“The very last straw was the funeral of a little girl, whom they tore apart in front of her mother’s eyes. Everyone refused to bury her, so I had to do it myself,”
– Konstantin (name changed) was born in Mariupol and, as he himself says, was a “Russian national democrat.” Konstantin had lived in Ukraine, Russia, and Belarus. After February 24, 2022, he, along with his relatives and neighbors, survived in the basements of Mariupol, day after day losing the people around him to shelling. Konstantin personally buried the dead. At the end of March, he passed through 13 Russian checkpoints to escape from the territory occupied by Russian forces and reach Zaporizhie. Later, Konstantin went to Poland, where he is still undergoing treatment. This interview is about how a Russian from Mariupol survived during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
— How did the Russian invasion of Ukraine personally start for you?
— For me, it all started in 2014. I was under the first shelling as a civilian in February 2015. It was “Eastern.” Went out for bread. The shelling started, they were hitting the market. We tried to run to the walls, I was hit by shrapnel in the leg, the military and medics quickly arrived. They gave me an injection, and it’s hard to remember what happened next. After that, I spent a year lying down.
I couldn’t stand on my leg at all – my hip was dislocated. There was a fracture from a through-and-through wound. The “Grads” from Russia were shelling Mariupol then. They were shooting from Sahanka. It was clear in which direction. Many left then. And I just changed neighborhoods. I really love Mariupol, didn’t want to leave. I like the fields, I liked my job. I worked for a long time in an internet provider company, providing internet to villages. And I really worked so that there would be standard 100 megabits in every village. And we achieved that.
The city, in my opinion, became more Ukrainianized. There were ethnic Russians who switched to Ukrainian in families.
— Specifically because of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine?
— Yes, precisely because of Russia’s attack on Ukraine. Although we had “Russian Ukrainians,” an organization like in Russia – Dyomushkin. Yura Gorsky (a nationalist, organizer of “Russian marches,” – ed.) came to us, I talked to him. I was also involved in this movement. As a Russian citizen of Ukraine, I have civil patriotism. Patriotism is like medicine. In small, necessary doses, it is useful, but when it is excessive – it becomes poison. By the way, until 2012, the “Russian Ukrainians” asked for support from Russia, but Russia did not need to support Russians in Ukraine. They never needed it. They just needed to destroy competitors in the industry in Donbass and so on. I understood this back in 2008. Well, that Russia is moving towards classical fascism, only through the backside, was also clear. I thought at least there would be classical fascism, like under Mussolini. These are some norms, but no.
— Am I correct in understanding that you were a Russian nationalist?
— We are nationalists, but light ones, so to speak, when nationalism is clearly measured in doses, it is beneficial, if there is a lot of it – it is poison. We were more like national democrats.
— And now do you consider yourself a Russian national democrat?
— Not anymore. And even so… my children will already be Ukrainians.
— So, it was precisely the full-scale invasion of Russia that changed your views?
— Completely changed. Now I’m just a libertarian, I stand for people’s freedom. And I want my children to be Ukrainians. My fiancee is Ukrainian. She literally saved me. In Nikolsk, she pulled me out of the second and third filtrations, from which I might not have escaped…
— During all the years of living in Mariupol, have you ever faced persecution because you are Russian and speak Russian?
— No. I was born in Mariupol, but we lived in the Chechen Republic in Russia and in Belarus. And I know three languages - Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. I never had any problems with the language or being ethnically Russian. But I had a friend who came in 2014 to Mariupol from Kazan to join the police force. You know why? Because Russians were oppressed in Kazan.
— Where were you and what were you doing on February 24, 2022?
— On the morning of February 24, I was at home, getting ready to go to work. Our director said there was no need to come to work, told us to take care of our loved ones. And on the 23rd, my fiancee was supposed to come to me from Nikolsk. It’s a good thing she didn’t come. The communication started to break somewhere on Friday, February 25, because they immediately started hitting the communication nodes. We had a provider called ‘Format,’ and they were targeted. I didn’t believe it until the end, thought it was just flexing muscles because it was really idiotic. We rented an apartment in the 20th microdistrict on the 9th floor. There was no electricity or water there, I was alone in the apartment with my cat. I went with the cat to the Kalmyusky district to my relatives. This district held out the longest in terms of electricity and water, but around March 2-3, we also had no electricity, gas, or water — nothing. The first week was quiet, if anything came, it was in the fields or at military targets. And, by the way, we didn’t have Azov, they’re shouting now – ‘Azov,’ but there was no Azov at School 42, I know that for sure. Because we had our Ukrainian Armed Forces soldiers from Levchenko Street, marines, and the police. Before the battles, they would go around and warn everyone to hide in bomb shelters. And now some say they were evicting people from their homes. Yes, they ‘evicted’ them because then it would get hit. They explained where exactly the bomb shelters were and so on.
