Nikolai Karpitsky. Life in Occupied Kherson: An Eyewitness Account

Source: PostPravda.info 12.01.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/life-in-occupied-kherson/

I spoke with Vitaly about life under occupation. He is known on social media under the nickname “Vital Ustas.” Before the war, he worked in the police. After retiring, he became involved in the scouting movement. He lived through the occupation of Kherson, in the Korabel housing estate on Quarantine Island.

Russian Occupation: Only Death Is Worse

When the full-scale invasion began, what I feared most was not the shelling, but the occupation itself. At times, the electricity was gone for long periods, and with it the connection to the outside world – you don’t know what is happening on the front line near you. There is only one thought in your head: anything but occupation. After the liberation of Izium and Kherson, I realized that reality was far more terrifying than even the darkest images my imagination had conjured. In conversation, a resident of Kherson told me that Russian occupation is a state of absolute lawlessness; only death can be worse.

Russian occupation is not simply a change of power. It is the transformation of a person into a thing – something to which anything can be done. It is impossible to hide from occupation or simply wait it out at home. The occupiers will come into your house and decide whether you live or die, and that decision may depend on the mood of drunken soldiers. In addition, the occupiers deliberately hunt down those who, in free Ukraine, openly expressed their views or demonstrated a Ukrainian identity.

Lawlessness

Vitaly from Kherson (“Vital Ustas”) speaks about everyday life in the occupied city.

– In the first days of the occupation, we were in shock. Two or three days – and they were already here: flags everywhere, military vehicles driving through the city. We thought there would be some kind of defense… How did they end up in Kakhovka on the very first day?!

– This was right at the beginning. An armored vehicle pulls up to a mother and her son who were simply walking down the street. A soldier points a machine gun at them and says nothing. She told me about it herself later. The street was empty. The mother stood there, not knowing what to do – whether to walk or not. They stood there, trembling. Finally, the son said, “Well, let’s go, Mom.” “Let’s go.”

The right to life is like air: while it exists, you don’t notice it.

– Without documents, you are a piece of meat, – says Vitaly. –Compared to this, the gangster 1990s were a children’s fairy tale.

Like Vitaly, I too remember the lawlessness and crime of the early 1990s, but even then I knew for certain that I was considered a human being regardless of whether I had my passport with me or had left it at home. Under occupation, however, even having documents guarantees nothing – even if they are perfectly in order.

– You leave your house and don’t know whether you’ll come back, – Vitaly says. – You don’t know where you’ll end up by evening: in a basement, or shot at a checkpoint.

As an example, Vitaly recalls the story of villagers who regularly brought milk to the city and were therefore already well known at a checkpoint.

– Why do you frisk us every time? Who are you looking for? – they ask.
– We’re looking for Nazis.
– And how many have you caught here already?
– We don’t talk to them. If we notice anything, we shoot to kill. Our battalion commander told us: “If you see anything suspicious and there’s no resistance, you’re allowed to kill on the spot.”

Vitaly did not hear of anyone being shot at a checkpoint inside the city itself, but in the suburbs it happened frequently. In the city, checkpoints were more often manned by the National Guard (Rosgvardiya). There, they might still “think” before shooting, but at the slightest suspicion people were detained and sent “to the basement.”

At the Checkpoint

– I lived in the Korabel housing estate, – Vitaly continues. – It’s the island part of Kherson. There’s a shipbuilding plant there; from it, they were firing at Mykolaiv. Our district was cut off from the rest of Kherson by a checkpoint. To get from the island to the city and back, you had to pass through it – traffic jams were terrible.

– When you cross a checkpoint, everyone is tense, like a drawn string. Once you’ve passed it, there’s a collective sigh of relief. In the city, checkpoints were mostly set up at exits: roads were completely blocked. But from time to time, mobile checkpoints appeared inside the city – suddenly they would block a street for two or three hours, set up a machine gun, and start checking all vehicles: documents, luggage.

– Phones had to be “cleaned”: they were checked at checkpoints. They went through everything, which took a lot of time – minibuses stood and waited. Sometimes FSB officers would show up. Using special equipment, they checked phone activity over the previous six months. If they found anything suspicious, the person was taken away. Some later disappeared without a trace. In Bilozerka, for example, a man was taken this way, and later his body – bearing signs of torture – was dumped near his house.

– We’re crossing the checkpoint between our district and the rest of Kherson, and immediately they shout: “All men out! Documents! Strip to the waist!” They checked tattoos. They knew prison tattoos, but if they found Ukrainian symbols or anything resembling runes, they took the person immediately. And after that – torture. That’s why those who had tattoos tried not to leave their homes at all.

Vitaly also recounts another case, retold to him by the mother of two sons. The elder was 22; the younger, 18, had Down syndrome. The older brother was taking the younger one to the hospital. At the checkpoint, soldiers checked his phone and saw messages in Ukrainian: acquaintances from Kyiv had been writing to him on Telegram.

