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Ukrainians Taking Revenge On Those Who Betrayed Them To Russians
Balakliya, in eastern Ukraine, was taken over by Russians, who used the main police station as a staging area for their cruelty.
Numerous locals were imprisoned in cramped cells in the basement for the six months that it was under enemy possession.
Ukrainians Taking Revenge On Those Who Betrayed Them To Russians
Survivors described being hauled into a torture room where they were tortured, electrocuted, and made to watch simulated executions.
According to documents found after the town was retaken last month during Ukraine’s spectacular counteroffensive, the interrogations were conducted by agents from Russia’s Federal Security Service.
However, local stooges like Oleg Kalaida, the unemployed former head of security at a poultry farm who was promoted to chief of police after agreeing to act as a Kremlin lackey, assisted the interrogators.
The horrifying tales of Russian atrocities, mass graves, torture, and war crimes that are emerging in liberated towns like Balakliya, a railway hub of 30,000 people, have horrifyingly become routine in recent months. However, the unsettling reality is that some Ukrainians have helped Vladimir Putin commit war crimes and steal their territory.
Videos from social media showed Russian troops lying face down in front of Ukrainian forces in Kharkiv
Ukrainians Taking Revenge On Those Who Betrayed Them To Russians
The Russian interrogators were helped by local stooges – such as Oleg Kalaida, the jobless former head of security at a chicken farm who found himself elevated to chief of police after agreeing to serve as a Kremlin henchman
Ivan Sushko, a newly appointed mayor of a town in the Zaporizhzhia region, died in August after having his automobile blown up, is one recent victim.
1,309 suspected traitors have already been the subject of Kyiv investigations, and 450 collaborators have been charged with betraying their own country and its neighbors.
Resistance fighters are hunting down and killing others. According to a list provided to this publication by a government source in Kyiv, there have been 29 such retaliation murders, along with 13 other assassination attempts that left some targets injured.
‘A hunt has been declared on collaborators and their life is not protected by law,’ said Anton Gerashchenko, an adviser to the interior ministry. ‘Our intelligence services are eliminating them, shooting them like pigs.’
These loathed ‘losers’ – the term used by one Ukrainian government minister – saw Russia’s occupation as a chance to grab power, money and status. Ukrainians Taking Revenge On Those Who Betrayed Them To Russians
Among those handed key posts are a paedophile, a wedding toastmaster and a street cleaner fond of talking to stones.
In Vasylivka, a town in southern Ukraine, Natalia Romanychenko, a former actress who sells dumplings and sausages online, became Putin’s patsy mayor. A single mother, she posts pictures on social media of her two young sons in Soviet military uniform.
In another town, a crime boss – used as a Kremlin propagandist on state television – was being lined up as mayor.
Natalia Romanychenko, a former actress who now runs an internet store selling sausages and dumplings, was elected as Putin’s stooge mayor of Vasylivka, a town in southern Ukraine. She is a single mother who shares photos of her two young sons in Soviet military garb on social media.
When Ukrainian soldiers approached in the Kharkiv region last month, collaborators left their posts. One prosecutor participating in the search for them claimed, “They tried to go to Russia, but the Russians did not let them in.”
Kalaida, who strutted around Balakliya as police chief during Moscow’s occupation until being apprehended by Ukrainian security forces while attempting to flee back into Russian-held territory, was typical of their kind. According to records discovered following his capture, the 48-year-old was a former police officer, but he seemed to have had difficulty finding employment after his previous job managing security at a poultry farm ended three years ago.
Local authorities said to Ukrainian journalists that he “collaborated on his own volition” and was given the rank of general by the Russians as payment. He now faces a treason sentence of up to 15 years in jail.
Despite eluding capture, Kalaida’s wife, who worked on a fire department hotline, is said to have been a collaborator as well.
Others told of torment endured during Kalaida’s reign as police chief, which included a man’s ear being sliced off and another dying after a vicious beating.
Volodymyr Saldo, a former mayor of the important city of Kherson, was one of a few Moscow supporters who were selected from the political periphery, given Russian passports, and given positions of authority. Later on, he escaped a poisoning attempt.
According to Sergey Bolvinov, the head police investigator for the Kharkiv region, “the tortures were all different.” I won’t list them all, but the lightest was subject to electric torture.
One detainee at the police station in Balakliya recalled how guards silenced the ventilation system so that everyone could hear the screams of anguish coming from those receiving electric shocks.
It is understandable that there is intense rage and resentment toward accomplices. Such crimes have destroyed any remaining pity for Russia in Ukraine’s border districts.
Another alleged collaborator is Dmitry Chigrinov, 45, a gangster facing charges of kidnapping and beating up hostages in eastern Ukraine. He was released on bail after paying £120,000 just six days before the invasion.
