For half a year, the village of Kupyansk in the Kharkiv region was occupied by Russia. However, after the liberation by Ukrainian troops, all is not well – some citizens remember the occupiers positively. While it was town back then
Russian troops had occupied the small town of Kupjansk in the Kharkiv region for around six months. In September, the Ukrainian army recaptured the city. However, although many Ukrainians in the occupied areas are looking forward to Liberation Day, not all residents of Kupyansk were happy about it.
“We had everything, electricity, gas, telephone, television,” Natalya Alexeyeva recalls in an interview with the “Süddeutsche Zeitung” about the time of the occupation. It wasn’t a bad time. The Ukrainians were well taken care of, the Russian soldiers behaved “exemplarily”, explains the 63-year-old. Alina Pisarenko, another resident, says that the Russians even counted the residents’ pensions when the Ukrainian post office couldn’t deliver them. Each pensioner received 165 euros – money that the 77-year-old gladly accepted despite her son’s protests.
But now the Russians are gone. And with them, at least for some Ukrainians, the literal perfect world. Since the then mayor Hennady Mazehora handed over the city to the advancing Russians without resistance in February, Kupjansk actually remained unharmed for a long time. Apparently, the Russians also had big plans for the city of 30,000. The occupiers had set up their administrative center for the partially controlled Kharkiv region here.
Now, after the struggles to retake it, the city is a shadow of its past. Streets have been destroyed and rocket hits can still be seen on the houses. Food, water, energy – many things are now scarce.
“When is there electricity? How much longer do we have to live like this?” snaps a Kupyansk woman at the new head of the military administration, Andriy Besedin, at a public meeting. The fact that he had just announced that the polyclinic was opening again and that the clean-up work was progressing does not seem to have reached her. People are very frustrated – and maybe blinded too.
After all, the Russian occupiers had about six months to re-educate the people according to their ideas. The indoctrination was already in full swing, as evidenced by some of the occupiers’ legacies: Russian flags, posters for Russian lessons and documents proving that the occupiers were already discussing the budget for cultural and sporting events. Some Ukrainians had already applied for a Russian passport in the summer. Others later emigrated to Russia.
Some residents are unable to explain why many processes in Kupjansk are not yet working again. After all, it is still the Russian troops who are shelling the city. And without the invasion of the Russian army, there would never have been such fighting. But instead, their own people now seem to be the enemy. This is also observed by two Ukrainian soldiers in Kupjansk: “Some are happy, but others look at us downright hostile,” says a soldier of the “SZ”, who does not want to give his real name.
In order to win the skeptical residents over to the Ukraine again, the new administrators, who are now Ukrainian again, are now already on press trips through the formerly occupied regions. Together they want to spread confidence.
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