only a polygraph device determined everything.
To start with, Andrei asked me to briefly talk about myself, while he took a piece of paper and wrote something down. I told my CV. It is not a secret, you can find it in the public domain. Later I figured out why he asked. Andrei collected a pool of questions, the answer to which was “Yes.”
The device itself was a small box about the size of a car stereo. The polygraph was connected to a laptop, and they attached sensors to my head, chest, under my buttocks and to my fingers. I sat on a chair a meter from the wall and looked at the wall. The interrogation consisted of a few blocks of 5–6 questions each. The first questions were from my CV: what school did I go to, what institute did I graduate from, …?
The last question in the block was:
Did you tell anyone about the location of russian military facilities?
In each block, the main question changed slightly, but its point remained the same.
Only then I finally figured out why I was detained. Most likely, the FSB had no other evidence, except for my possible confession during the interrogation with a polygraph device.
Andrei warned me that I should sit upright, only in one position.
During the second or third block, I automatically crossed my legs under the chair. Andrei noticed this and immediately made the first warning to me. I did not cross my legs again but at about the fourth block of questions I closed my eyes. Although Andrei was sitting behind me, he somehow, perhaps with help of his laptop, noticed it, stopped the process and said:
“I make the second warning to you. If you get three warnings, you will go back to your cell, where you will be tortured and anally raped. If you act right, you will soon be back to your cat.”
I did not like such a perspective at all, so I did not break the rules anymore. But I wonder how this Andrei knew about my cat, since it was Timur who took me from home. It seems that they carefully prepared for my interrogation because even such a small detail was known not only to Timur but also to other FSB officers.
Despite the crazy stress, I managed to keep my mind absolutely calm and cool. The main thing in such a situation is to control breathing and heart rate. I made a little effort and managed to breathe evenly and watch my pulse, although cold temperature did not help me in any way. I passed the last blocks of questions with flying colours. I have not allowed any increase of pulse or breathing rate.
Nevertheless, Andrei told me that he noticed that I was nervous when answering the key question.
“Dust in the eyes. A lice test,” I thought and calmly replied that everyone would be at least a little nervous when answering a question on which their fate depends.
After four or five hours of interrogation, Andrei finally said,
“You have passed the polygraph test. Now, you will be brought home.”
Of course, I didn’t believe.
They brought me back to the temporary detention facility with a hat on my eyes, as before, but did not take me out of the car. About 15 minutes later, the FSB officer brought my things from the cell. They let me out to the guard’s room to take my wallet. Money and documents were not missing from the wallet. They also returned me the computer system unit and three mobile phones. They were not damaged. We got into the car and drove off. Although I still had the hat on my eyes, I understood that we were going to my house. Just before the last turn I asked,
“May I take the hat off?”
“No,” they answered me.
They only took my hat off when the car stopped near my yard. My mother has just come out to meet me. Having not grasped the situation (my mother is 80), she even hugged one of the FSB officers. Later I explained to her that although I was released, the enemy remains the enemy and I will not hesitate to kill this FSB officer if I have such an opportunity.
Both the fact that I was brought by car and my mother’s careless gesture did not go unnoticed by the neighbours. After Kherson was liberated, two SBU officers even visited me. Perhaps they checked everyone who came out of the temporary detention facility. But I have not heard about such visits from other former detainees. Probably, “good” neighbours reported about me because I was transported in a car and my mother hugged an orc.
The SBU officers had the same hairstyles as Andrei who interrogated me. I also thought that there is a certain fashion among snitches, or perhaps there is some astral connection. I did not like the tone of the conversation from the very beginning, but after a few minutes everything settled down.
On the day of my release, I kept my promise and phoned Valera’s wife.
Four times on the days when they allowed to hand over the parcel, I went to the temporary detention facility and handed over the fruit to the 10th cell. Even the orcs at the gates of the temporary detention facility already knew that it was to the 10th cell. The cold days approached and I decided to bring some warm clothes to Valera. Back when I was in the cell, Valera told me that the sweater he was wearing was presented by orcs. He was detained in the summer when he was wearing pants and a T-shirt. I phoned Valera’s wife and together with her neighbour, who had the keys to Valera’s apartment, I chose the things that might be needed. Valera’s apartment was a terrible mess. They conducted searches there several times.
When I arrived at the temporary detention facility with things for Valerii and fruit for everyone, I saw a crowd of the detainees’ relatives. No one accepted the parcels. All attempts to knock or ring the device on the gate were unsuccessful. The relatives were in despair. The temporary detention facility was empty. All the detainees disappeared for unknown destination.
Later I heard that almost all of them were transferred to the left bank and distributed among the district detention centres. Valerii ended up in Chaplynka. I found an acquaintance in Chaplynka and contacted her with Valerii’s wife. Although the acquaintance has moved to another city long ago, there is still some connection.
A few weeks after the de-occupation of Kherson, the police called me and invited me to take part in an investigative experiment in the temporary detention facility.
I have already talked to the police before. Once I was driving my car to make a phone call and look up information on the Internet. At that time, mobile communication and Internet were available only in the city downtown. A neighbour’s house in my block was being searched. Of course, I stopped. Maybe some help was needed. But after my words, “Are you okay?” the police switched their focus on me. They checked my documents. A policewoman, so small, looking like a schoolgirl, checked my phone and asked some stupid questions about my contacts in messengers. And another policeman asked me if I happened to be a collaborator? I wanted to answer him that most of the collaborators were the police officers but decided not to escalate the situation. They even threatened me with a trip to SBU to which I replied that I supported such an idea. After a few minutes of conversation, everything settled down and I calmly drove on.
In the temporary detention facility, I could only remember the route they led me and the cell I was in. All the cells in the temporary detention facility were without doors. Orcs stole everything they could, even the cell doors. Of course, I recognised “my” camera No. 10 at once. Then we spent quite a long time drawing up the protocol. Of course, the chances of bringing any of the executioners to justice are not high, but nonetheless…
Kherson City is de-occupied now. The enemy is regularly shelling the city from the left bank. There are dead and wounded every day. But if they ask me,
“Perhaps it would be better to stay under occupation?”
I can say with certainty,
“No! I have already been in rashka prison and to stay under the occupation means to continue living in prison, only bigger!”
A very long but very interesting story. There could perhaps be a thousand such stories from Ukrainians suffering similar horrors by their “brothers” from the land of the fascist crime gangsters.
“Perhaps it would be better to stay under occupation?”
Perhaps this is one goal of the constant shelling – and a form of punishment – since this terror serves no military purpose.