"Kherson? More like F*-off-son!" How Andrii Andriushchenko Resisted the Occupation with Graffiti and Achieved a Digital Victory Over His Captors
Before the full-scale invasion, Andrii Andriushchenko, an art director at a Kherson nightclub, had no interest in politics, had never done graffiti, and could never have imagined becoming a soldier.
During the occupation, he armed himself with spray paint and, right under the Russians’ noses, wrote patriotic slogans on city walls. Those messages inspired Kherson residents and all of Ukraine to keep fighting. For this, the occupiers tortured him and planned to sentence him to life in prison.
Andrii Andriushchenko shares why he became one of the key organizers of mass resistance rallies, what drove him to write pro-Ukrainian slogans on Kherson’s buildings, and how he managed to escape captivity.
"We’re Holding a Public Assembly! We Will Fight the Enemy!"
We meet Andrii Andriushchenko in a small Kherson café. Now, he’s wearing a military uniform, a confident and smiling artilleryman.
Two and a half years ago, this very café became the starting point of his hellish 43-day ordeal of torture. It was here that the occupiers captured the man known as "Kherson’s Banksy."
Before becoming an anonymous but widely recognized "artist" and the author of witty and insulting graffiti aimed at Russian forces, Andrii worked as an art director at nightclubs and as a DJ. In his spare time, he studied cybersecurity and helped business owners protect their data. At the time, he had no idea that these skills would one day help save his life.
In the years leading up to the full-scale invasion, Kherson had been developing as a resort region, and Andrii fully enjoyed the beach party scene.
"My job was to organize parties," he recalls. "For example, during the summer season, resort clubs were booming. We had tons of visitors, there were even tourists from Belarus and Poland."
During the Revolution of Dignity, Andrii was just 19. It was then that he first became interested in social issues and closely followed the events leading up to Russia’s occupation of Crimea and parts of Donbas. For the first time, the young man from Kherson realized that Russia was no friend. According to him, most of his peers felt the same way, but among older generations, the sentiment was often different.
"That’s one of the reasons we couldn’t mount total resistance against the enemy. Some of the older generation still saw Russia as a friendly country even after 2014," Andrii explains. "The Anti-Terrorist Operation (ATO) was happening somewhere far away — it didn’t affect us directly, so we viewed it differently."
Andrii’s club life continued right up until the full-scale war. On the night of February 24, 2022 — just hours before the invasion — he locked up the club and went home with a few friends. But they didn’t sleep; instead, they played video games.
At dawn, Andrii decided to check the news. He opened YouTube and saw the speech of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who was announcing the start of his so-called "special military operation." It was a shock, although, unlike many Ukrainians, Andrii had little doubt that a major war was coming.
Andrii remembers the first day of the invasion as pure chaos. His phone was ringing non-stop with calls from friends asking what to do. He reached out to acquaintances in the military for information. Thanks to his cybersecurity expertise, Andrii had access to surveillance cameras across the region, including those along the coastline. He watched live as Russian convoys rolled in from Crimea.
Meanwhile, the city was waking up. The streets were jammed with thousands of cars — some people desperately trying to flee, others rushing to gas stations for fuel or supermarkets for supplies. Within hours, store shelves were nearly empty.
Andrii helped many of his friends evacuate from the semi-besieged city, but he chose to stay. The next day, a friend called and invited him to join a local defense group, which later became part of the "Municipal Guard" — a public safety unit that effectively became Kherson’s only legitimate law enforcement body after the police and other security forces abandoned the city.
"As a citizen, I felt like we’d been abandoned. But from a tactical standpoint, the police were probably following orders, and disobeying wasn’t an option. However, many officers — especially those near retirement or already retired — stayed behind and joined the ‘Municipal Guard,’ helping us navigate legal matters," Andrii recalls.
"Some people stayed despite orders for two reasons: either they had families they couldn’t leave behind, or they made a personal decision to defend Kherson to the end.
People in every neighborhood began rallying around the "Municipal Guard." They came armed with whatever they had — knives, sticks, even firearms. Andrii saw plenty of women carrying stun guns.
People were saying, ‘That’s it, we’re holding a public assembly! We will fight the enemy.’ There was a strong desire to restore at least some sense of order in daily life."
Beyond maintaining law and order, the "Municipal Guard" also coordinated and delivered humanitarian aid. Volunteers gathered addresses of low-income families through social service agencies and brought them food and medicine. At that point, it was still possible to travel from Kherson to unoccupied Mykolaiv. A major supermarket shut down, and its director chose to donate all remaining goods to volunteers, who quickly distributed them to those in need.
Alongside handling organizational matters, Andrii developed a secure communication system for the "Municipal Guard," setting up encrypted apps that served as digital walkie-talkies.
"I Heard the Enemy's Bones Creaking from Fear"
The leaders of the district branches of the "Municipal Guard" became the organizers of mass protests against the occupation. One of them was former party host Andrii Andriushchenko.