— Were there any announcements from the local authorities about the situation, how to behave, what to do?
— The mayor and his deputy said in the first days of the invasion that we should not worry and stay in place. There were no air raid warnings because there were electronic alert systems — they didn’t work without electricity. In the first week, officials from the district executive committee began to flee and leave. There were almost no evacuations. The only evacuation was on Friday and Saturday: February 25 and 26. And that’s it. The mayor and his deputy left immediately. Now they are fussing about how they will rebuild Mariupol, instead of just helping the people of Mariupol in Ukraine.
— When did you come under the first shelling?
— On March 6th in the fifth microdistrict. We were just leaving the warehouse of the ‘Etalon’ store with our family. The owner herself opened the warehouse for us and allowed us to take groceries. A rocket came into the parking lot — about 15 meters from us, there was an evacuation parking lot. Specifically into the parking lot where our yellow ‘Bogdan’ buses were standing, which could be used for evacuation. It was clearly aimed at the civilian parking lot, why else would they hit it? So that people couldn’t evacuate. The rocket came from the side of Talakovka, about which they were shouting on their ‘DNR’ (Donetsk region) radio that they had taken it over: ‘Ukrainian Nazis are attacking evacuation convoys.’ Only there it’s clearly visible where it came from. Interestingly, the ‘DNR’ people were angry with the people of Mariupol.
— Why? Because the people of Mariupol repelled the capture in 2014?
— Yes, remember May 9, 2014, there was the ‘Immortal Regiment’? The shooting started then by the ‘Barkashovites’ (Alexander Barkashov’s movement ‘Russian National Unity,’ – ed.), and it was the ‘Barkashovites’ from Rostov and Crimea who shot at the ‘Immortal Regiment.’ And that’s how the Russians in Ukraine were ‘oppressed,’ that until 2014 in Crimea, Kharkiv, Donetsk, there was the banned in Russia ‘RNE’ (Alexander Barkashov’s movement ‘Russian National Unity,’ – ed.), nationalists, that’s how the ‘Russians were oppressed.’ They weren’t banned here, in Ukraine, but they should have been. Because the ‘RNE’ members at the ‘Immortal Regiment’ opened fire on the elderly. The same thing happened in Odessa. When people were locked in and lured out.
— Do you think they collaborated with the Russian authorities in any way?
— Yes, of course. Barkashov – he’s completely under the FSB.
— What happened after the shelling on March 6, were you not injured?
— No. Then there was the next shelling on March 11th. It happened on Kirova Street, five meters away from me. On the 12th we also came under fire. We were walking from Kalmiussky to the center – it’s about 5-6 km. We were walking with neighbors on the phone. I only got scratches, but there were casualties. That was the last time I saw medics in the city: everyone was running from the explosion, and a medic was running toward the explosion, that guy had balls of steel.
— Were the fatalities already lying in the streets?
— Yes. Even on the outskirts, in the private sector, there were already some by the 7th or 8th. We saw them yellow. We took the yellow ones; I myself buried 12 neighbors…
— You personally?
— Yes. From the 7th until the 16th or 17th of March, I buried them. Then my nerves couldn’t take it anymore; I got a rash on my hands, scabs started to form…
— Scabs because you buried them without gloves?
— Yes, and even now, I’m still treating my hands. At first, there was a rash, then wounds, and when I arrived in Zaporizhzhie, they were already festering. We tried to hide the bodies immediately because there were children with us so they wouldn’t see it. We hid them in the garage. When it got quieter, we buried them behind the cemetery. From there, all our buried ones were dug up. When the shelling intensified, when they took over the territory from the 20th to the 23rd, they started shelling the cemetery from there. We started burying them in the park. There we have a small children’s town, a block, between the private sector and Stalinist buildings, and there’s a little church, a chapel, and we buried them around it. And when the Russians came, they immediately started digging up the bodies.
— Why?
— The number of victims. They dug them up and said it was ‘exhumation, we’ll inform the relatives,’ they attached tags and so on, but the relatives still don’t know anything; they just took the bodies away like garbage, or like in Old Crimea, they made communal graves, and it’s unclear who, what, how many people.
