How Russians Tormented One Occupied Ukrainian Village

Tom Mutch talks to the survivors of Russian occupation in recently-liberated Novopetrovsk and discovers a reign of looting and terror followed by an orderly withdrawal

It was just the day before we visited that the villagers had buried the bodies. “They were found drowned in the swamp; hands tied behind their backs” Viktor Ahafonov, a resident of the town of Novopetrovsk told us. The faces of the dead were blue, and it was clear to see they had been tortured. We had a funeral service for them yesterday.”

They were disfigured as to be unrecognisable, and as with bodies found in graves in other regions of Ukraine such as Bucha and Izium, Ukrainian authorities will now be hard at work to identify the latest victims of Russia’s invasion. 

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‘They Stole Everything’

Ukraine has finally emerged triumphant in the battle for Kherson, the only regional capital the Russians had captured during the war. The Ukrainian Army, after making clever uses of HIMARs to destroy Russian supply lines over the Dnipro River, had managed to make the Russian positions impossible to defend.

Rather than face an inevitable defeat, the Kremlin’s top battlefield commander, General Sergei Surovikin, ordered a withdrawal. But as in Bucha and Izium beforehand, Ukrainians are finding that the Russians have left a trail of horrors in their wake wherever they have been. 

For six months, local villagers explained, the Russians had their trenches in dugouts just 50 metres from the town, and as half the troops fought the slowly advancing Ukrainian army, the others terrorized the local population.

“Russians were in their positions with tanks and BMPs. Chechen troops were hanging around the village, robbing houses like local police. Once people leave the house and go away, they come, take everything from the house, rob, and drive away,” Viktor said as we shared a glass of homemade red wine in his backyard.

“They stole everything – fridges, toilets, washing machines. Total lawlessness. They beat those who they didn’t like. They treated old people well, but young people were beaten severely. They were enjoying the process. That’s the Russian world. Thank God, we waited for our guys!” 

We had reached the village before even the Ukrainian army, it seemed. During the day we spent there, a series of armoured vehicles drove to the outskirts of the village and soldiers cautiously moved into the city, beginning to remove leftover Russian weaponry. Soon, Ukrainian investigators will be combing the areas for evidence of Russian war crimes- which they expect to find in great numbers. 

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The Reality of Annexation

This village is a few kilometres from the city of Snihorivka, a strategic town in Mykolaiv oblast that the Ukrainian Army recaptured shortly before the Russians ordered their withdrawal. This was a piece of territory that Russia had allegedly annexed.

While the Russians hung posters in Kherson city that said, “Kherson and Russia, together forever,” the locals here were told the same thing. “They were screaming at me, it is a territory of Russia already, not Ukraine anymore.”

The occupying soldiers had attempted to force the villagers to vote in a sham referendum, but only 3-4 people had cast ballots. “They just claimed 90% anyway. Yesterday our troops entered Kherson and people are happy, running, screaming happily and they made 90% of the votes for Russia. Nobody wants Russia there. It was all fake why would we need Russia?”