In early March, Russian troops began entering Kherson in large columns. That’s when local patriotic organizations came up with the idea of gathering people for protests. They devised an action plan, a meeting point, instructions for participants, ways to spread the word, and possible escape routes. Then, the information spread through the city like a snowball rolling downhill: heads of residential building associations rallied their residents, and business owners mobilized their employees. Before the first protest on March 5, activists estimated there would be at least a thousand participants. Still, when Andrii Andriushchenko saw the sea of people filling Freedom Square, he was overwhelmed.
"The atmosphere was electrifying, full of desperate courage!" he recalls with excitement. "I was afraid that at some point, the crowd might surge toward the occupiers. Everyone who brought people along explained that no one should carry weapons or firecrackers. But besides firearms, people brought everything else they could think of — sticks, eggs, fireworks. Some even picked up stones. And all of it was hurled at the enemy. It was a single, unified outburst of absolute hatred."
The Russians stood in front of the regional administration building, shielding themselves with anti-tank barriers. On March 5 and during several subsequent protests, they seemed completely lost — Andrii recalls seeing pure terror on their faces. Putin’s propaganda had convinced them that Ukrainians would welcome them with flowers, yet here in Kherson, they were met with nothing but fury.
"The energy was incredible. At one point, I swear, I could hear the enemy’s bones creaking from fear," the activist says.
But the occupiers’ paralysis didn’t last long. Within days, Russian security forces arrived with orders to suppress the protests. The invaders recovered from the shock and began throwing tear gas grenades and smoke bombs at the protesters, shooting at their feet. At one point, a tank deliberately fired at a residential building to send a message about what would happen to Kherson if its residents didn’t fall in line.
By mid-March, the protests had to move to different locations, farther from the city center. The crowds shrank — not thousands anymore, but 500-600 people at best. The crackdown on organizers had begun. Russian troops took photos of protesters and, with the help of local collaborators, identified the most active ones, arresting and torturing them. The last protest ended in an especially brutal assault by the occupiers.
"It was a small rally. As soon as we gathered, armored vehicles with mounted machine guns started rolling in. That’s when we realized we couldn’t take the risk anymore and stopped calling people to protests," Andrii says.
After that protest, the "Municipal Guard" ceased its public activities. And for the former club director, a new chapter of resistance began — as an underground graffiti artist spreading messages of defiance across the city’s walls.
"A Sign That the City Remains Ukrainian"
By April 2022, Kherson was covered in blue-and-yellow graffiti: "Kherson? More like F*-off-son!", "The orc's body will rot in the ground, thanks to the Armed Forces of Ukraine!", and, of course, the infamous football chant mocking Putin.
The Russian military and security services were livid. But no matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t catch the elusive "Kherson Banksy." The artists behind these rebellious murals were Andrii Andriushchenko and his friends. It had all started earlier — with flags and ribbons.
"The Russians took down the last Ukrainian flag from the city administration building, so we decided — fine, you took down one, we’ll raise a thousand!" Andrii recalls.
The first flag action took place on March 7. A local tailor, who had hidden a massive Ukrainian flag before the occupation, now cut it into hundreds of small ribbons. Activists decorated Shevchenko Park with them. Photos of the blue-and-yellow-adorned city quickly spread across social media. But soon, they ran out of ribbons, and that’s when they picked up paint cans and started painting flags on walls. That’s when Andrii began adding slogans to the artwork.
The situation demanded caution. When they went out to paint during the day, they stationed girls on the perimeter of the block to keep watch for military patrols. If they spotted Russian troops approaching, they would warn the others via digital walkie-talkies.
The occupiers launched a manhunt for the activists. That’s when Andriushchenko decided he would work alone. He would head out just half an hour before curfew ended, quickly paint a slogan, and head home. He never took a phone or documents with him. Later in the day, he would return, pretending to be just another passerby, to snap a picture of his graffiti.
"I sent the photos to friends who had already fled the city, and they would publish them. Often, our government institutions would repost them — sometimes even the General Staff or the Verkhovna Rada. For them, it was proof that Kherson remained Ukrainian," Andrii explains. "It was really important to me to show that Kherson wasn’t giving up. These slogans had another major purpose. I often painted them near buildings where Russians were living. Sometimes — right on their military equipment. Then I’d photograph it and send the location to the right people."
Andrii knew the Russians were looking for him, so he stopped sleeping at home. But in the end, they caught him — at this very café. On the morning of August 4, 2022, twelve Russian National Guard officers stormed in, grabbed Andriushchenko, and started beating him. They cracked his head open and slashed his ear. Then, they took him and two other young men to their apartments, where they conducted searches. At Andrii’s place, they found bulletproof vests, ammunition, and detonators — he had been getting ready to transition to the next phase of resistance, this time an armed one. But he never got the opportunity.
The detainees were taken to the former detention center on Teploenergetykiv Street, which the Russians had turned into a torture facility. For the first three or four days, the occupiers didn’t realize they had caught the infamous "patriotic Banksy." But then, they managed to recover deleted photos from Andrii’s phone. His captors were thrilled and immediately began threatening him.
"They rubbed their hands together and said: ‘Well, my friend, you’re caught now. You’re not just some pro-Ukrainian activist — we’ll put you away for 15 years for inciting extremism and terrorism.’ They told me they’d take me to Crimea, try me there, and send me to a prison in Rostov — where I’d be a complete outcast and wouldn’t last a month alive."
