«If They’d Found Out — They Would’ve Shot Me on the Spot»: How a School Principal in Kherson Region Mocked a Commandant from Dagestan and Helped Blow Up a Russian Military Train

Before the full-scale war, Nadiya Fedorivna* was the principal of a boarding school in the village of X** on the left bank of the Kherson region, where children with complex needs were cared for.

From the very first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, the village was occupied. The school principal not only refused to cooperate with the occupying forces but also became an active member of the resistance: she posted patriotic leaflets, tracked enemy equipment as part of a Special Operations Forces group, and helped sabotage a train carrying ammunition.

Nadiya Fedorivna shared how she stood her ground in Ukrainian while arguing with Russian forces, how she handled FSB raids and house searches in her village, and how she learned to drive in order to more effectively monitor enemy movements.

She also spoke about collaborator-teachers and about patriots on the temporarily occupied left bank of the Kherson region — people who are still waiting for Ukrainian flags to return.

“More Than a Job — It Was a Life”

Future educator Nadiya Fedorivna was born in the Mykolaiv Region. In 1987, after receiving her assignment, she moved to the village of X in the Kherson region to work as a teacher at a special boarding school that both housed and educated children from across the region. Over time, she became the school’s principal.

 

“I worked there for 35 years, right up until the [full-scale] war began,” she says. “We had a great team, and every child received individual attention. It wasn’t so much a job — it was my life”.

As Nadiya Fedorivna recalls, the villagers lived comfortably. During celebrations, Russian songs were played alongside Ukrainian ones, but overall, Russian wasn’t the dominant language in the village.

“There were only a few people who spoke Russian — and even then, it was more like surzhyk,” she says. “We didn’t give it much thought. Language wasn’t something we made into a big deal”.

At the time, she felt that the people of X were united and deeply patriotic —
but the events that followed would challenge that belief.

“Oh, Please — What Tanks?”

February 24, 2022, was supposed to be a regular school day. But early that morning, Nadiya Fedorivna got a call from a colleague with news she couldn’t quite believe.

“My colleague says: ‘A student’s mom is calling — says there are tanks in A** [a village 35 km from X — ed.]. She’s going to get her kids.’  And I go, ‘Oh, please — what tanks?’ To be honest, I thought the mom had taken something, or maybe she was imagining things. But three minutes later, another mom calls, then another. So I call the education department in Kherson: ‘I don’t know what to do’. And they just tell me: ‘Sleep easy’”.

But sleep was no longer an option. Caretakers who had spent the night at the school with the children called to say that parents were already arriving to pick them up. So Nadiya Fedorivna rushed to the school.

At that moment, there were 96 students at the school. Staff began handing them over to their families. But because of the rapid occupation, not all parents were able to come. So some children were driven home by the school bus and by the vice principal’s car.

“My deputy had a Niva,” says Nadiya Fedorivna, “so we loaded the kids in and took them through the fields, dropping them off at their houses. On the way, we saw Russian military vehicles—but there was no sense that they were coming to take us over”.

By 5 p.m., every child had been returned to their family. The next day, the staff reported back to work. They arranged distance learning for some students, where possible, and delivered assignments by hand to others — all while quietly observing what was happening in the newly occupied villages. Nadiya Fedorivna also began volunteering.

“There were leftover food supplies at the school, so my friend and I packed them up and delivered them to families”, she recalls.

“In B** [a village 13 km from X — ed.], my friends had set up a humanitarian aid center at the church. They called to say no one from X could get through. So I went to the village secretary and got a list of people with special needs — pensioners, people with disabilities, and large families. And I delivered the aid according to that list”.

Later on, some of the very people she helped would go on to collaborate with Russian occupiers.

“Village Grandmothers Baked Pies for the Russians”

From the very first day of the full-scale invasion, the village of X was under occupation. With no mobile connection or internet access, residents were thrown into an information blackout. Still, the school principal held on to hope and continued going to work, while the male staff organized shifts to guard the building, where all the school’s property remained.

