Dmytro Sergeev is a Ukrainian born in Norilsk, so he has a Russian passport. In the occupied Nova Kakhovka, he used to organise shelters for the townspeople in his nightclub and help Ukrainian activists and volunteers. In response, the occupiers interrogated him and later tried to coerce him into collaboration.
Maryna Serhieievа is a geography teacher by profession. The couple gave birth to their second child under occupation to the sound of explosions. Eventually, they decided to evacuate.
We spoke of the long journey through the occupied territories, the forced life in Crimea and the choice to be Ukrainian.
Norilsk
That’s where my homeland is. I didn’t choose it. I was simply born there because my parents were working abroad. But as I grew older, I thought, “That’s it, fellas. I’ve had enough of Russia. I’ll move to Nova Kakhovka, my parents’ hometown, because I like it there. Because we, Ukrainians, have a fundamentally different mentality.” Have I ever had any illusions regarding Russians? Certainly not. I hail from there, all too familiar with the culture from within. Until 2005, nationality wasn’t much of an issue. However, starting then, the Russian perspective shifted towards sharply categorising people by their nationality. They gave me the nickname “khokhol.” During vacations, one would find oneself frolicking with friends in Kakhovka, later bringing back Ukrainian words to the north. Yet, I never took offence; I rather perceived it as a form of flattery. Then, at some point, their approach shifted towards outright malice. They began to incite the society to violence.
Norilsk is an industrial city. It looks as if a nuclear war has already taken place there. Poor environment? There’s no environment to speak of. Within a five-kilometre radius, the tundra is scorched. Everything is gray and somber. I once loved this city for my childhood and youth . . . But now, there are no sentiments left. All of that was obliterated on February 24.
February 24
The first strike on the night of February 24 targeted a military unit nearby. Our windows got blown out. My pregnant wife grabbed our little daughter from her crib and ran to the bathroom—our only shelter. It was there she realised she was carrying our daughter upside down.
Panic made me sick to my stomach. I needed to save my daughter and my pregnant wife. I first planned to escape through the Kakhovka Dam. It’s a good thing I didn’t since that’s where the first deaths in our city occurred. The occupiers opened fire on a car carrying a family. Witnesses recounted that the children were still alive, bleeding, yet the Russians denied medical aid to them. The youngest was just a month and a half old . . .
Nightclub
We decided to take shelter in the basement. I owned a spacious nightclub in the city centre, with dance floors and billiard tables. We opened our doors to the townsfolk and the basement was full within two hours. At that time, the enemy aircraft were heavily active over the city—we could see the missiles flying above us. I feared my wife would have a miscarriage . . . The adults were terrified. To distract children at least somehow, we used the projector to show them cartoons and set up a disco. Our basement was great, muffling the sounds of explosions. The most challenging part was explaining to the children why they couldn’t go outside.
Cabbage
As people recovered from the initial shock, they took on volunteering en masse, helping each other out. Farmers would come and distribute foods—vegetables, eggs and meat. I remember it vividly: explosions still echoing, everything shaking and then there’s a farmer standing in the city centre, in the middle of the square, handing out cabbage. For free.
Interrogation
Russian soldiers once stopped me on the street for an inspection and took me to a semi-basement room. They were displeased by something on my phone. As they were checking, I was made to sit facing the wall while they were clicking their guns. When they discovered where I was from, they started asking me questions about whether anyone had offended me here for the language I spoke. I kept silent. Then their superior came and asked the same question.
“If I give you an honest answer, you will punch me in the face.”
“No, no, tell me. I’m curious.”
“Until you came here, I was doing just fine. I was invited to host official events—Youth Day and City Day. I conducted them in Russian and never had an issue, not even once. Whom did you come here to protect?”
He stood still, silent and let me go in about an hour. But they came several more times for inspections later.
Rally
As people began to recover, they organised a rally against the Russian occupation (a massive rally took place on March 6). I had the equipment, so I set up professional speakers in the square, played the Ukrainian national anthem and assisted the guys I knew. After the rally, Russian soldiers approached those guys and they disappeared afterwards. I still have no idea where two of my co-workers are. The soldiers came to me three or four times too and I outright lied. My wife was about to give birth, I had a little daughter . . . In that situation, being a hero was something I couldn’t afford.
