Source: PostPravda.info 04.03.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/russian-occupation-repression/
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/frontline-stories/russian-occupation-repression/
Kherson. Rally against Russian occupiers on March 13, 2022. A frame from a video chronicle. YouTube
“I would rather live in Germany under Putin’s rule than live in wartime conditions,” a 19-year-old German said in the studio of the ARD television channel in early October 2025. In his opinion, Ukrainians should surrender because life during war is supposedly far worse than life even under Putin’s rule. Behind the statement of this young man lies a widespread misconception: that Russia is waging this war purely for political reasons – to change state borders and spheres of influence. The failure to understand that this is an existential war for the right to exist creates the illusion that Russia can be negotiated with through concessions.
Perhaps Germans like this young man believe that Russian occupation would resemble life in the GDR under Soviet control. Perhaps people in Ukraine once thought that rule from Moscow was not so terrible – after all, they lived under Brezhnev. However, life under occupation is not “like in the Soviet Union,” nor even “like in present-day Russia.” It is far worse.
The occupation regime can only be compared to a Russian prison colony, or a “zone,” as it is called. There are “red zones,” where absolute power belongs to the prison administration, and “black zones,” where criminal bosses rule. Now imagine several regions turned into one vast “zone,” where the administration, together with criminals, creates total lawlessness. That is what Russian occupation looks like.
I cannot speak for others, but I will speak for myself – as a resident of Sloviansk, a city that some Western politicians would be willing to “hand over” to Putin for the sake of an illusory peace with Russia. Quite recently, FAB-250 aerial bombs destroyed several buildings not far from my home. This has become so routine that it is no longer a reason to write about it on Facebook, where I usually share my thoughts, or to interrupt my household chores. Yet I understand that things will only get worse. But even if Russian aerial bombs were to destroy half of Sloviansk, I would still have a 50 percent chance of survival. If Sloviansk were occupied, however, there would be no chance at all. That is why, for me, occupation is worse than living under wartime conditions. But this is only my personal perception.
I discussed this issue with residents of Kherson who lived through the occupation. Among them is Oksana Pohomii, a civic activist and volunteer. She has lived her entire life in Kherson, including during the occupation, and in 2020 was elected as a deputy to the Kherson City Council. I will present excerpts from our conversation to show what occupation actually looks like.
Perhaps Germans like this young man believe that Russian occupation would resemble life in the GDR under Soviet control. Perhaps people in Ukraine once thought that rule from Moscow was not so terrible – after all, they lived under Brezhnev. However, life under occupation is not “like in the Soviet Union,” nor even “like in present-day Russia.” It is far worse.
The occupation regime can only be compared to a Russian prison colony, or a “zone,” as it is called. There are “red zones,” where absolute power belongs to the prison administration, and “black zones,” where criminal bosses rule. Now imagine several regions turned into one vast “zone,” where the administration, together with criminals, creates total lawlessness. That is what Russian occupation looks like.
I cannot speak for others, but I will speak for myself – as a resident of Sloviansk, a city that some Western politicians would be willing to “hand over” to Putin for the sake of an illusory peace with Russia. Quite recently, FAB-250 aerial bombs destroyed several buildings not far from my home. This has become so routine that it is no longer a reason to write about it on Facebook, where I usually share my thoughts, or to interrupt my household chores. Yet I understand that things will only get worse. But even if Russian aerial bombs were to destroy half of Sloviansk, I would still have a 50 percent chance of survival. If Sloviansk were occupied, however, there would be no chance at all. That is why, for me, occupation is worse than living under wartime conditions. But this is only my personal perception.
I discussed this issue with residents of Kherson who lived through the occupation. Among them is Oksana Pohomii, a civic activist and volunteer. She has lived her entire life in Kherson, including during the occupation, and in 2020 was elected as a deputy to the Kherson City Council. I will present excerpts from our conversation to show what occupation actually looks like.
Occupation Means Legal Arbitrariness and Total Control
“The worst thing that can happen in life is occupation, – says Oksana Pohomii. – Because your freedom is taken away, even if the security services have not come for you personally. Before, we had jobs. But then you either work for the occupiers, or you do not work and are left without any means of survival.
The Russians exerted constant psychological pressure, pushing people to collaborate. For example, they dragged a woman – the head of one of the art schools – straight out of her home. They held her all day and forced her to sign a consent to cooperate. As soon as she was released, she immediately left the occupied territory.
Until the end of April, we still had mobile communication, but then it was cut off. There was no connection at all. A signal could be caught only in one place in the city center – people gathered there just to send at least a text message to their relatives. Later, communication was briefly restored, but at the end of May it was shut down again. Only Russian SIM cards were sold. The internet helped a lot: some providers continued operating.