“I wasn’t planning to leave — I thought it would all be over in a month or two”, Nadiya Fedorivna admits. “You had to show them you weren’t afraid — you kept showing up. The school’s in the center of the village, so it was also a hub for information. You had to stay in the loop”.

Although the occupiers weren’t stationed in X, they often passed through the village. Some locals’ attitudes toward the Russians genuinely shocked Nadiya Fedorivna.

“In March, when a convoy of Russian vehicles came through the village and the soldiers pointed their rifles at our houses, some of our pensioners still said, ‘Thank you, boys, for coming!’ The village grandmothers baked pies for the Russians and brought them out — and the thing is, they weren’t even poisoned”.

The occupiers, in return, tried to “buy” loyalty with cash payments — 10,000 rubles in “aid” — targeting pensioners in the occupied Kherson region. At first, these handouts weren’t distributed in X, so elderly residents started traveling to the occupation administration in village B to ask for them: “How come everyone else is getting them, and we in X are left out?”

At the same time, other residents remained loyal to Ukraine. In some village shops, you could still pay with Ukrainian bank cards — one of those was where Nadiya Fedorivna shopped. Others brought in goods from nearby warehouses that still had Ukrainian stock. The Russians lined up for Ukrainian products — beer, ice cream, and more. 

“They came here to buy food from us and said, ‘Everything is so tasty here’”, the school principal recalls.

The occupation became a litmus test for people’s true nature. While some, like those pensioners, cozied up to the occupiers and waited for handouts, others risked their lives to help their own. One of those was a local farmer. During the food shortages, he continued delivering bread from the district center — 200 loaves for the whole village, the most the bakery would give him — and it enraged the Russians.

“One day they [the Russians — ed.] fired a burst from their rifles at his feet: ‘If you come back again, we’ll blow you up in your car,’” says Nadiya Fedorivna. “He came back soaking wet and said, ‘I’m done. I’m not going again.’  But the next day, he went anyway. ‘Who else is going to do it?’ he said. ‘Everyone else is too scared’”.

“A Respectable-Looking Man from Dagestan”

In the first months of occupation, there was chaos in the village of X. But by summer, the Russians had appointed a local “village elder” — as Nadiya Fedorivna describes him, “a guy in his early twenties, from village B.”

“That guy didn’t do much, but he came to my school to introduce himself: ‘I’m the authority now — let’s work together,’” she recalls.  “I asked him, ‘What do you want from me?’ He switched to Ukrainian and said, ‘Let’s reopen the school — everyone will have jobs.’

But our school was under regional jurisdiction. The students came from all over the Kherson region — some even from far away. 

So I told him, ‘Would you send your child to a daycare in the next village over?’ And he said, ‘Why would I?’ I said, ‘Well, what parent would bring their kid here from dozens of kilometers away? Who’s going to drive them? Feed them?’ He said, ‘What matters is your approval — everything else will fall into place.’ And I told him, ‘I’m not taking responsibility for that.’”

Soon after, the newly appointed military commandant began visiting X — “a respectable-looking man from Dagestan”, as Nadiya Fedorivna puts it. She met him for the first time in late July or early August. She vividly remembers that day.

 

“It was a Saturday. I was getting my nails done,” she says. “Someone told me: ‘They’re looking for you — they think you’re hiding here.’  I said, ‘I’m here. I’ve got six nails done.’ I finished the manicure, got on my bike, and rode to the school. There were armored vehicles parked outside and armed men standing there.  ‘We’ve been waiting 50 minutes for you.’  I said, ‘It’s my day off.’ And I made a point of speaking to them in Ukrainian.”

One of the occupiers — the commandant himself — entered the school with her. The two of them went into her office and sat across from each other at her desk.

“He introduced himself: ‘Mokhammed Izbrailovych, from Dagestan. Let’s talk.’
And I said, ‘Let’s talk”, she recalls.