— Did you personally see the Russians digging up graves?
— No, people who stayed told me about it later. The last straw for me personally was the burial of a girl. She was 3-5 years old. Everyone refused to bury her. A little girl… killed by shelling on March 17 during the day. She was somehow hit by a mortar shell, which practically split the child in two. After that, I… I can never do it again now… The girl died in front of her mother’s eyes. The mother went crazy right there; she saw everything and kept saying, ‘she’ll wake up now,’ ‘stop doing this,’ and so on. She went gray in front of our eyes, a young woman. And no one wanted to bury the girl because first the body had to be collected so it could possibly be buried. And I have such a character, always ready to help, even if it makes me feel bad and miserable afterwards. So, I had to deal with it again. You collect the body, wrap it in a carpet, hide it in the garage, and bury it in the evening. You don’t see the person in it anymore, that’s what’s scary. Especially when it’s a child. There’s nothing scarier than a child’s corpse.
— Did you work with a psychologist after that?
— We still do.
– What were you thinking, feeling at that moment?
— About nothing. A person gets used to everything; there’s just emptiness, despair that you get used to. It’s scary. There are no thoughts there, just a cycle of actions. One day – go for water. Another day – something else. When I went for water, I constantly tried to call the girl. I only managed to reach her on March 20. We talked, and I decided to leave the city, despite everything. My friend and I set out on the 23rd… My parents stayed in Mariupol, it was their decision. There, you see, there’s an information bubble, especially for the elderly, and you can tell them whatever you want. Mariupol’s elderly were told by the Russians and journalists, ‘Molodaya Gvardiya,’ and others, that China would rebuild factories in Mariupol.And they ran around happy, but people’s psyche was unstable after what they had been through…”
— How did you leave? By car?”
— On foot. We left on March 23. We encountered the first Russian checkpoint at Topolina, or rather, the first ‘DNR’ one; they immediately rob you, open your bag and take out whatever they like. They took out cigarettes, ‘Snickers’ bars that I was bringing for my niece, as the ‘DNR guys’ said, ‘entry tax’.
— Did they check your phone?
— Phones were already being confiscated, and I had an old phone, ‘Samsung Duo’; they scolded me and hit me for having such a cheap phone.
— They hit you directly?
— Well, yes, a blow to the jaw, they hit me 3-4 times. I fell because a blow to the jaw causes immediate concussion. Very strong.
—Were you later diagnosed with a concussion?
— I had a bunch of things diagnosed; they even broke my ribs later when we were leaving Berdiansk. There were 13 Russian checkpoints along our way, and only one was normal. No photos were allowed. I took my guitar with me, just a regular guitar, and I hid a notebook inside it with songs I wrote during the shelling, including in Ukrainian, and also hid a memory card with photos in the notebook.
We walked from Mariupol to Nikol’skoye, about 20 km, it took us 16-20 hours. At the exit checkpoint, they stripped us, checked for tattoos, and took us to the police station, where there used to be a Ukrainian checkpoint. There were guys in black uniforms inside; I don’t know who they were – FSB or Rosgvardia. They hassled my friend because he had guitar and pentagram tattoos – he’s a rock musician. In the end, they let us go, but there were humiliations, they picked on us because of our last name, saying, ‘you, Ukrainians, lived too well.’ They came, saw that people had better infrastructure, and they got angry. Instead of building such infrastructure themselves, they want to destroy it for others. That’s the whole ideology of racism, essentially. Just such an animal desire.
When we passed all the checkpoints, the last 4 kilometers we were given a ride, and in Nikol’skoye, they immediately assigned us to a school – that’s where the filtering took place. Mostly old people and women were there; old people were really dying of hunger because they were fed only one or two plates a day. We, men, barely got anything. We gave everything to the children and grandmothers – grandmothers couldn’t even walk from hunger. But ‘Molodaya Gvardiya’ didn’t give a damn, ‘Molodaya Gvardiya’ was filming stories there, damn it. People are dying, and they approached women of marginal appearance and offered a can of stew in exchange for saying that it was a Zaporizhzhie plane bombing Mariupol. And hungry people said this for Donetsk television in exchange for a can of stew.
— How was the filtering at school?
