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“Damn the Russians, they rape people, loot homes” – Resident’s uprising in occupied territories

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Even now, safely in her new home of Estonia, Inna Vnukova says she can’t purge the terrifying memory of living under Russian occupation in eastern Ukraine early in the war and her family’s harrowing escape. They hid in a damp basement for days in their village of Kudriashivka after Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022. In the streets, soldiers waving machine guns bullied residents, set up checkpoints and looted homes. There was constant shelling. “Everyone was very scared and afraid to go outside,” Vnukova told The Associated Press, with troops seeking out Ukrainian sympathizers and civil servants like her and her husband, Oleksii Vnukov.
In mid-March, she decided that she and her 16-year-old son, Zhenya, would flee the village with her brother’s family, even though it meant leaving her husband behind temporarily. They took a risky trip by car to nearby Starobilsk, waving a white sheet amid mortar fire. “We had already said our goodbyes to life, cursing this Russian world,” said Vnukova, 42. “I’ve been trying to forget this nightmare for four years, but I can’t.” Many Ukrainians like Vnukova fled the invading forces. Those who stayed risked being detained — or worse — as Russian forces eventually took control of about 20% of the country and its estimated 3 million to 5 million people. After four years of war, life in shattered cities like Mariupol and villages like Kudriashivka remains difficult, with residents facing problems with housing, water, power, heat and health care. Even President Vladimir Putin has acknowledged they have “many truly pressing, urgent problems." In the illegally annexed regions of Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson and Zaporizhzhia, Russian citizenship, language and culture is forced on residents, including in school lessons and textbooks. By spring 2025, some 3.5 million people in the four regions had been given Russian passports — a requirement to receive vital services like health care. Some in the regions say they live in fear of being accused of sympathizing with Ukraine. Many have been imprisoned, beaten and killed, according to human rights activists. Oleksii Vnukov, a court security officer, stayed behind in the village for nearly two weeks. Russian soldiers twice threatened to kill him, including an instance where he and a friend were dragged off the street by soldiers. But he survived and soon also escaped the village. The family traveled through Russia before making it to Estonia, where Inna works in a printing house and Oleksii, 43, is an electrician. “All life is leaving the occupied territories,” Vnukov said. “The people there aren’t living, they’re just surviving.” Mykhailo Savva of the Center for Civil Liberties in Ukraine said the Russian military’s practice of wielding “systemic and total control” in the regions continues today. “Even though a significant number of socially active people have already been detained, Russian special services continue to identify disloyal Ukrainians, extract confessions, and continue to detain people,” Savva said. “Residents face such practices as document checks, mass searches, and denunciations on a daily basis.” Human rights groups say Russian authorities used “filtration camps” to identify potentially disloyal individuals, as well as anyone who worked for the government, helped the Ukrainian army or had relatives in the military, along with journalists, teachers, scientists and politicians. Stanislav Shkuta, 25, who lived in occupied Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region, said he narrowly escaped arrest several times before reaching Ukrainian-controlled territory in 2023. He recalled being on a bus that was stopped by Russian soldiers. “It was horrific. Men and women were asked to strip to the waist to see if they had Ukrainian tattoos,” said Shkuta, who now lives in Estonia. “I turned white with fear, wondering if I’d cleared everything on my phone.” He said his friends who stayed in Nova Kakhovka say life has worsened, with suspected Ukrainian sympathizers stopped on the street or in surprise door-to-door inspections.

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