“I had a Ukrainian flag in the corner of my office, standing on a flagpole. We were speaking right in front of it. He put a pistol on the table and opened a notebook. At the top were written my last name, my children, my home address, my views. I asked him, ‘What kind of dossier is this on me? Just ask me directly — I’ll tell you everything myself.’

The commandant said, ‘You’re a local authority figure. You need to compile lists, gather pensioners, and distribute the 10,000-ruble payments.’ And I told him, ‘That’s not my job.’ He went on: ‘People are suffering, and you are indifferent. Children need to be educated.’ I explained: ‘We can’t operate — no parent will send their kids here. The situation isn’t safe. I won’t take on that kind of responsibility’”.

Nadiya Fedorivna pauses, then continues.

“He said, ‘You’ll need to step down. Find someone to replace you.’ I replied, ‘Whoever I find will be just like me’. 

He asked, ‘Why are you so opposed?’ So I said, ‘Let’s imagine I go to Dagestan and say, “We’re opening a Ukrainian school here.”’ And he said, ‘Why would you do that?’ So I asked him, ‘Then why did you come here and say, “This will be a Russian school”?’ 

He said, ‘People here have been oppressed for years for speaking Russian.’ And I said, ‘Who told you that? We’ve got teachers at this school who speak Russian outside of class.’
He said, ‘You don’t celebrate May 9.’ And I told him, ‘On May 9, we’re always at the memorial to the fallen — we honor their memory’”.

Their meeting lasted about thirty minutes. Before leaving, the commandant said he hoped she would reconsider her position — and asked for her phone number.

“He said, ‘I don’t like your attitude, but I think you’ll eventually come around.’ I just shrugged. 

Then he asked, ‘Give me your number. Why don’t you have a Russian SIM card yet?’ I replied, ‘I don’t need one. Everyone I need to talk to — I reach by bicycle.’

He asked, ‘And you’re not planning to get a Russian passport either?’ I said, ‘No one’s brought it up. Why would I need one?’ He replied, ‘Well, you know it’s all going to happen.’ And I said, ‘If it does — we’ll deal with it. But it hasn’t happened yet, has it?’
Then he said, ‘I think next time we meet, it’ll be under calmer circumstances.’”

After that, the occupiers left. Nadiya Fedorivna went home and reflected on the conversation — reminding herself of one thing: in situations like these, “you can’t push too far.”

“And What’s Your Relationship With Bandera?”

The very next day, Nadiya Fedorivna faced a new ordeal. At 9 a.m. FSB officers came to her house for an inspection. One was “a short, red-headed man with a rifle, from the Caucasus”, the other was younger — brash and cocky.

“The younger one barked at me right away: ‘Open the door!’ And I said, ‘First of all, it’s you, not you, I’m old enough to be your mother,’” Nadiya Fedorivna recalls. “He goes, ‘No one ever taught me manners.’ I told him, ‘That’s a shame”.

 

The FSB stayed in her house for three hours and conducted a thorough search. They also decided to give the school principal a kind of “exam” — in Ukrainian history.

“They went through the whole house — my computer, my phone. Watched all the videos — my grandkids in preschool, New Year’s,” she says. 

“I asked them, ‘What are you hoping to find in there?’ And one of them said, ‘I know exactly what I want to find. What’s your relationship with Bandera?’ I said, ‘You’ve given that figure so much attention, I’m starting to get curious about him myself.’ ‘Don’t play games with me,’ he snapped. I kept quiet. Then suddenly he jumped up: ‘I found it!’ My hands went numb. I thought, ‘That’s it. I’m done’”.

What he had found on her laptop was an article from Ukraine’s Criminal Code — the one on collaborationism. She had saved it early in the war so she could show her fellow villagers that their actions have consequences.

“He says, ‘You’re using this to scare people!’” Nadiya Fedorivna continues.
“I told him, ‘I saved it for myself. I’m in a position of authority — that law applies to me first and foremost.’ He looked at the date and saw that I had downloaded it long ago”.