— You could walk, but patrols were everywhere; you had to have a pass and documents; if you didn’t have a pass yet, they could beat you – they beat. Then you had to stand in line at the police station. There they already asked where you lived, if you had a business. I talked to a Russian and a ‘DNR guy.’ Saying that we wanted to go to Zaporizhzhie was forbidden; you couldn’t even mention the word ‘Zaporizhzhie’ at the filtering. You could only say that you wanted to travel only through Russia. Because civilians were taken for it, and taken to the basement – for a longer interrogation – those who were going to Ukraine. And, by the way, then – on March 24 and 25 – buses from the Red Cross from Zaporizhzhia arrived with humanitarian aid and to evacuate people. The ‘DNR guys’ hijacked these buses and kept the drivers in the basement for a whole month. I personally saw how they brought out the drivers, drove the buses further, and sent the drivers to the police station. They were released closer to the end of April.
By the way, it was like this; they told people that they were being taken to Zaporizhzhie, but they were taken to Taganrog. My acquaintance was taken all the way to Krasnoyarsk. In one pair of slippers, and he wandered there for 3 months as a day laborer to leave through Kazakhstan to Mongolia in the fall, and then from Mongolia, thanks to a labor agency, he went to Korea, and then to Japan. He’s an Orientalist. He lived in a school there for 3 months, lived in a basement in a boiler room – a refugee in the Russian Federation. There was also another friend of mine from ‘Kyivstar’. He simply told the Russians that it wasn’t possible to service the base stations, that the keys were with engineers in Dnipro, that they wouldn’t even be able to reprogram them because they would reset. He was sent to the basement for telling the truth – for refusing to cooperate – in Dokuchaievsk. He was exchanged as a soldier recently – he was there for over a year. On March 28, the city was closed for cleanup, as we heard, on the 28th, the Russians had lists of ‘ATO participants’ and policemen, you had to claw your way out because my friend took part in the ATO. My girlfriend pulled us out of the filtration in the evening before the curfew. We were hiding in her basement, and in the basement there was also a cellar.
— So, in the end, you didn’t pass the filtration?
— No. I didn’t get a pass stating that I passed the filtration. Overall, I can say that I got off easy. Because I limp, they probably treated me more gently, and others were treated worse. We got out of the girlfriend’s basement, found a driver and went to Berdyansk. There was only one checkpoint before Berdyansk – there was a Yakut with the call sign “Winter”, he drained diesel from people, took phones, took the last savings from a granny who was traveling with my girlfriend. On April 2, we arrived in Berdyansk. Although it was already occupied, there were still Ukrainian flags in the city. There, a good man signed us up for an evacuation bus from the “Red Cross” for the 3rd. Then this man was sent into exile for helping so much, his further fate is unknown. And then the worst began: we were already traveling under fire, the Russians used our convoy as a human shield, literally hitting us on the sides. On the way near Vasilyevskaya, someone from either the “Rusich” or a Wagnerite with a “Dead Head” patch got on the bus, took a man from our bus, an Azovstal worker. Only because he was born in Nizhny Novgorod. He told him: “What are you doing with the khokhols, you will dig trenches for us, since you are Russian.” This is the kind of Russian nationalism they have: only a Russian has the right to mock a Russian.
— How did you end up getting to Zaporozhye?
— You saw my boots, right? They were falling apart during all these 13 checkpoints. They started falling apart in Nikolskoye because they were chasing us back and forth. 13 checkpoints – no one did anything. Only at the first Ukrainian checkpoint a guy with the call sign “Bono”, by the way, looks like Bono (leader of the group U2, – editor’s note), threw me some army tape so that I could at least wrap them. The difference is in the attitude. He just saw. I didn’t ask him for anything. He just saw the fallen apart boots and ran for tape. That was the most awesome gift.
— What feeling did you experience when you got to Zaporozhye, to the unoccupied territory?
— “Revo” – a Ukrainian alcoholic drink – ran out in the whole of the “DPR”. And so we took a can of “Revo” each in Zaporozhye. There was a feeling of uncertainty. We were waiting for my girlfriend.
And then they gave us summons — we were standing there with our things, naked, my boots were bandaged, and they gave us summons. We went to the military registration and enlistment office with these summons. When we approached the military commissar, he asked, “Who gave this to you, people from Mariupol?” He gave us a formal reply, and next time told us to ask the names of those who handed it out, because “they are degenerates.” He gave us formal replies and said, “First, at least get a job, find a roof over your head, guys.” From Zaporizhia we moved to Dnepr, then to Ivano-Frankivsk, and already in Frankivsk I was rejected by the military registration and enlistment office, they won’t even take you as a clerk, or rather, they could have taken you as a clerk, but the jobs as a clerk are too privileged. The local military commissar said, “If you want to be a clerk, pay me 60 thousand hryvnia, I’ll arrange everything for you.” I was given a military ID for disability, the military commissar himself said: “Go to Europe for treatment.” I had a concussion and a ruptured auditory nerve after shelling in Mariupol.
