Russian Occupied Ukraine - A personal report

These personal accounts from refugees within Ukraine are from interviews by Volodymyr Khomik. Lutsk, Ukraine.

More than 7.7 million refugees have escaped from Ukraine and crossed over to Poland, Romania, Estonia, and Lithuania. Another 8 million people have been displaced and have found a safe place to stay in cities and towns like Lviv and Lutsk. Lutsk is in the northwest about 3 hours from the Polish border. Housing is scarce and most are staying in temporary housing.

Volodymyr wrote on June 19th: “These refugees I interviewed live in a dorm at the Lutsk Medical College. When I first got there the doors were closed and someone came up to me, asked why I was there and asked for some identification. Then, a lady called some unknown authority for permission. Then someone else led me to the refugees who were living on the 7th floor. It isn’t easy to find the refugees in town because they are housed all over the city, and no one seems to have a clear record of where they are living. Also, Ukraine is under martial law, so people are a bit distrustful and suspicious about strangers. Unfortunately, I guess I have become like a stranger to people here since there are many young people who’ve grown up here and I don’t know them. My coworkers are now retired and I don’t know the people who have taken their jobs. Sadly, I am a stranger among my own people.”

I imagine this is hard for Volodymyr to feel disconnected to his own community. When we lived in Lutsk, Volodymyr knew virtually everyone. Volodya, a professor at the university, was important in his own way. He was our ticket into meeting all kinds of interesting people from academics to musicians to lawyers and our neighbors - this opened up the whole world that was Lutsk, Ukraine. Now that he is retired and has become an Elder, Volodya no longer knows the young people who have taken the place of his friends. This is sometimes one of the little known scourges of getting older - being forgotten and ignored.

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Interview of Inna, a refugee in Lutsk, Ukraine by Volodymyr Khomyk. June 2022. Image: Volodymyr Khomik, Inna from Rubizhne, Luhans’ka oblast, worker at a local factory.

“My 24 year old daughter Karina, a student studying in Kharkiv, called me and said, ‘Mom, the war has started.’  Intense fighting broke out in Kharkiv.  The University evacuated the students from Kharkiv to the city of Kryvyi Rih, and from there the administration sent them to the city of Kamianets-Podilskyi.

On the first day of the war, only one missile strike occurred in Rubezhnoye.  The fighting there did not begin at the beginning of the war, but later.  In March, fighting began with powerful air strikes.  We sat in the basement for three days.

Then we moved to the town of Svatova.  The city was completely occupied on March 3rd.  There were no battles but the Russians occupied it.  It is very difficult to live in an occupied territory.  Our family did not have a good life there.  We were not free to say the word "Ukraine" or to say that we cared about Ukraine.

It ended very sadly.  My husband's brother fought in the armed forces of Ukraine.  Families in which men fought on the side of Ukraine had to leave the region, because the Russians used violence against the relatives of Ukrainian soldiers.  There were people who were whistle-blowers who went to the Russians and denounced those families whose sons or husbands belonged to the armed forces of Ukraine.

An acquaintance of mine, a classmate, lived with her 15 year old daughter and her husband who fought for Ukraine.  The Russian military broke into their house at night, and tried to rape their 15-year-old daughter but failed.  The family immediately fled the town of Svatove.

It was scary to pass checkpoints on the roads between different cities, because the Russians took the people off the buses, checked everything, and stripped them to their underwear.  Even young children were questioned about their attitudes towards Ukraine.  The Russian military at the checkpoints said that we Ukrainians are not grateful to them, and that they had come here to Ukraine from Russia to free us from the Nazis, and yet, we still support Ukraine.

We left Rubizhne and Svatove, but our parents had to stay there.  Also my grandparents, who are 95 years old were forced to stay because they are not able to leave the Luhansk region because their health does not allow them.  It is very difficult to live there now, very difficult.  There is no funding for humanitarian aid either.  The Russian occupiers promised to give them a Russian pension in rubles, but did not give them anything.  My parents received a Ukrainian senior pension in early February, but they no longer receive anything.  They qualify for a Ukrainian pension, but they can’t receive it because they live in an occupied territory where this pension is not available.  They have survived thanks to their small farm dacha in the village.  Those people who live in the cities and in apartment buildings and do not have a dacha or a farm, have a very hard time living. (Note: a dacha is a small piece of land allotted during Soviet times to citizens by the local government for gardening or growing vegetables for personal consumption.)

We can’t get ahold of our parents.  If the Internet ever works, I still can't talk to my parents freely, because the Russian’s are eavesdropping on everything and the Russian Federal Security Service is listening.