Cross
I gave birth under occupation, amidst the echoes of explosions. It happened at five minutes to ten. The doctor even joked that I made it before curfew. I was the only woman in labour in the maternity hospital.
Around midnight, the occupiers began launching missiles very close to where we were. They often took up positions near kindergartens, schools and hospitals banking on these locations not being hit in retaliation. Clutching my newborn, I had to sign some documents, but my hands were trembling uncontrollably. The doctor suggested, “At least mark it with a cross.” That’s exactly what I did.
Volunteers
Volunteering became extremely dangerous. Some were confined to basements, while others were shot in their cars. Olena, a remarkably young woman who owned a beauty salon, initially turned her place into a shelter and then a medical supply hub. I offered to relocate the medical supplies to my nightclub, which caused me problems. They [Russian soldiers] came several times for inspections.
“What is this?”
“Medications.”
“Where from?”
“From Ukraine.”
“How the hell did these come from Ukraine?”
The last time, Olena was transporting medicines under gunfire. It often happened that vehicles were halted, their lifesaving cargo thrown onto the road, destroyed, tires riddled with bullets and they would say, “Go!” There were vials of insulin and other essentials that could save lives, just scattered on the pavement.
Offer
I was offered a chance to become a collaborator. It was very dangerous to refuse, but thankfully, I managed to wriggle out of it somehow. My friends, who are currently fighting on the front lines, would simply not understand me. I wouldn’t understand myself either.
I opened a bar because I needed to provide for my family. Even the occupiers would sometimes stop by. Our guys beat up some Russians once and then ended up in a basement, enduring torture for a month. A few didn’t make it back alive; they were brought out in body bags. Yet, one who did return alive said he regretted nothing.
The Truth
I once ended up having a chat with an occupier who fought near Mariupol.
“I came here looking for the truth,” he said.
“How did that go?” I asked.
“Out of three hundred, only thirty made it back.”
“How come?”
“Look, I get what’s going on here. But I had orders . . . ”
“Well, you’re the one with a gun.”
“Wanna take it? I can give it to you.”
Son
My son from my first marriage lives in Norilsk. He used to study in a Ukrainian school here in Nova Kakhovka two years before the war and prior to that, he’d spend all his summer vacations in Ukraine. After graduating, he planned to move to Nova Kakhovka.
The situation at his school is utterly absurd now. Every morning, they’re forced to sing the Russian anthem and three or four times a week they have so-called “Discussions on Important Matters.” In these lessons, teachers explain why kids like them have to die in Ukraine. Occupiers also stop by in an attempt to rationalise why they kill Ukrainians, using euphemisms like “we cleared out” instead of admitting and saying “we killed” someone’s father, mother or child.
Initially, my son refused to attend these classes, but when they forced him, he and his friend started singing the Ukrainian National Anthem during the lesson, quietly at first and then louder . . . That sparked an uproar. They called his mother, tried to reach me in Nova Kakhovka and even threatened him with the juvenile offenders’ unit. They tried to engage him in “by-the-book” discussions, claiming that Russian speakers in Ukraine were being oppressed. “I lived there,” my son would say, “and I was never oppressed.” They professed to have come there as protectors, to which he’d say, “Are you ‘protecting’ my dad with your bombs in Nova Kakhovka?” They had no answer to that. Experience nullifies propaganda. Eventually, they declared singing in Ukrainian a crime, so he stopped. But he remained steadfast in his opinion. I’m incredibly proud of him!
“Saltpetre”
The event that drove most of the townspeople to leave was “the saltpetre incident.” That's when a strike hit an ammunition depot. Within a radius of 3-5 km, everything was levelled to the ground, turning it into a plain field.