Eight days later, the FSB came back. This time, they were specifically searching for weapons and supposed saboteurs she might be hiding.

“They asked, ‘Do you have any weapons?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ The FSB officer told me, ‘Show me,’ and pointed a rifle at me. But all I had was my husband’s old air rifle. He said, ‘I’m not interested in that — any real weapons?’ 

Then he spotted a lawn mower in the yard.
‘Who works that thing?’ ‘I do,’ I said. ‘No way! And why don’t you have a husband?’ Such stupid questions. They tore the whole place apart — maybe they thought I was hiding someone.”

Another clash with the occupiers happened later that summer, when  Nadiya Fedorivna learned from the school janitor that her colleague’s son — also a staff member at the school — had been abducted. While searching for him, Nadiya Fedorivna had to travel to nearby settlements and knock on the doors of occupation offices.

By then, the occupiers had already set up a so-called “police force” in the district. In village A, one of the “officers” — likely from Donetsk — told her how “you bombed Donbas for eight years.” In the end, they advised her to check in settlement B, where the occupation “administration” was based.

“We got to settlement B, and the ‘police chief’ — a very tall man named Shchehlov — said, ‘I don’t have any such information [about the abduction], but I’ll look into it’”, she recalls.

Shchehlov was from Russia. They called him Zvir — “the Beast.” It was like there were two people inside him. He would speak calmly at first, and then suddenly switch:

‘Didn’t I tell you?! You’ll be…’  Then five minutes later, he’d flip again — back to being “a good guy”.

Mokhammed Izbrailovych was there too.
He said, ‘That’s the one from X — works at the school, won’t take a Russian passport’”.

Nadiya Fedorivna filed a report about her missing colleague. Fifteen days later, Shchehlov came to her house and promised to find him.

“Of course, no one was looking,” she says. “My friend had been taken to a torture chamber. Things were getting tense in Kherson already — they transferred the prisoners. He came home eventually.”

“Hello — The Target’s Been Spotted”

Although Russian forces didn’t station themselves in village X, a lot of military equipment passed through from the very first day of occupation. Nadiya Fedorivna and a group of like-minded locals began tracking it.

“You’d be standing in a store or near a house, counting with your eyes how many vehicles were going by”, the school director recalls. 

“If only I had known more about the types of equipment — I’d have known what to call it. So I’d start describing: ‘It was this kind, with a missile-looking thing on the side.’ They’d ask me, ‘Was that a Buk?’ And I’d go, ‘Oh God, I really need to learn what a Buk is…’So you just describe what you see. Eventually you start recognizing things — BTRs, BMPs with tracks. What’s a self-propelled gun? You learn that too — it’s the one with the long barrel on top. Little by little, we figured it out”.

Nadiya Fedorivna and her group also located Russian air defense positions outside the village. At first, the school principal took photographs, but later decided not to tempt fate and expose herself to unnecessary danger.

“It was easier to just make a call and say ‘Hello,’ or send an SMS — then delete it”, she says.

“I didn’t have a license or any experience, and one of the girls taught me how to drive. I only got my license once I made it to Kherson.” She laughs. “I’d drive without headlights, park in a spot where the car wouldn’t be seen, and wait for the train to pass. But I needed a cover story — something to explain why I was there at night. So my excuse was: ‘I don’t know how to drive — I stalled.’ Sometimes I wouldn’t go alone, just in case.”

Once, on the highway from Crimea, Nadiya and another concerned resident encountered a large convoy from the Chechen Akhmat unit. It had crossed over from occupied Crimea and stopped to rest. As they slowly drove by, they counted ninety-eight armored vehicles — and passed that information on “upstairs”.

“It was a massive convoy — really terrifying,” she recalls. “You report the sighting, the number of vehicles. But whether they keep moving in the same direction or split off — that you can’t control”.

In late July, something happened that Nadiya Fedorivna still remembers with a smile. A Russian train carrying ammunition was headed from Crimea toward a neighboring village, Y. The occupiers were using storage facilities there to offload shells. But at the end of the line — the train exploded.

