Russian rockets now explode every day in Zaporizhzhia in southeastern Ukraine, but for people fleeing nearby occupied territory that Moscow plans to annex after sham “referendums” starting on Friday, this city on the Dnieper river remains a refuge.
“Many people have been detained in cellars and there are beatings and torture,” Svitlana (51) says of life under occupation in Nova Kakhovka, a town in Kherson region about 200km southwest of here, which Russia seized more than six months ago.
“They are particularly looking for people who were in the Ukrainian military or police force, but also teachers who don’t want to teach according to the Russian school system or simply those who have a pro-Ukrainian position,” she adds.
Svitlana arrived in Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday night with her daughter Karina, their Jack Russell dog and tortoiseshell cat and a couple of small bags, in a minibus driven by volunteers through about a dozen Russian checkpoints and the dangerous front line, where shelling and gunfire are frequent and landmines line the roads.
“You sort of get used to the explosions but that doesn’t stop your body shaking from fear,” she says of life in Nova Kakhovka, where the Russians and local collaborators are under growing pressure from a Ukrainian counteroffensive and shadowy partisan groups who have launched gun and bomb attacks on Moscow-appointed officials.
“There was even an explosion as the minibus pulled up to take us away,” recalls Karina (27) whose husband tried to leave occupied territory on the same night in another car: “But he was stopped and turned back at the last Russian checkpoint,” she explains.
Karina says he will try again to join them in Zaporizhzhia, but while he is still in Nova Kakhovka she does not want to share their surname, fearing possible reprisals against him.
“It’s such a relief to get out of there. Finally we can speak Ukrainian again, use our phones, find out what’s really going on, use our bank cards to buy something – no Ukrainian banks or ATMs work there now and we’ve had about five months without a mobile phone connection,” says Svitlana.
“There’s only Russian propaganda there: they told us ‘Russia is here forever’ and even lied to us that Zaporizhzhia city was under Russian control. We’re just waiting for liberation – we’ve only just got away, but we want to go back when it’s free territory.”
Occupation officials in Kherson region postponed plans for a “referendum” on joining Russia earlier this month for security reasons, but abruptly announced this week that it would go ahead from Friday to Tuesday, alongside similar votes in Russian-held parts of Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk provinces.
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Kyiv and the West say the votes are a sham, but the Kremlin has made clear that it intends to use them as a pretext to annex about 90,000sq km of territory in eastern and southeastern Ukraine – an area bigger than the island of Ireland.
Russia also warned that it could use tactical nuclear weapons to keep hold of the annexed land, and announced the mobilisation of 300,000 reservists to boost the ranks of its military following a chaotic retreat from Kharkiv region in northeastern Ukraine.
“I heard nothing about any referendum,” says Anton Ovcharov, who also arrived on Wednesday night to the carpark of a shopping mall in Zaporizhzhia, where an aid centre provides displaced people with food, medical help and temporary accommodation in local schools and kindergartens.
Ovcharov arrived from Enerhodar, a town about 50km to the southwest in an occupied part of Zaporizhzhia region that is the site of Europe’s biggest nuclear power station.
Russian troops who seized the area in March oversee the work of its Ukrainian staff, who this month shut down the last of its six reactors after repeated shelling damaged power lines and radiation sensors, fuelling international fears of a nuclear disaster.
“I live about 6km from the plant, and it’s extremely scary to live in such a place during a war – it’s the biggest atomic plant in Europe and a blast there could be something on a global scale,” says Ovcharov (44) a geophysicist whose work was connected with the facility.
“I didn’t see any violence from the Russians towards people in Enerhodar. But I don’t want to work with them. They are occupiers and this is my land,” he says.
“So it feels good to be here among my people. But so many have left [occupied areas] and don’t know what to do next. Things are totally unclear and that’s not good.”
When the air-raid siren wails, as it does several times each day and night in Zaporizhzhia, the big aid tents empty out and people head for the nearest bomb shelter, or simply drift around the car park until volunteer staff return.
Viktoria and Yaroslav wait for the all-clear outside a city-centre help point for displaced people, in what older locals remember as a “house of culture” from the Soviet days.
“The Russians and collaborators are going after anyone who served as a Ukrainian police officer and soldier, and business owners are told to pay bribes or have their companies stolen from them,” says Yaroslav, who worked in a small furniture factory in Melitopol, 160km south of Zaporizhzhia, before the occupation.
“There’s no law there now. The internet doesn’t really work and it’s routed through Russia, like the phone system, so they can eavesdrop. Only Russian television is available and Ukrainian channels are blocked. Russian and Ukrainian money is used, but to get Ukrainian cash from your account you have to go through a kind of broker who takes commission of between 8 and 15 per cent,” explains Viktoria (51).
“The ‘referendum’ will be a total fake. Collaborators came around saying they would go house-to-house checking who had voted and how. The only people who will take part are collaborators and some pensioners, who are being offered food parcels and like all the Soviet nostalgia,” she adds.
“But I believe most people in Melitopol still support Ukraine – we’re hoping for liberation and we believe it will come when the time is right for our military.”
Yaroslav (41) says Ukrainian forces have hit Russian army bases and storage sites hard in recent weeks, often with long-range and high-precision weapons like the US-supplied Himars multi-launch rocket system.
“In Melitopol, I saw Himars rockets flying in,” he says. “And this morning the windows of the building next-door to where we are staying were blown out by a Russian missile.”
Russia bombed a television tower, electricity substation and hotel and restaurant in central Zaporizhzhia on Thursday morning, and that night about a dozen heavy explosions boomed through the inky blackness of the city about one hour after its 10pm curfew.
Zaporizhzhia is now a major gateway not only for people fleeing occupation, but those returning to their homes in Russian-held territory – although the latter were told that their route was closed for security reasons on Thursday after the morning missile strikes.
Most say they are going back because they do not have the money, strength or time left in life to start again somewhere new, or that sick or elderly relatives need them on the other side of the front line.
“My grandchildren left Mariupol with their mother in March, and I just brought some of their things to them here in Zaporizhzhia,” says Fyodor (75), who lives in Sopyne, a village on the Azov Sea just outside the port city that was devastated by a 10-week siege before falling to the Russians in May.
“I had to go through ‘filtration’, when the Russians checked my phone and documents and belongings and asked questions, before I was allowed to go home,” he recalls.
“I have a little house in Sopyne, where I was born. I have a garden where I work and grow food, which with some humanitarian aid allows me and my wife to survive,” explains Fyodor, who declines to give his surname in case it causes trouble for him or his relatives.
“I’ve seen the city. It is totally destroyed. What was there before has gone,” he says of Mariupol, where Ukrainian officials believe tens of thousands of civilians may have died during the siege, and a pre-war population of 500,000 has shrunk to about 150,000.
“I heard something about a referendum but how could they possibly hold one? There are rules for such things,” Fyodor adds, describing how he divides his life into “before the fighting, during the fighting, and now this”.
“And I don’t know how long ‘this’ will last. I don’t feel sorry for myself but for my children and grandchildren. Families are being scattered around the world, but how will they live?” he wonders.
“Only the poorest have stayed behind. And they are living with nothing.”
