{"id":426070,"date":"2025-09-15T10:53:13","date_gmt":"2025-09-15T10:53:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/426070\/"},"modified":"2025-09-15T10:53:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T10:53:13","slug":"russian-occupiers-brought-death-and-intimidation-to-kherson-ukrainian-teen-russia-ukraine-war-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/426070\/","title":{"rendered":"Russian occupiers brought death and intimidation to Kherson: Ukrainian teen | Russia-Ukraine war News"},"content":{"rendered":"

Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013<\/strong> Evhen Ihnatov was a young teenager when Russian forces occupied his hometown.<\/p>\n

In the eight months of 2022 when the southern Ukrainian city of Kherson was overtaken, his mother was killed and his brother was forcibly held in Russia.<\/p>\n

Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list<\/p>\n

\u201cWe buried her in the countryside. Grandma was beside herself,\u201d Ihnatov told Al Jazeera of the tragedy that befell the family when his mother, Tamara, died. He was aged just 13.<\/p>\n

On October 6, 2022, Tamara, 54, had boarded a minibus that was ultimately blown to pieces on a bridge by a misdirected Ukrainian missile.<\/p>\n

His brother left for a Russian camp on the day she died.<\/p>\n

Now 16 and living in Mykolaiv, studying in a college to become a car mechanic and working part time in a pizzeria, Ihnatov has spoken to Al Jazeera about life in occupied Ukraine.<\/p>\n

After graduation, he said he might sign a contract with the army.<\/p>\n

But that ambition felt impossible when he was living under Russian control, a period he survived with angst, the denial of all things Russian and a sense of dark humour.<\/p>\n

Kherson is the administrative capital of the eponymous southern region the size of Belgium, which mostly lies on the left bank of the Dnipro River, which bisects Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Russians occupied the region and Kherson city, which sits on the Dnipro\u2019s right bank, in early March 2022 and rolled out in November that year.<\/p>\n

According to Ihnatov, other witnesses and rights groups, Ukrainians were mistreated, assaulted, abducted and tortured from day one. Russia regularly denies intentionally harming civilians.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey beat people, a real lot,\u201d Ihnatov said. \u201cThose who really stood up are no more.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"PlasticPlastic ties used for torture and a broken chair are seen in a basement of an office building where Ukrainian prosecutors said 30 people were held for two months during the Russian occupation of Kherson, Ukraine [File: Anna Voitenko\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

A former Ukrainian serviceman he knew was assaulted so violently that he spent a week in an intensive care unit, Ihnatov said.<\/p>\n

In the first weeks of occupation, Kherson city was rocked by protest rallies as Ukrainians tried to resist the new rulers. Moscow-appointed authorities soon packed hundreds of people into prisons or basements in large buildings.<\/p>\n

\u201cDetained for minor or imaginary transgressions, they were kept for months and used for forced labour or sexual violence,\u201d Nikolay Mitrokhin, a historian with Germany\u2019s Bremen University, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Survivors have said they were forced to dig trenches, clean streets, trim trees and bushes, and haul garbage.<\/p>\n

At least 17 women and men were raped by Russian soldiers, Andriy Kostin, Ukraine\u2019s prosecutor general at the time, said in May 2023.<\/p>\n

Rallies stopped because of the crackdown, but most of the locals remained pro-Ukrainian, Ihnatov believes. He said the fewer pro-Russian locals were mostly elderly and nostalgic about their Soviet-era youth, attracted to the idea of Russia because of Moscow\u2019s promises of higher pensions.<\/p>\n

But to him, the Russian soldiers did not look like \u201cliberators\u201d.<\/p>\n

He said many drank heavily and sported prison tattoos. In July 2022, the Wagner mercenary group began recruiting tens of thousands of inmates from Russian prisons with promises of presidential pardons and high pay.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey look at you like you\u2019re meat, like you\u2019re chicken,\u201d Ihnatov said.<\/p>\n

He said ethnic Russian soldiers or ethnic Ukrainians from the separatist region of Donbas in the east whom he saw several times a day on patrols or just moving around were often hostile towards Ukrainian teenagers. Ethnic Chechens were more relaxed and gave them sweets or food, he said.<\/p>\n

Fearful of Russian forces, the Ihnatovs \u2013 Evhen\u2019s seven siblings and their single, disabled mother who occasionally worked as a seamstress \u2013 moved to their grandmother\u2019s house outside Kherson. While still occupied, the village was not as heavily patrolled as the city.<\/p>\n

There was a cow, some ducks and a kitchen garden, but they were cash-strapped and moved back to the city right in time for the new school year that began on September 1, 2022.<\/p>\n

But Russian-appointed authorities were facing an education disaster.<\/p>\n

Many teachers had quit to protest against the Moscow-imposed curriculum, and enrolment fell as some parents preferred to take a risk and keep their children in Ukrainian schools online.<\/p>\n

A Russian curriculum was introduced in all of Kherson\u2019s 174 public schools, and by August, Russia-appointed officials and masked soldiers began knocking on doors, threatening parents and offering them monthly subsidies of $35 per child who would go to a Russia-run school.<\/p>\n

\"PropagandaPropaganda newspapers are seen inside a school used by Russian soldiers as a base in the settlement of Bilozerka in the Kherson region on December 2, 2022 [Anna Voitenko\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

Ihnatov\u2019s eldest sister, Tetiana, enrolled her school-aged siblings.<\/p>\n

Students at Ihnatov\u2019s school were herded into the schoolyard to listen to the Russian anthem. But he and his friends \u201cjust turned around and went to have a smoke\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n