The occupiers claimed it was saltpetre, but everyone knew the truth. That’s when we resumed hiding in the basement. It was terrifying, but we tried to make light of it for the kids, saying the “boom-boom” sounds were just fireworks. Nevertheless, they sensed everything . . . My elder daughter, Vasylyna, was one year and ten months old when she started experiencing mental breakdowns. Once, she was sitting on the sofa blowing soap bubbles when we heard a loud explosion. Startled, she spilled the bubbles mixture on the sofa and ran into the bathroom in tears. That's when we decided it was time to leave. We couldn't head to Ukraine because the Russians would have shot our car, hence we chose to go through Crimea.
Crimea
After leaving Nova Kakhovka, we waited nearly a year for my international passport to be processed. We rented an apartment in Yalta, where I landed a job as an electrician. Once, while doing repairs in a school, I stumbled upon what used to be Yanukovych’s pre-election office. It was filled with manuals talking about “one people” and how “Russia is our friend” and so on . . . I also found a whole stack of filled-out ballots where people voted against the referendum. None of them had been counted.
Both in Crimea and Russia, military-themed toys are abundant. It’s as if they’re obsessed with it. They make uniforms for children, child-sized helmets and toy guns. In Yalta, you can see boys playing in these uniforms and balaclavas on the playgrounds. Logically, you understand these are just children with indoctrinated minds, but on a perceptual level, they already seem like occupiers to you. Because people in the same uniforms pointed guns at you, destroyed what you cherished and came after your friends and took them to basements from which they never returned.
People of Yalta
Very few locals remain there. The majority are newcomers from Krasnoyarsk and other Russian cities. Their disconnect from reality is severe! Among the locals we spoke with, the support for Russian authority doesn’t just register at zero—it dips into negatives. They all understand the gravity of the situation. They’re waiting, yet they’re also very fearful. No one has discarded their Ukrainian passport.
Hospital
I ended up in the hospital with my eldest once. They were bringing in loads of kids from Artek, all sick with poisonings and infections (in this camp, Russians accommodated children from other occupied areas and hardly ever returned them to their parents, relocating them to Russia instead). No one was willing to treat us; my child was critically ill and unconscious. Only one doctor treated us with decency.
“My child is Ukrainian, you see . . . We don’t have any insurance. I’ll earn the money and pay you back everything,” I said.
“We are all Ukrainians here,” she replied. She prescribed proper treatment, signed the documents and ensured we were charged the minimum.
Self-respect
I received my international passport at last. On our way from Crimea, we stayed in the city of Tver, at my sister’s place. She’s among those who took to the streets for rallies in Russia and faced repercussions. Someone she knows is still missing. People suddenly disappeared without a trace just as commonly in Russia as they did in Nova Kakhovka, with no rights in sight.
We were all shocked when, at one of the first rallies, two policemen dragged away a young woman while around four hundred protesters merely stood by, just watching. Can you imagine something like that happening in Ukraine?! Not a chance. Those cops would’ve been stripped and beaten in no time. Even I, with responsibilities towards my family and children, would’ve intervened to defend that girl. Come what may, I couldn’t just stand by and watch; I wouldn’t be able to respect myself if I did.
Hope
On the day we were planning to leave Tver for Europe, Prigozhin marched on Moscow. We were so thrilled! We thought, maybe we’ll wait for a bit and possibly even return home soon. Watching the Russians panic was astonishing. Nothing significant had happened yet, but they were already dashing to stores, stockpiling groceries. Though I consider myself a kindhearted person and tried to push away such thoughts, I couldn’t help but think: “You absolute cowards! If only you heard explosions just once, if something exploded near your child just once, I’d love to see how you’d continue to support your beloved president then! If only you could endure just one day of what we’ve lived through for an entire year! How desperately you need to see the whole picture . . . To have your worldview flipped and suddenly realise: oh, this is so wrong! This shouldn’t happen.”
Dam Destruction
Our grandmother lived in a five-story building on the outskirts of the city. The occupiers had turned its basement into their quarters where they slept, ate and got wasted. They fortified the building with concrete slabs and checkpoints; residents were only allowed through one entrance. When their colleagues brainstormed and decided to blow up our dam, these folks started to scatter like cockroaches. They were swimming around the building, hastily packing up their belongings.