“We’d been keeping tabs on that train for a while,” she says. “We were told it would arrive that day, but they didn’t say when. So we kept our eyes on it in shifts. We’d go to the neighboring village and ask, ‘So, what’s going on here? The trains keeping you up at night?’ Just casual talk — to fish for real info. And when the train arrived, I quickly said, ‘Hello, the target’s been spotted’”.

That was all it took. The Ukrainian Armed Forces struck the train with HIMARS. The explosion was massive — fire engulfed the area, including the ammunition depot.

“The blast was insane. It felt like everything behind our village was on fire — and it was nine kilometers away! Explosions kept going all night. You couldn’t even sleep — it was so intense,”  she laughs.  “In the morning everyone shows up… But how do you show what you’re feeling? It’s screaming inside you: ‘Say it — say how awesome this was!’
So we whisper: ‘Pretty cool, huh?’ — ‘Yeah.’”

By 8 a.m., Russian troops launched a raid through X — combing every street to find out who had targeted the train in Y.

“They were young guys, in balaclavas, armed. We stepped out onto the road so they wouldn’t go into the school — stood right by the gates,” Nadiya says. “They stopped to talk: ‘We swept through Y — it’s clean. But we were told someone here might’ve helped’”.

That’s when they launched into one of their favorite routines — asking loaded philosophical questions and promoting the “Russian world.”

“They ask, ‘How’s life here?’ I say, ‘It was better before armed men were roaming the streets”, she recalls.

 “One boy pulls off his mask — he’s just 18, a kid. He leans on his rifle and says: ‘You say you had a good life. But now you’ll have a better one!’  I ask, ‘Who told you I wanted better?’ He says, ‘Well, some people do,’ and points at the pensioners.

I told him, ‘Take that handful of people, put them in a nice car, drive them to Krasnodar, give them two-story houses — and if they tell me they’re happy there, I’ll be thrilled for them. But as for me — I’m fine.’”

Soon after, the Russians staged the capture of two so-called “terrorists,” accusing them of sabotage and forcing them to confess to something they hadn’t done.

“When they were out searching, I kept thinking, ‘God forbid,’” she sighs. “You do your best to look harmless — just a simple woman, half-blind in one eye, who doesn’t see anything, doesn’t go anywhere. If they’d found out — they would’ve shot me on the spot. And they’d make sure everyone saw it.”

Nadiya Fedorivna and her group weren’t the only ones resisting behind enemy lines — but each group worked on its own, unaware of the others. “Everyone was doing something. And everyone was hiding”.

Beyond her group’s efforts, Nadiya acted alone too: she used the school’s printer to make patriotic flyers. At night, she and others would put them up around the village and nearby areas. At first, they warned of punishment for collaboration. Later, the message changed: “Ours will return”.

“Locals who got up early would tear down the flyers,” she says. “And they’d report it to the district. So we started getting raids. That was scary — you never knew if they could trace anything from the printer”.

She even took part in stealing Russian ammunition. One day, the invaders parked their truck in a grove and went off to drink beer. Once they were tipsy, “we quickly grabbed the shells and hid them.”

“Get In — We're Going to Open the School”

Before the full-scale invasion, the village of X had both a boarding school, run by Nadiya Fedorivna, and a general education school. After the occupation began, some teachers from the latter decided to reopen it — and on September 1st, a new school year officially started under Russian control.

But as Nadiya Fedorivna recalls, very few children actually attended — and many of those had been brought in from other settlements. The same went for the staff — there were plenty of outsiders.

“Anyone who wanted to work at the school could,”  she says.  “It didn’t matter who you were or what kind of life you’d lived before — education didn’t matter. A guy finishes trade school as a car mechanic? ‘You know physics? Great, you're the physics teacher.’
Or, ‘You build furniture at home? Your woodworking’s pretty good? Perfect — you’ll teach shop class’”.