“Ukrainian language?! You bastard!” – they shouted and dragged him out of the minibus. The minibus stood there, the passengers watching as the young man was beaten. In the end, the soldiers decided to take him away, but the passengers began to plead, asking that the older brother be allowed to accompany the younger one to the hospital. Only because of this was the young man released, but his details were recorded and he was warned: if they ever saw Ukrainian-language correspondence again, it would be the end for him.

People could be beaten simply for saying the “wrong” word or for “looking the wrong way.” Vitaly gives the example of a 65-year-old man on a minibus who merely snapped back when soldiers started harassing him. He was dragged outside, beaten with boots and rifle butts in front of all the passengers, and then thrown onto the roadside. Sometimes women were dragged out and beaten in the same way.

Terror

Vitaly says that occupation is a constant expectation of something terrible.

– You wake up in the morning and immediately check the news. One day they announce some kind of “mobilization”: all men must register for military service. Another day it’s forced passportization. Then the hryvnia is abolished. Then they’re searching for someone. Then there are house-to-house raids. Then payment terminals are taken from shops. We paid with bank cards – and that infuriated the “rashists.” By August, terminals had been removed from a number of stores, though not everywhere. The worst thing is that you are completely rightless. There is no protection, no guarantee that you won’t be taken simply because someone didn’t like you.

– Sometimes, to intimidate people, the occupiers themselves posted videos of torture. At the very beginning, someone stole a car from them. They found that person and posted a video showing how they tortured him with electricity – attaching wires to his ears. The pain is unbearable: it feels as if your brain is being boiled.

“House-to-house raids” – this was the name given to planned searches of civilians’ homes, which Vitaly describes:

– A knock on the door, the first question: “Who is in the apartment?” They checked identities and searched everything, overlooking not a single detail. They didn’t manage to search all of Kherson, but in villages I know of houses that were searched several times.

– There were constant reports of people disappearing, – Vitaly says. – Once, young people went out for a walk after curfew – and never came back. In the morning, a mother stands at the police station: “Where is my son?” – “We don’t know.” He might have been sent to dig trenches or something even worse. Sometimes people never returned at all. To this day, no one knows how many people went missing. It’s impossible to count exactly – people simply vanished.

– There was a manhunt for participants in the ATO (the Anti-Terrorist Operation in eastern Ukraine) and members of the Territorial Defense. The rashists had lists – possibly handed over by collaborators. That is how the deputy commander of a Territorial Defense battalion was kidnapped. Two days later, his body, bearing signs of torture, was found in the Dnipro River.

Protests

The threat of occupation is more frightening than shelling – that is exactly how I felt during the bombardments in frontline Sloviansk. That is why I was struck by how the residents of Kherson, from whom the occupiers were trying to take away even the right to life, went out to protest under the barrels of machine guns.

On March 5, the first mass rally of Kherson residents took place on Freedom Square, with Ukrainian flags and slogans such as “Kherson is Ukraine” and “Russians, go home.” The military fired warning shots, but the rally did not disperse. From that moment on, protests in Kherson became a daily occurrence.

Over the next two days, people also took to the streets in other cities of the Kherson region – Nova Kakhovka, Hola Prystan, and Oleshky. On March 6, in Nova Kakhovka, the military used weapons against protesters, wounding five people. On March 13, the largest protest took place in Kherson, with around 10,000 residents participating.

From March 19, violence against protesters in Kherson escalated. The occupiers shifted from tactics of intimidation to outright violence: harsh detentions and beatings, the use of stun grenades, and tear gas. By April, the protests became fragmented and decentralized, shifting toward brief gatherings and symbolic actions.

The last mass protest against the Russian occupation in Kherson took place on April 27. The Yellow Ribbon movement organized a peaceful march under the slogan “Kherson is Ukraine,” with about 500 participants. During the brutal dispersal, some participants were injured.

All of this I knew from social media – at a distance – so I asked Vitaly to describe what he felt as an eyewitness.

– The rashists initially assumed that everyone here would be unanimously pro-Russia. Instead, the people were hostile and tense. A Rosgvardiya officer gets on a minibus and asks, “Why do you all look so sullen?” Everyone stays silent – they know that no matter what, they can’t say anything. Say a word, and they can drag you out of the minibus and tell the driver, “Drive on, we’re keeping him.” When they saw the protests, they realized that this was a hostile environment for them.

– The rallies began on March 5. At first, the occupiers simply observed. Then they started moving closer – fully armed, with assault rifles, masked, riding on military vehicles. People stood there, chanting. At first, thousands gathered; then fewer and fewer. I attended rallies during the second week – it was terrifying. They were filming everything, and a drone was flying overhead. I was afraid I’d end up in some database and then be taken away later for participating in the rally. For about three weeks, the protests continued actively, and then they moved from Freedom Square to Shevchenko Park. There, eight or nine people would gather by the monument.

