November 22, 2022 at 1:00 AM EST
A portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin is seen in an office at the Kherson Maritime College on November 16 in Kherson, Ukraine. (Wojciech Grzedzinski for The Washington Post) Comment on this story
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KHERSON, Ukraine – When Russians occupying her town came to the maritime college where she worked, Maryna Ivanovka refused to fall in line. The 60-year-old administrator was fired and kicked off campus. His home was raided and his phone, computers and passport confiscated. A pro-Russian subaltern was installed in his place.
Months later, Kherson’s occupation began to collapse suddenly. The Russian soldiers fled. And so did the woman who had taken his job and position.
As soon as Ukrainian authorities had swept the university for booby traps, Ivanovka was back at her desk Wednesday, sifting through the evidence her Russian-backed replacement had left behind: a ledger of employees who had worked for the Russians, a list of students who had voluntarily gone to Crimea and, peering from the side of a potted plant, a portrait of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“We’re going to put it in the bathroom above the toilet,” Ivanovka said as a colleague slapped the portrait upside down, “so everyone can see his behind.”
Undoing eight months of employment will not be so easy, however.
About a week after the last Russian soldier fled across the Dnieper River, the mood in Kherson remained largely celebratory. Hundreds still gathered every day in the central square to embrace the soldiers. Power was still out, but businesses were coming back to life. Russian propaganda billboards were being torn down and Ukrainian ones were going up.
Joy walk: Kherson cheers as the first train arrives from Kyiv after the occupation
But in the institutions of this regional capital, from city hall to hospitals and schools, newly restored leaders like Ivanovka face a double conundrum. How to rebuild without the thousands of Russian sympathizers who fled? And even more annoying, what to do with the ones that are left? Thousands of people in the city had an ambivalence toward, or even an affinity for, the Russians.
Kherson was spared the scorched earth strategy that Russia used elsewhere in Ukraine. Despite widespread arrest and torture in the city, few of its buildings were bombed. Until they sabotaged the utilities on their way out, the Russians kept the lights on and the faucets running. Kherson, a Black Sea port founded by Catherine the Great, was a place Putin intended to assimilate, not annihilate.
Russia’s fleeting success in Kherson is a reflection not only of its brute force, but also of the connection many here felt to Moscow. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people in Kherson accepted Russian passports in the hope of receiving benefits. Many more accepted thick envelopes of Russian rubles on top of their pay as an incentive to stay in their jobs.
As Ivanovka searched for documents, a Ukrainian intelligence agent poked his head in for information about the woman who replaced her. Ivanovka suggested that she question a security guard named Vyacheslav Maksymov, who was close to the woman and had also continued to work.
“And take the keys away from him,” he said.
The officer declined a reporter’s request to observe the interrogation.
“Better than not,” he said. “It’s been a long time since we’ve been home and when we face these people, sometimes we just crumble.”
Selling a “United Russia”
Across the street from the prison where the Russians allegedly executed some of their enemies, is a towering performance hall. If the Kherson torture chambers were the hidden side of the occupation, the room, transformed into a humanitarian aid center, was the image the Russians hoped to project.
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A few days after the escape, however, the building was in disarray. The papers were scattered. Glass windows and doors were smashed and a torn poster of Putin’s political party was on the floor.
But amidst the rubble were signs of a concerted attempt to curry favor with the locals. Children’s backpacks featured a jolly Russian stuffed bone sailor urging children to “stay the course.” The crayon drawings showed smiling stick figures atop Russian tanks and warships with the words “United Russia.” An old man walking around the building picked up a collection of works by Anton Chekhov.
“Of course it’s Russian,” he said when asked if the books were leftover leaves from the occupation. “What else would it be?”
The clearest image of Russia’s persuasion campaign was in a messy office. There, piles of documents cataloged Kherson residents applying for aid, pensions, passports and jobs. One of the children on the list sent to a summer camp in Crimea. Applications to volunteer at the help center filled notebook after notebook.