Meanwhile, the boarding school didn’t reopen that year. But a few of her former colleagues did agree to collaborate with the occupiers. Out of 54 teachers and staff, eight went to work at the reopened local school. Russian authorities paid teachers who agreed to cooperate 100,000 rubles each.

“There were people whose decisions really shocked me,” Nadiya admits. “One of the last teachers to go over to them still messages me: ‘I feel like a traitor.’ She says she does — but she still went. ‘I need money for medicine, I have nothing to live on.’ It’s only the second year the general school’s been open again, and she says: ‘It’s scary — the kids can’t read in Ukrainian anymore”.

Between September 23 and 27, the Russians staged an illegal “referendum” across the Kherson region on joining the Russian Federation. In X, it lasted three days. On the very first day, pensioners went straight to the polls. Nadiya remembers how, by 9 a.m., they were heading to the village council “dressed up like it was a holiday, with their hair done.”

But overall, turnout that first day was low — and the occupiers were desperate to show high numbers. So the next day, they began forcing people to vote — at gunpoint.

“Local drivers were ordered to provide cars,”  Nadiya recalls.  “Inside, there’d be armed soldiers, a ‘commission representative’ with a ballot box, and they'd go door-to-door — house after house — to the ones who hadn’t voted yet.

If on the third day you still weren’t home, they would come back the next day with soldiers and make sure you ‘took part’ in the referendum anyway. That’s how one of Nadiya’s colleagues got caught up in the sweep“. She told them, ‘I had a doctor’s appointment that day — I physically couldn’t be here.’ They asked for proof — even wanted documents from the clinic”.

After the “referendum,” Russian soldiers began settling in the village — just a few families at first. But on October 17, they moved into the boarding school. At 9 p.m., they showed up at Nadiya’s door — the village “head” had given them her address. That’s when she realized there’d be no avoiding them this time.

“They arrived in two vehicles,” she recalls. “And said, ‘Get in — we’re going to open the school’”.

She refused to get into their car and rode her bicycle instead.

“I had no choice — I took the keys and opened the school. They told me to go in first, to make sure there wasn’t an ambush. I showed them all the keys so they wouldn’t break any doors. They said, ‘We know it’s a school — we just need a place for political training sessions’‘.

 

The next morning, when I went to the store, I saw the school surrounded by ropes and marked with ‘MINES’ signs. Military vehicles were everywhere. Much of the school’s property had been taken — bunk beds, refrigerators, linens. Our Ukrainian symbols were still hanging in the hallways — we hadn’t taken anything down or hidden anything. Our flag was still there.”

They Brought in Russian Textbooks — and a Pile of Russian Fairy Tales Too

After Russian forces seized the school, they began stopping by Nadiya Fedorivna’s house daily with mundane complaints — “no water, no electricity, the boiler wouldn’t start”. They insisted she find someone to handle the utilities and building maintenance.

The school principal quickly realized these visits would never stop. Meanwhile, Russian soldiers were settling into the village with their families. The music school had been turned into a makeshift hospital for their wounded. And at home, things were becoming more dangerous — the FSB’s interest in her was only growing, and every move she made felt scrutinized.

At that time, a friend of Nadiya Fedorivna’s was planning to leave for Ukrainian-controlled territory with his family. On the evening of October 29, they agreed he would pick her and her daughter up the following morning.

The following day, once curfew was lifted, they set off in two vehicles. First, they stopped in Enerhodar (Zaporizhzhia region) to get the required travel permits. They waited there for two days, renting a place to stay. Once they secured the documents and cleared more than thirty checkpoints, they made it safely across to Ukrainian-controlled territory.

“We thought it would be temporary — we planned to be home by New Year’s”, Nadiya says with a faint smile.

She arrived in Kryvyi Rih on November 3, where she would end up staying for nine months — living on next to nothing and struggling to find a job.

Just a week later, on November 10, ten Russian soldiers moved into her home in village X. Nadiya believes it was payback for refusing to cooperate. According to a neighbor, no one lives there now — but the house is in ruins.