Searches always happen unexpectedly – and that is truly terrifying. Friends reported that an armored personnel carrier was on a neighboring street and that the rashists were combing through one block after another. Our block was next the following day. I tied a scarf and put on glasses so as not to stand out. Four soldiers came to conduct the search. Their attention was distracted by our grandson Mykyta – that saved us: they did not look where the supplies of our volunteer organization were stored. One of our girls was searched several times – she lived in a settlement, in a private house.”
How the Residents of Kherson Reacted to the Occupation
“When the invasion began, I still did not know that we would be surrendered so quickly, – Mrs. Oksana recalls. – I thought there would be some resistance. I wrote on Facebook that we were gathering for a rally – my husband, our volunteers, and I, people we had worked with since 2014. We had been with them in Avdiivka, Marinka, Krasnohorivka, and Shyrokyne. We also announced that we were collecting clothes, medicines, instant food, cigarettes, and toiletries for the wounded. At first, we collected items in the lobby of the city council, but already on the second day – February 25 – there was no more space, so we moved to the district council building and later packed the aid kits elsewhere.
The first rally took place on March 5. Our volunteer group was helping Ukrainian soldiers with target coordinates, and I did not want to put people at additional risk, so I asked them not to come to the rally. I myself was already on my way to pack food supplies when a friend called and said, ‘There are so many people here! You can’t even imagine!’ Then I turned around and rushed to the rally. Later I realized: it was our ‘herts’ – we went out unarmed against fully equipped soldiers with assault rifles and shouted at them, ‘You were not expected here! Get out!’”
‘Herts’: Kherson residents confront Russian soldiers. A frame from a video chronicle. YouTube
The word ‘herts’, which Mrs. Oksana used, has no direct equivalent in other languages. It refers to a kind a Cossack tradition in which, before battle, the bravest warriors would ride out before the enemy army, mocking it and challenging it to single combat.
“March 13 was the day marking the liberation of Kherson from the Hitlerite occupiers, – she continues. – That day there was a very large march. The soldiers fired over our heads, but people still walked from Freedom Square to the Embankment. There was a Ukrainian flag one hundred meters long there – someone had sewn it! There was such an emotional uplift, such euphoria, that at that moment we forgot about fear. They thought they had come to a pro-Russian region, but in reality, it was not so. When we came out – and not only Kherson, but also Hola Prystan, Kakhovka, Nova Kakhovka, Kalanchak, and Skadovsk – with flags, shouting, throwing ourselves at tanks, something must have clicked in their minds: we were not going to become Russia… I don’t know, but I hope it clicked.
We spent a lot of time walking in the evenings, visiting friends and like-minded people, talking – because otherwise it was impossible to survive. You walk down the street and see that someone has tied a yellow flower and a blue flower together and hung them on a tree – and you understand: we are not alone. There are other people. As you walk, you look for these blue-and-yellow signs and believe that Ukraine will return. And we were lucky – we were liberated.”
Occupation Means the Agonizing Expectation of Reprisal
Not only the repression itself is terrifying, but also the constant threat – the expectation of punishment. Mrs. Oksana recalls:
“It is frightening to live in such a state, when you don’t know what tomorrow will bring. I constantly carried a small backpack with a toothbrush, soap, and a change of underwear in case they suddenly took me away. Only later did I realize: what backpack? They put a bag over your head, take the backpack away – and you are left with nothing. If you tell Russians all this, they won’t understand; they’ll say, ‘You could have just kept living! People can adapt to anything!’ But here someone else decides everything for you – they might, for example, step into a minibus at a checkpoint and say, ‘I don’t like you – get out!’ They felt like masters of life. If you did not submit, they could do anything to you.
The first month everything was closed, and then the market opened. There is one image that will stay in my mind forever. It was before May 9. I was going to the market looking for Ukrainian food. An open truck was slowly driving nearby, and in it was a prisoner on his knees, bare-chested, with a bag over his head. That was when it became truly frightening.
During the March 5 rally, the occupiers photographed participants from the regional administration building. A young man, Artem, was identified from one of the photographs and taken away ten days later. He was on his way home when they seized him. They shot him in the leg, dumped him near a hospital, and said, ‘You’re lucky.’ And that was still relatively mild – later things were much worse. During the occupation, he was taken to the ‘basement’ twice more.
When you constantly hear that one person after another has been taken away, you begin to understand how different reality is from expectations. We did not think it would be so terrifying until we began hearing from friends who had been held in the ‘basement’ about the abuse and torture that took place there.