After I left Rubezhnoye, my house was destroyed during an air strike and everything was lost and the house was uninhabitable.  The Kadyrov's Chechens fought in Rubezhnoye and they looted apartments, and took household appliances, and everything else from abandoned homes back to Chechnya.

(Wikipedia: Ramzan Akhmadovich Kadyrov is a Russian and Chechen politician currently serving as the Head of the Chechen Republic. Kadyrov was reported to have been taking part in Russian operations outside Kyiv. In a video he called on Ukrainian forces to surrender “or you will be finished”. The Telegraph reported that on two occasions where Kadyrov had said he was in Ukraine he was proven not to be. In one instance he said he was in Mariupol at a petrol station and published a photo, but the pump in the background, Rosneft's Pulsar brand, does not operate in Ukraine. On another occasion, Kadyrov posted a video suggested he was meeting troops in Mariupol but he hosted a Russian official in Grozny on the same day. On 28 March 2022, President Putin promoted Kadyrov to the rank of lieutenant general. On 26 May 2022 Kadyrov threatened Poland. He was apparently upset by the Polish supply of weapons to Ukraine.)

The most dangerous anxious moment I experienced was when the Russians learned that my husband's brother Eugene Alexander had been in the Ukrainian army for 5 years and was fighting against Russia. The Russians armed with weapons and machine guns came to our home and began to search the apartment.  I told them that I have a small daughter and asked them to please not to scare her. Later, my husband also went to fight in the war and is now fighting for Ukraine.

In the future, I hope that our state will get back its entire territory and that we will be able to see our parents.  My biggest fear is that I may not have a chance to see my parents again.”

Note: This is an interesting interview for multiple reasons including stories of how the Russians are treating Ukrainians in occupied territories. It also shows how frightening it is to be away from your family that are stuck in Russian occupied territory and the fear that you will never be reunited. The belief that the Russian Federal Security Service-i.e FSB (former KGB) is omniscient and able to wiretap every house in Ukraine and is watching everyone may or may not be true, but a belief that the FSB has a Stalinesque superpower to control and watch the people is widely believed. The reference to the Chechens fighting in Ukraine is a well spread myth, a kind of a bogeyman story, used to scare Ukrainians into submission. How accurate these stories are is unknown, but referring to the brutal Chechens does a good job of scaring the everyday Ukrainian. My memory of the Ukrainians is that coming from generations of submission from the Soviets and the brutal Tsar, the people are quick to believe myths and to believe in the brutality of the government and, in particular, the Russians.

March 2022 - Mariupol. A personal report.

More than 7.7 million refugees have escaped from Ukraine and crossed over to Poland, Romania, Estonia, and Lithuania. Another 8 million people have been displaced and have found a safe place to stay in cities and towns like Lviv and Lutsk. Lutsk is in the northwest about 3 hours from the Polish border. Housing is scarce and most are staying in temporary housing. See photos in the gallery below.

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Interview of Tatiana, a refugee in Lutsk, Ukraine by Volodymyr Khomyk. June 2022. Image: Volodymyr Khomik, Tatiana - teacher of Ukrainian language in school in Mariupol. Note: As per Lutsk City regulations, Volodymyr had to get permission from ‘the authorities’ to meet with refugees and to take photos of them.

“When the war began, my greatest fear was that I wouldn’t have a country anymore - that in a few days Ukraine would be gone.  In the first days of the war we watched television - we watched the news about what was happening in Kyiv and even around Mariupol. I couldn’t believe it!  Our capital was under siege.

On March 2nd, communications, electricity, gas, and water were all shut off in the city.  And from that time on our own struggle for survival began.  On March 22nd, our house burned down.  My husband and daughter and I were staying with my mother, who lived in a small private house.  We moved to her house 5 days earlier.  Because rockets landed around the houses next to my mother's, we hid in the basement for 5 days. It was very cold and bullets flew straight into my mother's house.  We couldn’t see our own home in the distance.  Everything was veiled in smoke, neighboring houses were on fire. People were running in the streets.

We survived by living in the basement, but we didn’t know what the condition of the house was.  After the shellings, the house began to burn and plastic water pipes began to melt in the basement. The basement was flooding and there was smoke everywhere. We tried to put the fire out, but we couldn’t. It wasn’t possible to stay there and we had to run to another part of ​​Mariupol.  But, we could tell that the city was soon be captured - in a few days the Russians would reach us.

We walked to the garage and it turned out that our car had survived - sitting safe and sound surrounded by other destroyed cars.  My husband, son, and daughter, and I left Mariupol in this car.  We arrived first in Zaporizhia, then in the city of Dnipro.  From there we moved to Lutsk.  My mother tried to stay in Mariupol but in May she was able to come to Lutsk and now she is with us. My husband Alexander had to leave and return to the front to fight.