The torture escalated. The beatings became more brutal. They electrocuted him, choked him with a gas mask, and drove needles under his nails. And yet, despite everything, Andrii was relieved — because he had worked alone. He didn’t know the other "Yellow Ribbon" activists, so he couldn’t betray them even if he wanted to. The torture continued daily, and even when they brought him back to his cell, the suffering didn’t stop.
The cells, designed for three people, held seven to nine prisoners at a time. The occupiers grabbed people indiscriminately, so the crowd was diverse: Ukrainian police officers, young men who had violated the curfew, helped withdraw cash, or shouted something offensive at a Russian soldier.
When the guards got bored, they tormented the prisoners. They liked to burst into the cell unexpectedly and force detainees to sing the Russian anthem or a song like "Officers" by Gazmanov. Аnyone who didn’t know the words was beaten. When a new prisoner arrived, the guards would sometimes forbid everyone from sleeping until he spoke. Andrii eavesdropped on their phone conversations and discovered that the prison guards were ordinary men from Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk. Back home, they worked in correctional facilities, but they came to Kherson because the so-called "new territories" promised good salaries.
Even in these horrific conditions, Andrii found a way to strike back. One day, he noticed that the guards used Telegram for communication — and he devised a plan to expose them to Ukrainian intelligence.
“They were leading me back from an interrogation, beaten and tortured, and I turned to the guard and said: ‘They’ve started hitting the bridges, and I don’t wanna die here with you. I see you all use Telegram — let me show you a trick to disable tracking so they can’t trace you,’” Andrii says with a smirk.
The guard, of course, thought he was lying but still handed over his phone, holding a gun to him. Andrii pretended to turn something off. An hour later, a whole squad of guards came to him and said,“Alright, do it!”
In reality, Andrii, a cybersecurity specialist, had done the opposite — he enabled a function that allowed tracking of their IP addresses. Later, he passed this data to Ukrainian intelligence, who were able to identify the guards — crucial for holding them accountable for the crimes they had committed on Ukrainian territory.
"The Best Party of My Life"
Andrii Andriushchenko managed to escape captivity by pure luck. The closer Kherson got to liberation, the more “work” the so-called investigators had. More and more people were being thrown into the torture chambers, and the occupiers didn’t have enough hands to handle them all.
One day, the operative who usually tortured Andrii was assigned to another interrogation, so they sent in a new guy — likely a Buryat, judging by his appearance. The moment Andrii realized the new interrogator knew nothing about his case, he made up a different story:
“I had already lost all hope of getting out, so I started telling him that I had been used by corrupt Ukrainian politicians. They promised me a lot of money to paint for them, but in the end, they never even paid me. He asked to see my phone and scrolled through the photos — nightclubs, hookahs, girls. I said, ‘I’m not a nationalist, I’m just a party guy.’”
Andrii got lucky — the operative believed him. That same day, on September 15, they simply shoved him out of the detention center gates. At first, he stood there in shock, then ran home as fast as he could. His phone and apartment keys had not been returned.
Fortunately, near his building, Andrii ran into an acquaintance and asked to borrow her phone to call his mother. After 43 days of torture, he had changed so much that she didn’t recognize him at first. But when she finally did, she burst into tears of joy.
Andrii soon got his keys back, but he still didn’t stay at home — he feared the Russians might come for him again. Yet, just two weeks later, he was back on the streets with paint, leaving messages in support of Ukraine.
By late September, rumors of Kherson’s imminent liberation were everywhere. Then, on November 10, the first Ukrainian troops arrived — no flags yet, just vehicles marked with white crosses. The next day, full military columns rolled in.
“The city was instantly covered in Ukrainian symbols. Bright colors, beautiful girls, nice cars — everything that had been hidden during the occupation suddenly burst into the open,” Andrii recalls. “It was the best party I’ve ever been part of. Back when I worked at a bar, I always said that on the day of liberation, drinks would be free for everyone. Five minutes in, our bar was completely packed.”
For the first few days, Andrii and his friends drove through Kherson waving Ukrainian flags. But soon, the hard times began. The Russians shelled the city from the left bank of the Dnipro. Food and medicine were scarce. So, the former underground activist became a volunteer again — this time, helping secure supplies and setting up distribution points for food and medicine.
His efforts were noticed by the regional military administration, which invited him to work — first as a specialist, then as the head of the department for humanitarian aid.
“I had never been involved in government work before. It was something completely new to me,” Andrii says. “We went through the chaos of de-occupation, the horrors of the Kakhovka dam explosion [when Russian forces blew up the hydroelectric plant], and the gradual loss of donor interest in our region. Persistence and enthusiasm got us through.”
As a government official, Andrii had an exemption from military service. But in July 2024, he volunteered to join a marine artillery unit — the same one he had previously supported as a civilian.
“I’m an entertainer, a DJ, an MC,” he says. “But picking up a weapon to destroy the enemy — that’s a whole new chapter. I wasn’t raised as a warrior, but I needed to become one, so I became one.”