He is accused of putting up the Russian flag when Putin’s troops arrived, then providing food for enemy forces, secretly passing on names of law enforcement officials and trying to oust the detained mayor so that he could replace him.
One man held in Balakliya’s police station told how guards switched off the noisy ventilation system so everyone could hear the screams of pain from people given electric shocks
A view of an abandoned military position not far from city of Balakliya, Kharkiv region on September 18, 2022, recently recaptured by the Ukrainian army following the retreat of Russian troops
The crime boss even appeared on Russian television – labelled as a community activist – praising the occupiers. Now he is back behind bars, facing a long prison term for betrayal of his country as well as the earlier kidnap and violence charges.
Others are even sleazier. The stooge mayor of Berdyansk, a major port, had been convicted of child sex offences, according to one presidential adviser. He was reportedly fired and rumoured to have been replaced by a Russian. It is not clear if his deputy – a 29-year-old street cleaner who admitted talking to stones and plants in an interview – retained his job.
Collaboration, of course, features in all conflicts. During the Second World War, the complicity of some leaders and citizens was crucial to ensuring German dominance over much of Europe and assisting the Holocaust.
Fuelled by fear, opportunism and human weakness, it was seen in every Nazi-occupied nation. Yet as history shows, the legacy of such actions can leave divisions that last decades.
One woman I met near the city of Chernihiv, close to Belarus, wept after telling me about the murder of her two brothers, who were identified to Russian troops by a neighbour in her village. ‘Someone pointed out our house – I don’t know who,’ said Iryna Kulichenko. ‘How do you live after this?’
Another woman, detained in Balakliya’s basement cells, was left shocked by the behaviour of some neighbours. ‘I have known many people for more than 40 years and in many cases, as it turned out, I was wrong about them,’ she said.
A member of the Ukrainian National Guard fires a D-30 howitzer towards Russian troops on Wednesday, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, in Kharkiv region
Ukrainian servicemen and a dog stand at a position on Wednesday, amid Russia’s attack on Ukraine, outside the town of Bakhmut, in Donetsk Region, Ukraine
Ukrainian soldiers look at the debris of damaged Russian military machinery in the recently recaptured city of Lyman, Donetsk area, Ukraine, October 5, 2022
She has now left the newly liberated town with no desire to return. ‘It is difficult to live with people if you know that they are involved in denunciations,’ she said.
Last week, alarmed by Ukrainian advances, Putin annexed four occupied regions following hastily held sham referendums. The signing ceremony in the Kremlin featured a bizarre rant from the Russian dictator against the West, touching on topics ranging from 17th century history to gender-reassignment surgery.
Those representing the four stolen regions included Volodymyr Saldo, a former mayor of the key city of Kherson, who was among a handful of Moscow sympathisers plucked from the political margins, handed Russian passports and placed into positions of power.
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Three weeks after the full-scale invasion started in February, Saldo posted on social media that ‘Kherson is my soul, and Kherson is Ukraine’ – yet a few months later stood in the Kremlin to sign over his war-torn home region into Putin’s bloodstained hands.
Saldo survived a poisoning attempt two months ago after being rushed into hospital for treatment in Crimea. Russian sources said ‘his mind began to cloud and his fingers went numb’ after reportedly eating food made by a new chef.
Other collaborators have been less fortunate. There have been at least 29 suspicious deaths, starting in March with the mayor of a town in Luhansk who suffered a ‘gunshot wound to the heart’ after being ‘abducted from his home’, according to his wife.
One former Ukrainian MP, previously accused of child abuse, died in a targeted missile strike. He had fled to Russia in 2014 after Putin’s initial incursions, before returning to Kherson and proclaiming joy at being back in his ‘motherland’.
Private buildings damaged in shelling in Tsyrkuny village of Kharkiv area, as pictured on Wednesday
Ukrainian officials have been investigating reports of mass graves in areas formerly held by Russian forces
Such killings are presumed to be the work of the resistance movement. Orchestrated by Ukraine’s special forces, it has become increasingly well organised. Recent fatalities include Ivan Sushko, a wedding toastmaster appointed mayor of a town in the Zaporizhzhia region, who died in August after his car was blown up.
The partisans seek to spread fear through such killings while destroying arms dumps, devastating infrastructure for supply lines and threatening residents working with the enemy.
In one town, activists posted pictures online of a local graveyard with names of collaborators pasted on headstones. Their birth dates are correct, but dates of deaths have been left blank.
The message from Ukraine’s leaders as their troops continue advancing along the battlefront is similarly stark. As deputy prime minister Iryna Vereshchuk said this week: ‘I have personal advice for collaborators: run away.’
