The liberation of Kherson by the Ukrainian army was celebrated by most city residents, but now, a week after the first Ukrainian soldiers entered the city, the atrocities committed by the Russian occupation authorities, who maintained a regime of terror there, are gradually coming to light.
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I meet Cedar Aleksandrovich, a handsome man in his twenties, in the local market, while he is waiting in line for water. There is no running water in the city. "It's tough to describe what we've been through in the last few months. The Russians were drunk and walked around with their weapons drawn, searching apartments and houses. I was lucky and they didn't do anything to me, but the soldiers caught my friend and his girlfriend when they were trying to escape the city. She was raped and he was beaten to a bloody pulp. They left them lying in a field outside the city and one of the soldiers said to them: 'Here, see, now you are safe,'" says the young man with a blank expression.
The Russian occupation forces looted everything when they entered the city; this became an integral part of their everyday life.
I meet Yevgeny Antonchuk in an empty electrical goods store. He is waiting for the chain his store belongs to, to start delivering products so that he can refill the empty shelves. "The Russians hounded us from day one," he says. "We refused to accept Rubles because we are a Ukrainian chain, and they responded by looting our businesses. Drunk soldiers came in here and took cell phones, televisions, and washing machines. Some broke in through the windows and stole electric kettles. They took them without the base that connects them to electricity. I don't know if they did it out of evil or stupidity, probably both together," he says with a sad smile.
But looting is far from being the worst part of the Russian reign of terror. We heard from neighbors that throughout the months of occupation, they heard screams of torture, which led us to a police station that was used by the Russians as a detention and torture chamber. Outside the building, we met Vitali Grigorovich Serdiuk, a 65-year-old resident of Kherson, who came to the city as a free man and was tortured there with unimaginable cruelty.
Whoever sang the anthem wrong – was beaten
"My son serves in the Ukrainian army and I look after his house for him," Vitali said. "In August, the army raided the house and arrested me while I was working in the garden. They tied my hands, put a sack over my head, threw me into a truck with other detainees, and took me somewhere I didn't know," says the elderly man. Tears begin to well up in his eyes.
"I was put on the second floor of a building with six others. Every time a guard entered we were forced to stand up and shout 'Glory to Russia. Long live Putin. Anyone who didn't shout out loud was severely beaten. Every day we had to stand up and sing the Russian anthem. Whoever got the words wrong, was severely beaten. The prisoners who knew the words wrote them on the wall so that we wouldn't be beaten," says Vitali.
"This was the routine in detention, but the agony was unbearable. They took me to a small room in the basement and put a bag over my head. They asked me where my son hides the guns and who was my contact in Ukrainian intelligence. I had no idea what to tell them because none of this was true. So they started beating me; first with a stick, then with clubs. They forced me to stand up, and every time I managed, they beat me hard until I collapsed. 'We will make you remember,' they kept telling me. When they stopped the beatings, they connected an electrode to my leg and electrocuted me. The current was probably not very high, but it hurt so much. Every time I screamed, they increased the current," says Vitali, crying bitterly.
We go into the compound with Vitali. All evidence of those brutal acts still remains: the clubs, the stains of blood, even the Russian anthem that is written on the detention room wall. Vitali claims to be lucky. "I was released after three days of hell, but there was a man with me who had been there for three months. Others were detained for longer periods of time and experienced much greater cruelty, which I don't even want to mention," he says in a whisper. His wife, who is next to him, hugs him.
A sister's hug
We leave the building, located in the heart of a peaceful civilian neighborhood, in silence and discover a heartwarming scene. A soldier in the Ukrainian Artillery Corps, returning from the front for the first time since the liberation of the city, jumps on her sister with bear hugs. They have not seen each other for nearly six months. No eyes are dry. Katya, the soldier with blonde dreadlocks, is well-known in the city.
She was a partisan, joined the army as a fighter, and is regarded as a legendary sniper in the southern combat zone. Vitali lets go for a moment of his personal horror and manages to smile through the tears. "No matter what they do to us, we are fighting for our family and our home. This is simply stronger than anything they have."
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