Near Kherson, orphanage staff hid Ukrainian children from Russian occupiers
The Washington Post visited addresses of nearly three dozen applicants. Some addresses appeared to be fake, perhaps a sign that people felt compelled to apply. Most were real but the houses were empty. Neighbors or relatives said the applicants had fled days or weeks before the city was liberated, often to Crimea.
“I would be fine with any kind of government as long as it takes care of its people,” said a woman named Marharyta as she rummaged through the abandoned aid center. The Post is identifying him by name only because of the risk of retribution.
Some residents said they had been swayed by billboards and social media posts promising that a Russian passport would allow them to get medical assistance or a Russian pension worth four times more than in Ukraine.
Sasha, 60, who The Post is also identifying only by first name, said she stood in line for six hours to receive the first of four 10,000-ruble payments at what used to be Ukraine’s post office . Without telling his wife, Sasha also applied for a Russian passport in order to receive a permanent Russian pension.
“I have one [Ukrainian] pension, but it is not enough to live or receive medicine”, he said. As soon as the Russians fled, however, the rubles were worth almost nothing, and he was left with little more than the shame of taking his payments and passport.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” he said as his wife squirmed uncomfortably and a neighbor listened. “The Ukrainians could shoot me tomorrow.”
Sasha said he accepted responsibility for his mistake, but also felt betrayed by Russia, which he always considered a “brother” country. “They looted my birthplace,” he said of the Russian withdrawal from Kherson. “If I used to have some loyalty to Russia, now I’m just disgusted.”
On a cool morning four days after the Russians fled, Halyna Luhova stood on the street corner in front of Kherson’s town hall building. A sign at the front door read “MINES MINES MINES,” so Luhova, the former city hall secretary, and other officials were waiting for the Ukrainian military to check for explosives or booby traps and let them in.
Officials met in small groups to discuss bread delivery and repairs to the power grid. But again and again, the conversation turned to contributors. Of the nine advisers before the invasion, five had conspired with the Russians, he said. One, a wealthy real estate magnate, was appointed mayor. The real mayor was still missing.
“They fled to Crimea and took everything with them,” said Luhova, who is now head of the city’s military administration.
In some institutions, workers simply refused to follow Russian orders. Teachers risked their lives to offer online classes to students, an alternative to the Russian propaganda offered in their schools. And staff at one major hospital simply ignored many demands from their new bosses.
The stealthy Kherson resistance fighters undermined the Russian occupation forces
Andrii Koksharov, the head of the trauma department, said he refused to sign a new set of rules imposed by his Russian bosses and refused to accept a Russian salary, but was allowed to continue working because his skills were necessary At one point, the Russians forced him at gunpoint to amputate one of his soldier’s arms, he said.
When the Russians fled, the hospital’s director, Leonid Rymyga, came out of hiding and went back to work. To his surprise, his replacement stationed in Russia did not flee, but instead tried to negotiate to keep a job.
“I told him to negotiate with the SBU,” Rymyga said, referring to the Ukrainian intelligence service.
“You have sold your homeland”
The Russians initially kept their distance from the Kherson Maritime College, a major Soviet-era institution where young men and women learn to captain merchant ships. But one day, they broke into the headquarters and held officials at gunpoint.
In May, Russian-appointed officials visited and said the university, like Kherson, was “Russian now.” When Ivanovka and others objected, they were fired and banned from campus. On July 21, Russian security agents visited his home and confiscated his passport, phone and computers.
In her place, the Russians installed a low-level teacher, whose desire to work under occupation elevated her to assistant principal.
“I never thought that a teacher of Ukrainian history and patriotic education would collaborate with the occupiers,” Ivanovka said of her substitute, who could not be reached for comment.
The substitute moved to Ivanovka’s office and put up Putin’s portrait. Then he began trying to coerce other employees into continuing to work, said Oleksiy Kucher, 36, a lawyer who works at the school. Sometimes he said staying was the right thing to do, Kucher said. Other times, however, he hinted that there could be consequences for saying no.
“She was texting saying, ‘Aren’t you afraid to start your car and it’s going to blow up?'” Kucher said, adding that she ignored the threat.
The staff were devastated by…