Fear and disgust - how do people live in the occupied territories of Ukraine?

All character names have been changed.

Boris spent most of his life in Kherson. He asked us to hide his identity - after Russian troops occupied the area and the Ukrainian army began to move closer, civilians learned to be extremely cautious.

We are chatting.

For months, Boris struggled to maintain his professional and personal life in a city full of Russian soldiers and policemen. This is a life full of stunning contrasts. One day Boris interrupts the conversation with me to delete all the messages on the phone. He does this before going through the Russian checkpoint.

"You need to make sure that there are no suspicious photos in the deleted messages folder," says Boris.

In the first months, many people disappeared - the appointed leaders of the city dealt with anyone who was considered loyal to Kiev.

After that, there were fewer "missing, wanted" ads on walls and social networks. Boris believes that arrests have decreased. Half of the population of the city, which had 280,000 people before the war, went to territories under government control or abroad.

Those who remained, says Boris, began to adapt - residents invented their own rules and avoid the authorities at all costs.

"For four or five months we felt like we were living in some kind of libertarian society," says Boris. "It is self-sustaining and self-regulating."

In the middle of July, the situation changed, officers of the Russian special services started arriving in the city, and a few weeks before the "referendum" there were even more of them.

"About 20 cars every minute, very serious people," says Boris.

Boris, like everyone else we talked to for the purposes of this text, opposes Russian occupation and annexation. It would be wrong to claim that everyone in this area shares his views. But all available data, including data from previous polls, show that people living in the territories occupied since February this year mostly consider themselves Ukrainians.

However, at the beginning of the occupation, the situation brought an unexpected benefit, says Boris.

"The city is really empty now and people can ride bikes safely," says Boris. "It's like a post-apocalypse."

The next time we talked, we talked about trips to a village on the banks of the wide Dnieper. From there you can see the Antoniv bridge, which has been shelled several times by Ukrainian artillery since July.

"We picked grapes for wine and were in the sauna," says Boris, "This is an inseparable part of the culture of our city."

In Russian-occupied Kherson, sticking to what you value requires constant improvisation.

A good example is money.

Despite Moscow's attempt to introduce the Russian ruble, the Ukrainian hryvnia is still widely used. For a while, people drove minibuses with Wi-Fi that allowed customers to walk into a Ukrainian bank and withdraw money in hryvnias. For that, they took a commission of three to five percent.

Now, says Boris, information about reliable dealers is passed on by word of mouth, they take a small commission or even exchange cash for free.

But the Russian currency is advancing confidently. Some social benefits are already in rubles, which shops are obliged to accept. The only active banks are Russian. A Russian passport is required to open an account. The same applies to work in state enterprises.

"This is how they are trying to force the majority of Ukrainians in the city to accept Russian citizenship," says Boris.

Another way is propaganda.

Since May, posters have appeared on the streets announcing that Russia is back to stay. Sometimes these slogans were accompanied by pictures of Russian heroes of the 18th century, which alluded to the founding of Kherson as a fortress city by Catherine the Great, the last Russian empress, in 1778.

Other posters show Russian passports with the motto "Social stability and security" or a happy husband hugging his pregnant wife while urging loyal citizens to have more children. But there were other billboards that seemed more insidious to Boris.

"They show some celebrity and say this guy is from Kherson and has dedicated his life to Russia. You're a little proud of this guy, and they use that pride to connect you to Russia."

This message has little influence on the pro-Ukrainian majority in Kherson, says Boris.

"But those who were brainwashed before the war," he adds, "are now coming out of the shadows."

During the so-called "referendum" in Kherson, according to Boris, he saw several elderly women happily leaving the polling station with cotton candy and Russian flags.

"Probably some kind of encouragement from the organizers," says Boris.

Battles for culture, history and information are raging throughout the newly occupied Ukraine. Someone is trying to pick up cell phone signals across the front lines, parents are secretly educating their children in Ukrainian online schools (one of the positive legacies of the pandemic) to avoid the education system now under complete Russian control.

"Kids learn online in Ukrainian schools, using Russian internet and Western VPNs," says Boris. "That's the irony."

Attempts to stay in touch with Ukraine help them endure.

"Either you will pull yourself together or you will simply fall apart," says Boris.

However, the long talked about but constantly postponed "referendums" threatened to defeat his goal.

"It's terrible," replies Boris when I ask him what people think about the vote.

"Panic. Despair... Depression. Apathy."

"Why do the Armed Forces take so long?" - he asks, referring to the slow counter-offensive of the Ukrainian forces near Kherson.

Now men of draft age fear that the mobilization underway in Russia, Crimea and the separatist republics of Donbass will also begin in Kherson.

For now, this only applies to those who have received Russian passports, but the panic is growing.

Boris says he is debating whether to flee or stay, hoping to wake up one day to see Kherson liberated by the Ukrainian army.

"I am torn between safety and the unique experience of meeting Ukrainian soldiers in the city."

If the liberation of the city is what fills Boris with hope, then in Mariupol, 418 km to the east, such a scenario seems much less likely.