The school was not far from his apartment. He remembered seeing about 50 children staring at Russian flags and coats of arms on the school building.<\/p>\n

His class had 22 students. They were surprised by an oversimplified approach of new teachers who treated the students like they knew nothing.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey explained everything, every little thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Communication between students changed. Their conversations became cautious, and they did not discuss sensitive issues, worried others would overhear them.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything was happening outside the school,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The new curriculum was taught in Russian and emphasised Russia\u2019s \u201cgreatness\u201d while Ukrainian was reduced to two \u201cforeign language\u201d lessons a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverything was about references to Russia,\u201d Ihnatov said.<\/p>\n

However, to his clique, Russia\u2019s efforts appeared half-hearted.<\/p>\n

Teachers were more interested in fake reporting and just gave away A\u2019s, he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey didn\u2019t force us to study, couldn\u2019t make us,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019d crank up the music in my earphones, didn\u2019t care about what they were saying, because anyway I\u2019d get an A. We got good grades for nothing. They wanted to show that everyone studies well,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Only his history teacher would confront his group of friends while \u201cthe rest were scared,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Their rebelliousness could have cost them more than reprimands had Russians stayed in Kherson longer, according to observers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat they did only worked because the occupation was short term. Had the occupation gone on, the screws would have gotten tighter,\u201d Victoria Novikova, a senior researcher with The Reckoning Project, a global team of journalists and lawyers documenting, publicising and building cases of Russia\u2019s alleged war crimes in Ukraine, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

After school, Ihnatov took odd jobs in grocery shops or the city market and hung out with his friends.<\/p>\n

Ukraine \u2018never existed\u2019<\/p>\n

The new teachers paid special attention to history classes. Instructors from Russia or annexed Crimea were promised as much as $130 a day for teaching in Kherson, the RBK-Ukraine news website reported.<\/p>\n

New textbooks \u201cproved\u201d that Ukraine was an \u201cartificial state\u201d whose statehood \u201cnever existed\u201d before the 1991 Soviet collapse.<\/p>\n

The erasure of Ukrainian identity went hand in hand with the alleged plunder of cultural riches.<\/p>\n

Russians robbed the giant Kherson regional library of first editions of Ukrainian classics and other valuable folios and works of art after the building was repeatedly shelled and staffers were denied entry, its director said.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy eyes don\u2019t want to see it. My heart doesn\u2019t want to accept it,\u201d Nadiya Korotun told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, thousands of children in occupied areas were reportedly taken to summer camps in Crimea or Russia \u2013 and never came back as part of what Kyiv calls<\/a> a campaign of abduction and brainwashing.<\/p>\n

Kyiv has accused Moscow of forcibly taking 20,000 Ukrainian children away and placing them in foster families or orphanages.<\/p>\n

In 2023, The Hague-based International Criminal Court issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin for the \u201cunlawful deportation and transfer of children\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"LiudmylaLiudmyla Shumkova said she spent 54 days in Russian captivity in Kherson [File: Anna Voitenko\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

Some of the abducted kids \u201cbroke\u201d, a presidential adviser on children\u2019s rights said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey are really maximally broken. Russians do absolutely everything to achieve that,\u201d Daria Herasymchuk told Al Jazeera. \u201cThere were cases of Stockholm syndrome when [the abducted children] became Russian patriots.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ihnatov\u2019s elder brother Vlad, 16 at the time, was among those who went to a camp \u2013 and was forcibly kept in Russia for a year until his sister travelled there to get him back.<\/p>\n

In an unfortunate twist of fate, he had left for the camp hours before his mother was killed.<\/p>\n

He was transported to a summer camp on Russia\u2019s Black Sea coast and then transferred to the city of Yevpatoria in annexed Crimea, where he continued school \u2013 and was not allowed to return home.<\/p>\n

His sister Tetiana travelled there to spend a week in a \u201cbasement\u201d while Russian security officers \u201cchecked her\u201d, Ihnatov said.<\/p>\n

They returned to Ukraine via Belarus and Poland and \u201cdon\u2019t talk much\u201d about the experience, he said.<\/p>\n

A month after his mother\u2019s death, Moscow decided to withdraw its forces from Kherson city and the region\u2019s right-bank area.<\/p>\n

Ukrainian forces were greeted like long-lost family.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe liberation was about nothing but joy, freedom and joy,\u201d Ihnatov said.<\/p>\n

But Russians holed up on the left bank and began shelling the city and flying drones to hunt down civilians.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn a week or two, the cruellest shelling began. And then \u2013 fear,\u201d Ihnatov said.<\/p>\n

His sister decided to relocate the family to the Kyiv-controlled city of Mykolaiv, where they live in a rented three-bedroom apartment.<\/p>\n

\"OlhaOlha, 26, said she was beaten, given electric shocks and subjected to forced nudity and torture by occupying Russian forces in Kherson [File: Anna Voitenko\/Reuters]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kyiv, Ukraine \u2013 Evhen Ihnatov was a young teenager when Russian forces occupied his hometown. In the eight…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":426071,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7654],"tags":[2000,299,126,12,7661,657],"class_list":{"0":"post-426070","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ukraine","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-features","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-russia-ukraine-war","13":"tag-ukraine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115207943599311065","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=426070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/426070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/426071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=426070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=426070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=426070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}