Nova Kakhovka itself wasn’t drastically affected by the dam’s destruction, but all the animals in the local zoo died. People went around pleading, “Let us take the animals! We are used to keeping cows; we could surely care for a llama and others . . . ” They were denied.
Fear
We were in a hurry because we hoped to celebrate our younger daughter’s first birthday in a humane country. We looked for the shortest route and chose to go through the Ubylinka checkpoint. First, you veer off the highway onto a rough track, then onto something that hardly qualifies as a road. The car shook as if we were navigating railroad ties. Alongside were vast, abandoned villages with charred, wooden structures. Our GPS failed and so did cell service and the internet. We were running out of water and food. It was getting dark. Deer scampered about and surely where you find deers, wolves aren’t far behind. I was no longer concerned about the car’s condition; I just sped away, driven by sheer terror. God forbid something happened to the car, we could have perished there, not even making it to the border.
Inferno
At the Russian border, we encountered an absolute hell. We were stuck there for a full two days. Humanity seemed absent among the border guards. And then there was the weather: sweltering heat followed by torrential rains. People who had to cross the border on foot stood for hours in the rain, holding small children in their arms. No benches, no potable water. The only available toilet was so repugnant that entering was unthinkable. You were greeted with piles of feces saying, “Hi there. Occupied.” The surrounding area was no different.
Naturally, that was the last place we wanted to celebrate our daughter’s birthday. But despite it all, she received gifts! A can of stewed meat, a can of condensed milk and ten euros. They were gifts from a Ukrainian-Kazakh family we met in the queue.
And actually, it was our kids who saved us. FSB agents spent hours searching people in front of us with Kharkiv license plates. They were stripped to the waist, their phones combed through. At 4 a.m., it was our turn. We stepped up to the window with our documents.
“Why did the father take citizenship, but you didn’t?” the officer asked.
“Because I don’t want to. He had no choice; he was born with that passport.”
The officer’s face went through a whole range of emotions, spinning like a kaleidoscope.
Then it was time for my younger daughter’s documents. She was the one who was born under occupation.
“And why doesn’t she have citizenship?”
“We don’t want our child to have Russian citizenship.”
The officer’s face went through another series of expressions.
“What do you mean you don’t want it?”
“It’s like wanting it but in reverse. We want to leave and never return here again.”
“Show me the children!”
We brought over two car seats, showing our sleeping kids, cheeks puffed out, softly snoring.
“Why are their eyes shut?”
“Because children tend to sleep at nighttime.”
“Alright, you can take them back,” she said with disdain, as if to say, "Remove your trash."
With a huff, she finally let us through.
Humanity
At the Latvian border, we were met with an entirely different demeanour: an air-conditioned facility, Wi-Fi, clean restrooms and colouring books for children. Being a Russian citizen, I was called in for questioning.
The interviewer, a young woman, spoke Russian with more clarity than those Russian border guards who arrogantly tossed words at us.
“After the interview, we’ll decide whether to allow you entry or not,” the Latvian officer said and then suddenly added, “You all must be starving after your journey!”
She offered me her own boxed lunch. Later, she also brought apples, buns and nectarines for the kids.
Poland
We were welcomed very warmly here. They’re helping us get settled in. My wife and I joke that we had our first daughter during the COVID-19 lockdown and our second amidst occupation. We’ve decided not to have any more children, as we don’t need asteroids falling from the sky.
Home
How has this experience changed us? It’s made us stronger. If you’re human, you’ll retain your humanity, no matter the situation. And our town, Nova Kakhovka, is resilient. Nothing can break it. Regardless of the circumstances, no matter how long the occupation lasts, Nova Kakhovka will always remain a part of Ukraine.
Do we plan to return? Absolutely. The moment the last shell has fallen, we’ll be packing up and heading back to rebuild our homeland. I’m an electrician specialising in high voltage, so my skills will definitely be in demand. Even if the pay isn’t great, it won’t matter. Nova Kakhovka is our home. I want my children to grow up in their home.