– There was a hunt for everyone who had “shown up” on social media and taken part in the protests, – Vitaly explains in response to a question about the risks of participating in rallies. – First and foremost, they went after those who had been especially active during the first month of the occupation. One woman I know was noticed at a rally – or perhaps identified through social media. Later, she was detained and taken to a basement. There, they laid a naked young man on a table in front of her, and three soldiers raped him. After that, they told her: “If we see you at rallies or checkpoints again, the same will happen to you.” From then on, she stayed quiet as a mouse until the end of the occupation – went nowhere, afraid of everything.

Collaborators

The occupiers wanted to govern a functioning city, but to do so they needed specialists in many different fields. Vitaly explains:

– Once they realized that the city was fully under their control, filtration measures began. At first, they expected people to voluntarily go to work for them and inform on anyone who supported Ukraine. Some did, but there were too few to quickly build their own system of governance. Then they began deliberately searching for civil servants and municipal workers – at every level.

– They decided to revive the orchestra at the drama theater. This was about two months before liberation. They found the conductor, Yury Kerpatenko, and told him: “Come on, the theater has to function. You’ll work for us.” He refused. An argument followed, word by word – and they shot him right in his own home.

– In July, the rashists began working with children – in a militarized format. In Kherson, they organized the first “Young Army” club and found some teachers. I was afraid they would come after me too, because I had previously worked with the scouting movement in the National Scout Organization of Ukraine. And before that, I had worked in the police.

– If I saw a former colleague on the street, I tried to cross to the other side just to avoid running into them. I didn’t know whether they were “with us” or “with them.” What if he said right there in the street, “Come work with us – the pay is good,” and you replied, “No, I don’t want to”? Then the question would immediately follow: “Why don’t you want to?” That’s how they pressured former civil servants and municipal workers: “Come work for us! … Why don’t you want to? … Out of principle? … Oh, so you’re for Ukraine!” And after that, anything could happen: blackmail, the basement, torture.

– There was a case in Kherson well known in police circles. A retired police officer with the rank of major went to work for the rashists and promised to bring along his co-godfather, Oleh Khudiakov: “We’re co-godfathers, friends – we worked together for so many years. He’s competent; he’ll definitely work for you.” But Khudiakov categorically refused. He was held in a basement for three days – what they did to him there is unknown. In the end, he agreed to cooperate, and they released him. He returned home and hanged himself.

– We were afraid even of acquaintances. There were people we had been friends with for many years, and then suddenly it turned out they were rashists to the core: “Hooray! Hooray! We’re with Russia!” What to expect from them next was impossible to know.

– For example, I know a singing teacher at a cultural college. He never openly declared his political views, but one day acquaintances came to him and said, “We’re going to report you.” – “For what?” – “You taught classes in Ukrainian for so many years!” That was enough to label a person a “Nazi.”

Connection with the Outside World

– In April, Ukrainian internet and mobile communications were cut off, – Vitaly recounts. – The occupiers routed internet access through Crimea – with restrictions similar to those in Russia. Mobile service was switched to special SIM cards on which Ukrainian numbers were blocked, making it impossible to call relatives in territories controlled by Ukraine.

– In March and April, people were leaving en masse via Mykolaiv. My co-godfather was traveling to Oleksandrivka – it’s in Kherson Oblast – and had to pass through about twenty checkpoints. At some, the soldiers were sober; at others, drunk, but searches were conducted everywhere. At that time, there were still no registries of ATO participants at the checkpoints, so many people managed to slip through – even in May, people were still able to leave.

– By June, leaving had become extremely difficult. Huge traffic jams formed in front of the checkpoints, and cars were searched for up to an hour. One acquaintance managed to leave only on the twenty-seventh day. People stood in line a month, renting housing just to spend the night. Sometimes the rashists started shooting – they wanted to scare people into dispersing – but no one backed down.

Schools

– During the occupation, from March until mid-May, schools were not operating, – Vitaly continues. – At the end of May and the beginning of June, about four schools reopened in Kherson – one per district. In those cases, principals made deals with the occupiers. There were few children, and classes were incomplete.

– Lessons did not last long and stopped once the Armed Forces of Ukraine began striking military bases with HIMARS. The occupation authorities started claiming that the city was “dangerous,” although there was no threat to schools: the strikes were very precise and targeted military facilities, including Rosgvardiya bases. We applauded when the Ukrainian Armed Forces struck.

– After that, the schools were closed, and children began to be sent to “camps” – to Krasnodar Krai, to Crimea, to Belarus. Entire classes were sent, and then they were never brought back. As a result, the children either remained under occupation or ended up in Russia.

Kherson. Historical Background

On March 2, Russian troops occupied Kherson. In September, Russia announced a so-called “referendum” and on 30 September signed a “treaty of accession,” declaring the incorporation of Kherson Oblast into the Russian Federation. On November 11, 2022, the city of Kherson was liberated from Russian forces after 256 days of occupation. Before the occupation, Kherson’s population was about 279,000; today it is approximately 60,000.

At the beginning of the occupation, repression was chaotic, and random people became victims. As repression became systematized, a deliberate search for the “unreliable” began. During the occupation of Kherson, the repressive machinery did not have time to complete the transition from mass, chaotic repression to the targeted, systematic persecution of the kind now practiced in Russia.