People were taken to torture chambers – these were not prisons in the usual sense, where food, water, and access to a toilet are provided. It was simply a room crammed with people. Whatever you were seized in – underwear and a T-shirt – was what you remained in the entire time. No parcels were allowed. Once a day, you were taken out to fill a bottle with water and use the toilet. And they tortured, tortured, tortured… You constantly heard the screams of other people. Relatives of those arrested could not find out where their loved ones were being held. You would come to the commandant’s office and be told: ‘We don’t know.’
Russian Occupation, Kherson. People were tortured in this room. Kherson, November 14, 2022 by Media Center Ukraine
In one case, parents were arrested after it became known that their son served in the Armed Forces of Ukraine. ‘We’ll release you when your son comes,’ they were told. The mother was eventually freed after a month, the father after two. He had been a sturdy, handsome man, but when he was released, he looked like an old grandfather. That was how much he had changed in just two months.
During the first week, FSB officers were not visible. Around March 10–12, they appeared and began systematically visiting addresses. From that moment, people started being seized. There were cases when Ukrainian soldiers and members of the territorial defense were captured, and later their bodies were found bearing signs of torture. The occupiers had lists – all the addresses. For example, a woman who had long ago worked in the prosecutor’s office or a court would be visited and pressured to collaborate, even though she was already 70 years old and suffering from dementia. This means the lists were outdated – which in turn suggests they had been prepared long in advance, even before 2014.”
How Putin’s Nazism Differs from Hitler’s
Not only Mrs. Oksana’s account, but also the testimonies of other people who lived through the occupation, confirm that behind the word “denazification” lies Russia’s own Nazi-like policy in the occupied territories.
In one form or another, discrimination on national grounds exists in many countries, including democratic ones. The difference is that democratic states possess legal mechanisms to combat discrimination. What the Russians carried out in the occupied territories was no longer discrimination but repression.
For example, banning the publication of a newspaper in one’s native language is discrimination, whereas arrest and torture for using one’s native language is repression. Restrictions in hiring based on nationality are discrimination, but treating the expression of one’s national identity as terrorist activity is repression. It is precisely this distinction that provides grounds for describing Russian policy in the occupied territories as Nazi in character.
However, there is a fundamental difference between Putin’s and Hitler’s Nazism. The Nazis under Hitler defined Jews according to a biological criterion. Putin’s rashists regard Ukrainians as enemies not by birth, but by self-identification. If a Ukrainian does not demonstrate a Ukrainian identity, the rashists by default consider that person “Russian.” This possibility of mimicry has given some people a chance to survive. Jews in Nazi Germany had no such chance. On the other hand, while Hitler’s repressions were systemic and orderly, rashist repression is chaotic and arbitrary, requiring no pretext. Therefore, anyone can become its victim, regardless of whether they consider themselves Russian or Ukrainian.
“Even if you submitted, they could still do anything to you – for example, because of the Ukrainian language, – Mrs. Oksana recounts. – Friends told us how a man was taken right off the street. He was going to feed a dog belonging to neighbors who had left. Soldiers asked him something, and he answered in Ukrainian. He was held for a week. What they did to him – he refused to say. He only said that now he and his wife speak exclusively Russian with each other. That was in September. Later they managed to leave through Vasylivka. They waited two weeks to be allowed through. To escape hell, they switched to the Russian language.”
Human rights and the right to identity
The struggle against Ukrainian identity inevitably turns into a struggle against human identity itself – against the desire to remain human. This is confirmed by the words of Oksana Pohomii: “Their goal is to kill the human being within a person. They took a group of people who had helped the Armed Forces of Ukraine and forced them to torture one another.”
Today, amid negotiations about peace in Ukraine, the parties discuss the political, economic, and military aspects of a hypothetical peace with Russia while remaining silent about the most painful issue – the human rights situation. In the occupied territories, fundamental rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights are systematically violated: the right to life, liberty, and security of person (Art. 3); the prohibition of torture and degrading treatment (Art. 5); the right to recognition as a person before the law (Art. 6); protection from discrimination and equality before the law (Art. 7); the right to an effective remedy (Art. 8); freedom from arbitrary arrest or detention (Art. 9) and from arbitrary interference with privacy, home, and correspondence (Art. 12); freedom of opinion and expression (Art. 19); and freedom of peaceful assembly and association (Art. 20).
But there is one more fundamental right – not formulated in the Declaration, yet without which we cannot consider ourselves civilized people – the right to identity. No one should deny another person’s identity. Yet in the occupied territories, Russians do not merely deny Ukrainian identity; they repress everyone who recognizes it within themselves.