Question: When was the most dangerous moment? 

The most dangerous moment was when all five of us were in my mother's room and a bullet flew through a window.  Somehow the bullet didn't hit any of us.  Death was very close.  Of course, shells were falling all around the yard, fragments were flying in all different directions.  But when this bullet flew in, right in front of our eyes - it was the scariest thing.

I was scared at night when planes bombed the houses around us.  Those explosions made everything shake.  We heard all the windows shatter in a building next to the house.

The planes flew over during the day and sometimes at night.  The artillery fired during the day - it never stopped.  At night we heard planes flying overhead constantly - it woke us up.  And, then, there were the explosions. First, we heard the explosions from far away, then closer, and closer - I knew that the next blast would hit us.

Question: Were there any people you knew who were killed by the Russians?

My friend’s husband died, and all our neighbors died.  A women I knew was buried in her own apartment building. It wasn’t until later that they found her and dug her out of the building. One 15-year-old  boy was killed by shrapnel on the street.  There were many wounded people and many who were burned.  The house of a friend of mine caught fire but she couldn’t get out of the house - she had an amputated leg and she was burned alive.

Question: Did you know about the Azovstal Factory in Mariupol?

(Note: Wikipedia: The Azovstal plant became one of the most emblematic points of the Siege of Mariupol. The plant had tunnels and bunkers capable of withstanding a nuclear attack, making it an extremely defendable position. As the Russian forces advanced into Mariupol, Ukrainian forces withdrew to Azovstal, and by late April it became the last pocket of Ukrainian resistance. The Battle of Azovstal occurred on the site, resulting in a conditional surrender by the Ukrainian defenders after over a month of resistance. The plant was almost completely destroyed by Russian bombardment over the course of the battle. After the capture of Mariupol by the Donetsk People's Republic, they announced plans for the plant to be demolished during the city's restoration.)

We lived very near the Azovstal Factory.  At that time in March, fighting was taking place all around Azovstal.  Ukrainian troops escaped into the yard and there were battles on the ground.  And then, when we left Mariupol, I was told that the Russians had captured the whole city.  Then the Russian troops came from the so-called ‘Donetsk People's Republic’.  They walked in with white armbands, and came in as new masters of the city.  The Azov fighters were in the basement of the plant, surrounded and isolated.  Those brave Ukrainian warriors remained there until finally they had to surrender to the Russians.  They had no food or water.

Many people hid in the drama theater in Mariupol. 

(Note: Wikipedia: On 16 March 2022, the Donetsk Regional Drama Theatre in Mariupol, Ukraine, was bombed during the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It was used as an air raid shelter during the siege of Mariupol, sheltering about 1,000 civilians, of whom about 600 were killed. Ukraine accused the Russian Armed Forces of deliberately bombing the theatre while it was sheltering civilians. Russia first claimed that the reason the theatre was bombed was because it was being used as a base by the Ukrainian military, and then denied the allegations and instead accused the Azov Battalion of blowing up the building. Both Russian claims have been refuted by independent investigation. The theatre is among the many Ukrainian heritage and cultural sites destroyed during the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine.)

A friend of mine from another school hid there with her son.  She survived.  She worked as a cleaner at the Mariupol Drama Theater where she could get food. Fortunately, she left the theater right before the theater was bombed.

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Refugees from Severodonetsk and Konstantinovka of Donetsk Oblast, housed by the city of Lutsk. Photos by Volodymyr Khomyk.

2022 Lutsk in War: Photos

2022 Lutsk Ukraine in Wartime

Photos by Volodymyr Khomik.  March and June 2022.

Lutsk, a three hour bus ride to the Polish border, appears untouched by the war that is raging in the east.  A pleasant woman merchant sells socks that are scattered on a luggage rack.  The market is filled with produce from the Carpathia to the south and merchants wait for customers.   The woman shopping in the market with her ubiquitous white plastic bag looks similar to someone I might see in Seattle in the summertime.

Underneath a peace, lies the beast of fear.  Metal barrigades that line some of the streets are in wait for the enemy.  People stand in line to pray to their saints for protection.  It is what is hidden that is the most revealing.  The prices of the nice red tomatos are high, the streets are empty, and that pain you feel in the pit of your stomach terrified by the invading Russians. Will the government be able to still send you your pension next month?  Will you have enough food for the rest of the week? Should you escape across the border to Poland or stay hunkered down in the safety of your claustrophobic 500 sq ft apartment?

