A year ago, on March 2, 2022, the Russians entered a Kherson. We stayed there for eight months. “In those eight months we lost a piece of humanity,” says Di’s husband today Irina Kabycheva. She says it with resignation, but without regrets. His wife, housewife, 42 years old, mother of their only son Timur, for example, has turned into a terribly effective spy. Thanks to her information, which she sent in code while walking with the boy, the Ukrainian forces were able to bomb the hotels turned into headquarters by the Russians. Killing dozens.
THE INFORMATION
In those eight months she became a kind of Mata Hari too Anastasia Burlak, 33 years old, beautiful oval face, tattoos, bartender: behind the counter of his restaurant he served scotch and cocktails to the enemy, and in the meantime he passed information to his 28-year-old friend Nedostup, in his old life a hipster with a degree in sociology employed in a factory that produces parts spare parts for cars: in those eight months he learned to kill (“I did a Google search”, he said a few weeks ago in an interview) and slaughtered several Russian soldiers, most of them who came out drunk from Anastasia’s pizza bar . Like Irina’s husband (he prefers not to say the name), neither Anastasia, nor Nedostup, nor anyone else regrets that lost humanity that transformed boys, girls, housewives, family men, rockers or taxi drivers overnight , into informers, killers and spies.
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According to Nato, the dead among Ukrainian soldiers since the beginning of the conflict are 200 thousand. Kherson was the most important city that fell into enemy hands, and then liberated. Today, everyone says, the streets remain silent, even though the Ukrainian flags are flying again. Many have left and have not returned. Bombs continue to fall everywhere, almost at random, dropped by the Russians across the Dnieper. Anastasia plucked up the courage to tell her story to the British Telegraph. Her photo portrays her radiant, beautiful. She more beautiful than the photos of her before her, when she looked younger, more scared, but more “normal”. Those eight months in which she has become another, she carries them in a series of nervous tics that don’t go away. She earned them in the field, when she sent messages via Instagram, all information obtained by remaining behind the counter serving the enemy, spying on their uniforms, ranks, trying to steal names, information on their accommodations.
She had also come up with a code name, “Negroni,” to use in case she was caught. Nedostup would have known that she had to delete everything, throw away the cell phone, disappear. “Luckily, I’ve never had to use it,” says Anastasia. “I remember the first time the Russians entered the room, my hands shaking as I served them, how scared I was,” she told the Telegraph: “But I was also angry: how did they dare to occupy our land, decide for us? I transmitted all the information I could: how many soldiers there were, how many vehicles, and all the details I could glean about the commanders».
THE BUSY CITY
Those of Kherson who remained, almost immediately learned to live in an occupied city. And many have decided to join the resistance. Almost everyone has learned to send coded messages, hide them among photos of their children and cats on social networks. To imprint the details that could be useful to the Ukrainian forces. One of Irina’s tips served to raze the Ninel, a downtown hotel where the command of the Russian forces had settled. She had seen that the Don Marco restaurant had also become a headquarters, but the Ukrainians spared that one: they would have risked massacring civilians as well. Mykhaylo, (nom de guerre), 30, also turned into an informant in a flash: he continued to drive a taxi in the occupied city, thus communicating in real time where the Russian forces were. “The targets – he said – were destroyed within twenty minutes after I had indicated them”.
Even the double game would have made the popular @ Maneken007 (Model 007, so on Instagram), born Oksana Voloshchuk, 30, influencer and blogger. She had ended up on the black list of Myrotvorets, the site controlled by the Ukrainian services which publishes the names and surnames of citizens considered “enemies of the fatherland” (many of whom ended up killed): according to the services, Maneken was in the pay of the Russians and had supported the annexation of Crimea. Last October, however, you received an honor from the head of Ukrainian intelligence Budanov, for “services rendered collaborating with the military police”.
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