Ukrainians speak of sorrow, rape and suspicion under Russian occupation

IZYUM, Ukraine — When Russian forces stormed this northeastern Ukrainian city in March, civilians — hunkered down in basements and bomb shelters — left messages on their gates that doubled as pleas for survival: “Children live here,” they wrote. “People live here.”

They hoped the notes would persuade invading soldiers to take mercy on them. But just as in other towns brutalized by Russian occupation, few were spared.

‘I screamed: “Yurii! Yurii!” There was silence.’ - Liudmila Trykushenko

As Russian forces pushed to take over Izyum in early March, Liudmila Trykushenko and Yurii Zobolev stayed to take care of his mother.

One night, the couple lay on their basement floor, where they had moved their mattresses to stay safe. Yurii turned to his wife: “If anything happens to me, don’t worry. We have the money. It’s going to be fine.” She replied: “We lived through worse. Everything will be fine.”

She drifted off to sleep — then woke to an explosion.

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The attack left their basement door blocked, trapping her inside. She screamed for almost an entire day — but no one came to save her.

She eventually made her way out. Yurii’s body sat in the cold basement for a week before she buried him in a shallow grave.

Weeks later, Russian troops exhumed his body and reburied him in a mass burial site.

After their 25 years together, she had to survive the rest of the occupation without him.

‘I see it all before my eyes’ - Tetyana Maryenko

Before the war, Tetyana Maryenko and her teenage daughter lived in the village of Kamyanka. When missiles began raining down near their home, they fled to Izyum, about seven miles on foot.

Maryenko and her daughter squatted in abandoned homes in Izyum.

One day, Russian soldiers barged into a house where they were staying.

What happened next to Maryenko was first detailed by The Washington Post in September. She shared a fuller account during several later interviews.

The following video contains Maryenko’s description of rape by Russian soldiers.

‘Everyone who could hold a needle and do stitches was helping us’ - Anatoliy Kovalenko

The hospital in Izyum was already struggling to treat the city’s many war victims when it came under attack. Much of the building was destroyed.

Even then, the doctors kept working.

Sometimes Anatoliy Kovalenko would have to pause a surgery he was performing to run to the hall and assist a less experienced doctor with other procedures.

When walking outside, staffers and patients had to be careful to avoid mines scattered across the property.

‘It feels like I’m standing on something hot. ... It’s burning.’ - Viktor Naidenko

Viktor Naidenko didn’t see the mine until it was too late.

The small piece of sand-colored plastic — no larger than the palm of his hand — was near the path he walked through on his small farm in Izyum each day.

“When we walked around, we’d always pay attention,” he said. But on that day, he stepped just slightly off the path he had been taking. “And there was a ‘boom.’”

It was August, just weeks before Ukrainian forces would retake his city. The occupying Russian forces, called to the scene to assist him, put him on a helicopter and flew him to Russia for treatment.

For two weeks his family had no idea where he had gone or whether he was alive.

Eventually, volunteers got him to the border, where he found a driver to take him back into Russian-occupied Ukraine.

‘There is God in the world. He will be the one to judge us.’ - Serhii Saltovskyi

When fighting ramped up in Izyum, civilians struggled to bury their dead. Traveling to cemeteries was too dangerous. Funerals were nearly impossible.

Serhii Saltovskyi, who worked as a taxi driver before the war, says he started moving bodies for proper burials “so that the city wouldn’t become a cemetery.”

He and other volunteers would collect donations for their makeshift funerals — or use their own money to pay for supplies, he said. But despite their efforts, the Russian military eventually got involved and took credit. They didn’t pay him, he said, but did offer him food rations and some gas.

He saw his work as a public service. Some believed it made him complicit in the occupation.

Others in Izyum have faced similar scrutiny. Some have since fled to Russia or are in jail.

Ukrainian soldiers visited him soon after they retook control of Izyum and interrogated him.

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Credits

Sergii Mukaieliants, Anastacia Galouchka and Wojciech Grzedzinski contributed to this report. Editing by Jessica Koscielniak and Reem Akkad. Translations by Lesia Prokopenko.