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Flashback - 1997 in Lutsk

Although there are a few inside ‘grocery stores,’ most people shop at the neighborhood "bazaar." This is equivalent to summer farmer markets, only on a much smaller scale and operated year round. 

Photo: mbfitzmahan. Bazaar, Lutsk, Ukraine. 1997.

1997 September. Lutsk Ukraine. Don’s Journal of Lutsk.

In a brick and mortar store, products are displayed behind a counter where you can see but cannot touch the merchandise.  You must ask for everything from a clerk, who will hand it to you for inspection or purchase.  In many cases an item on the shelf is the only one they have. When you buy it, there is no more "in stock."

Although there are a few inside ‘grocery stores,’ most people shop at the neighborhood "bazaar." This is equivalent to summer farmer markets, only on a much smaller scale and operated year round.  Some vendors may have a wide variety of sodas, juices, candy, magazines, etc. while another may have only a small paper bag of mushrooms.  At present, there is lots of produce in good condition.  We wonder what things will be like in December.

At the market we buy some bread, onions, garlic, milk, salt, pepper, and margarine. These, combined with the farm fresh potatoes we received from Volodymyr will make a fine potato soup. With that we head home.  The soup is great. We sit in our little kitchen, eat our dinner and discuss our first day in Lutsk.

Volodymyr Khomyk

May 28, 2022 - News from Volodymyr.

I receive news of life in Ukraine from our friend, Volodymyr Khomyk. We met Volodya 37 years ago when he came to Seattle on a Gorbachev sponsored program to study Don’s program on alcohol abuse prevention, “Here’s Looking at You.”

That was in the mid 1980s - it was a hopeful time as Gorbachev negotiated with Reagan for a nuclear arms reduction and Gorbachev attempted to bring reform to the Soviet Union with glastnost and perestroika. Unbeknownst to all, those would be the last years before the collapse of the governments of the Soviet Union and its Satellite states. Ukrainian independence came on August 24, 1991 - starting with its exciting and hopeful Declaration of Independence and moving through the rocky early years of inflation and attempts to create a liberal democracy. This was followed by the Orange Revolution in 2004 and the Maidan Protests in 2014, which led Ukraine to lean away from Russia and face toward the West. In retribution for turning away from Russia, Putin attacked Ukraine in 2014, occupying Crimea and sending troops to eastern Ukraine. And, now in 2022, Putin has invaded Ukraine with an existential attack that threatens the very survival of the newly formed state on the eastern border of Europe.

Volodymyr lives in Lutsk, a small city of 200,000. That is where we lived, worked, and studied for a year in 1997-98. Volodymyr was our sponsor who was instrumental in bringing us to Ukraine. A professor of psychology, he recommended to the Dean of the Law School that he hire me to teach comparative law at the Lesya Ukrainka Volyn National University.

For an expat, the best experience from life abroad is when you meet a local who acts as your conduit to life in the community. It doesn’t happen very often, but when it does it brings to you the joy of living in a foreign place and feeling like you belong. Volodymyr was a guide to the practical things like where to buy food and where to pay your bills. He showed us how to use the local transportation - how to get to work and to school. He introduced us to our neighbors who took us out to the forest for a lunch of shashleek. He introduced me to some artists in town who took me into the Volyn Studio where I developed film, and made friends where we drink lots of vodka, laughed and shared stories. He introduced me to dissidents and judges. And despite not speaking Ukrainian or Russian, we made friends and got to know Ukraine.

As of the end of May 2022, Volodymyr wrote to me that he receives a small monthly pension, $150 - well below what he needs to buy basic goods. He writes that the value of the Ukrainian currency, has gone down considerably. Food prices have gone up and he must pay public utilities for his apartment. Factories and other industries are “constantly reducing,” he writes. “We are getting many products - foods from Western Europe - but I now have almost no food.” He wrote that he was writing “under the loud sound of an air raid warning siren.”

It is particularly hard for the elderly in Ukraine, especially the elderly like Volodymyr who have no family. The only family Volodymyr had when we first met him was his elderly mother who lived alone in a small village, “the Great Out of the Way Place,” near the Chernobyl nuclear plant. In 1997 Volodya made regular trips into the village to see his mother and then he came back with bags of fresh produce and meat. She died a few years ago leaving Volodya alone.

On the good side, Volodymyr lives in Lutsk, not in eastern or southern Ukraine which has suffered terrible losses. Some of the elderly in the east have been unable to get pensions and their neighbors have left them behind. Sometimes, families have even had to leave their disabled elderly. Medical facilities closed.

Volodymyr fears the invasion of the Russians. Who will take care of him?

A week ago, Volodymyr wrote, “But in relation to my own health I am still feeling well. Thanks to God.”