— How did you leave Ukraine?
— Absolutely easily, I was in Poland on June 22. And I am still being treated, I am abroad.
— Do you think this war could have been prevented somehow?
— No. I still remember coming to Russia in the 90s, I have Don Cossacks on my father’s side in Builovka, Voronezh region. Even then I heard there: “Oh, khokhols, oh you with your balachka” (dialect of the Ukrainian language, – editor’s note). And this is what the Don Cossacks said in the 90s, Russians. The last time I was in Russia was in 2012, my band and I gave a concert in Novosibirsk. The same as my parents had in Mariupol, “Stalin-era” buildings, only with sewage, toilets were outside. Novosibirsk, 2012. While in Ukraine, as soon as the houses were made cooperative, they installed sewage everywhere themselves, in the same houses. That’s the difference. Somewhere they endure and wait…
-— How do your parents live in Mariupol now?
— My father is dying. He’s 69 years old, needs constant support, no medications. I told them they should leave, but they don’t want to, saying, “We have an apartment here.” They’ve been scared that if they leave, migrants will move into their apartment, as the builders currently working there have been threatened.
— Builders are moving into other people’s apartments?
—Yes. It’s awful, drugs, syringes under the windows.
— Does your father have a diagnosis? Why is he dying?
— He had a fractured collarbone. And just because, at 69, in a city where there are no medications. My grandmother already died there during the occupation because there weren’t any diabetes medications.
— What specific medications does your father need now?
— For arthritis, among others.
— Can you ask specifically which medication he lacks? The name.
— I can’t, he cut off contact with me.
— Why?
— He rejected me because I’m pro-Ukrainian. He was summoned for talking to me, and they tortured him with electric shocks. At 69.
— Who and when tortured him?
— Last summer, when I told them to leave. They took him to the local police department. And there was electric shock torture, as my neighbors told me. He doesn’t admit to anything, and he’s had mental problems since then.
— Do you talk to your mother? How is she?
— Yes. My mom supports Putin because that’s what you have to say. You can’t even write there. Understand, everything bad about Russia is concentrated in Mariupol right now. If Russia is a police state, then Mariupol now is like the police during the occupation, as my grandmother told me. There are suspicions, constant checks.
— What do you dream about?
— Finally moving in with my girlfriend. And then we’ll see. I have no plans; I’m completely empty, as if someone scooped me out with a spoon. I don’t have hatred; I understand that everything has its price.
— When the war is over, do you want to return to Ukraine?
— Yes, but I no longer have a home there. I understand I’ll have to build a new one. And what needs to be done with Russia, in my opinion… I would like a free Don Republic; my ancestors are from the Don, and it would serve as a buffer zone to protect Mariupol. A kind of allied zone. But… seeing that Rostov’s RNE, the poison, has penetrated too deeply, people are poisoned. In the 90s, as I said, speaking “balachka” (a dialect of the Ukrainian language) was banned in the Voronezh region, they were beaten for it.
— In your opinion, are there many people in Russia who don’t support the war?
— No. Russian society is like Chinese; they don’t even understand what war is. There’s no empathy. Most Russians only care about what’s in their pockets. They didn’t choose the state; they see the state as separate from their little lives; they don’t feel any responsibility. It’s complete infantilism.
— Why do you think so?
— Because society is raised that way, and it has been that way since before the Soviet Union and in the Russian Empire, that’s how it was built. It’s unclear where we went wrong, whether it was when Ivan the Terrible destroyed Novgorod once again, or when Nevsky betrayed, or when the Second False Dmitry didn’t succeed… It’s unclear where we went wrong.
— Anything you’d like to say to Russians?
— I, a Russian in Ukraine, was sent not to defend, but to destroy. And an important moment I remembered about the only normal one out of 13 Russian checkpoints on the way from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia. There was a Russian officer, and he asked me, “Why don’t you go to Russia?” I answered, “Because I saw what came from the east to us.” And he nodded, he understood. The only decent officer, but there are few of them.
— So he understood that he was doing something wrong?
– “Hans, are we really villains?”
Author: Anastasiia Chumakova