"After the occupation, my whole life broke," says the former teacher, who asks to be called Aleks.

After the hellish siege that captured the world's attention from March to May, civilians who were unwilling or unable to flee the city found themselves in the desert.

"The Russians went around the apartments destroying everything related to Ukraine," says Aleks, with whom we also communicate via a secure messaging app.

"They burned Ukrainian symbols and many books in my house."

When the siege ended at the end of May, Russian soldiers gradually withdrew, leaving pro-Moscow separatists from the self-proclaimed "DPR" in charge of the city.

"The city turned into ruins," says Darina, a student who stayed in Mariupol until August.

"The city turned into a big market, where everyone sold what they could to earn something."

There was not enough electricity and water. Thousands of houses were destroyed. Bodies lay unburied among the rubble.

 

But Darina says the streets quickly filled with banners congratulating Moscow on the "liberation" of Mariupol. The combination of propaganda, necessity and pro-Russian sentiment among some of the residents of Mariupol had an effect, she says.

"Many people support the occupiers and many work for the demolitionists, because they need money so they don't die of hunger."

Due to its location in the south of Donbass, Mariupol's ties with Russia have always been somewhat deeper than Kherson.

Traces of resistance can be seen on social media, where images of masked people wrapped in the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag are being shared.

The letter "i", which does not exist in the Russian language, appeared on the walls of the occupied Ukraine.

But Mariupol was physically and emotionally crippled by the war. There is a lack of optimism.

"There is little hope left," says Aleks, "because people think Mariupol is abandoned. But they still hope."

No guns are heard in Mariupol, in Kherson they are getting closer. But in Energodar, halfway between the two cities, the sounds of war never died down.

Russia captured the city and its massive nuclear power plant at the start of the war. In recent months, Russian and Ukrainian forces have exchanged fire across the Dnieper. Ukraine accuses Russia of using the nuclear power plant as a front.

The constant threat of explosions forced energy suppliers to adhere to a strict schedule.

"You try to find time in the day - meet friends, visit your parents, buy food," says 38-year-old Maksim.

"Dogs run the streets at night."

Food that originally disappeared from stores is no longer a problem. Residents of the south say supermarkets are full of expensive, unwanted Russian goods, while street markets are overflowing with domestically produced products.

Cut off from 80 percent of Ukraine's territory, farmers are forced to sell their produce locally. Vegetables are cheaper, but meat, cheese and milk cost twice as much as before the war.

"Now money is given only for food," says Maksim.

After more than half a year of occupation, Energodar is half empty. Among those who remained, there are many elderly people.

"Everyone who could went, first of all mothers with children," says pensioner Natalija.

Natalija says that she misses her daughter and granddaughter, but she is glad that they are somewhere safe in Europe.

Due to gas shortages in the last four months and frequent power outages, Natalia's life is a constant struggle for survival, especially with winter approaching.

"We were isolated for seven months, cut off from civilization. Mobile communication is rare. If there is internet, it's a holiday."

But, like Boris in Kherson, he tries not to miss any news.

The pensioner mentions Ukrainian military analysts, who say that, according to their forecasts, liberation is not far away. Sometimes he descends on the banks of the Dnieper, hoping to pick up a mobile network signal from the territory controlled by the Ukrainian authorities on the other side of the river.

It's an attempt to keep in touch.

In Russian-controlled Melitopol, far from the front line deep in the occupied south of Ukraine, 30-year-old Toma talks about another routine activity - caring for the sick.

"In the beginning it was a quest. To find a cure for my mother, who has a sick heart."

There are no longer long queues for medicines, as there were in the spring. But Toma says the pharmacies are now run by a Moscow-appointed "authority" and are stocked with Russian drugs that locals consider to be of poor quality. Four of the five types of medicine her mother needs are now unavailable.

They have to be bought from friends or relatives in Ukraine-controlled Zaporozhye and then delivered via a risky journey through checkpoints.

Based on the fact that people have to survive, there is no work and people are forced to trade their property, the appearance of posters with Putin's quotes about the future of life in Russia seems like an additional insult, says Toma.

 

"It's like we've been taken back 35 years," she says, recalling the time when Ukraine was still part of the Soviet Union.

The situation in Melitopol schools is catastrophic, says the woman.

Teachers and administrators refuse to cooperate with the occupation authorities, forcing them to hire anyone who agrees to work.

"The former cleaner at the school became the class teacher of our friends' child," says the woman.

Russian symbols are everywhere - from imported textbooks to the flag that flies in the school yard and the national anthem that is played at the beginning of each day.

Parents who want to send their children to school are offered 10,000 rubles each, but only on the condition that they provide information about the passport and place of residence of the child's parents.

But, says Toma, there are signs of rebellion in the classroom.

"Children write Russian words in Ukrainian letters, hang blue and yellow ribbons on their backpacks and wear socks with the slogan "Russian ship..." - a reference to the action of defiance by the Ukrainian defenders of the small Black Sea island during the first day of the war.