“I messaged my neighbor once, asked her what she could see,” Nadiya recalls. “She said, ‘The signal’s bad, I don’t think anyone’s there — but your whole place is wide open’.

All the doors had been broken down. The air conditioner smashed. The refrigerator taken. Rugs from inside the house had been laid out in the yard and driven over. They sawed the couches apart because no one wanted to share a bed. They tore down the fence so their vehicles could get in more easily. They even took my dogs somewhere.

They dragged my car out of the yard but couldn’t start it — I’d removed a part. They kept trying to tow it, and eventually hauled it off to village B on a rope, to a mechanic”.

 

Nadiya has been following what happened to her school through the news. In October 2024, Russian forces converted the building into a so-called “center for abandoned children.” The new head of the facility is the school’s former accountant.

“They threw my library out into the street,” Nadiya says. “They brought in Russian textbooks — and a pile of Russian fairy tales too.”

“No Matter How Hard It Gets — We’ll Be There”

On November 11, 2022, the Ukrainian Armed Forces entered Kherson. The news of the city’s liberation arrived on the same day as Nadiya Fedorivna’s eldest daughter’s birthday — and left them both stunned.

“My daughter said, ‘That’s the best birthday present I’ve ever had”, Nadiya recalls with a smile.

She visited the newly liberated regional capital for the first time in December 2022 and moved there permanently in July 2023.

“As we drove in, I felt like my whole body was shaking — what if they hadn’t cleared everything out? What if something was still lurking?” she says, her voice catching slightly. “After liberation, Kherson felt like someone recovering from surgery. People seemed dazed like they were moving under a dome. But once I moved here, I saw life slowly returning: people going to the market, buying things, chatting. But still — the city is suffering”.

Today, Nadiya Fedorivna lives in an apartment owned by close friends, covering only the utilities. She teaches remotely — a second-grade class. Her students are scattered: some live abroad in Poland, Germany, or Turkey. One boy is still in occupation.

“He goes to school there. Says they made him,” she explains. “This year he can’t join us online. They know kids are still learning from the Ukrainian side — and in occupied areas, doing online school is incredibly dangerous. God forbid anyone finds out.”

Before the full-scale war, village X had around 1,500 residents. Now, Nadiya says, roughly 300 remain — mostly pensioners or those who can’t leave their ill parents. Some stay simply to protect their homes: the occupying authorities continue to seize properties whose owners have fled, giving themselves free rein to reassign them.

Since autumn 2022, residents have been pressured to take Russian passports. Without them, even basic medical services are inaccessible.

“If you wanted a pension, you had to take a Russian passport,” Nadiya explains. “There was a retired woman in our village who resisted for a long time. She wouldn’t go to the doctor either. She said, ‘I won’t get sick.’ But they kept coming to her house: ‘Why won’t you take the passport?’ She told her daughter, ‘Why would I want their rag?’ In the end, she gave in — otherwise, they’d keep coming. And they do searches all the time. Always looking for something.”

The pressure continues to mount on the occupied left bank of the Kherson region. People still living there live in constant fear.

“They probably have a list of everyone with an active pro-Ukrainian position — maybe someone in the family is serving — and they’re monitoring them,” Nadiya says. “No one visits each other anymore. No one stops to chat in the street. That’s never happened before in our village.”

She’s deeply disappointed in some of her fellow villagers — especially those with no principles. “Whoever shows up tomorrow, they’ll cheer for them, as long as they get something out of it,” she says. She doesn’t know how she’ll ever live side-by-side with them after liberation. Some, she says, have even climbed the ladder under occupation — “from rags to riches” — while others have quietly gone along with it.

 

“There’s a guy in our village — used to be a nobody. Now he’s the local ‘policeman.’ They gave him a service pistol. He goes house to house, eavesdropping,” she says. “Someone sent me a video from their flag day. The school stitched together a 10-meter Russian flag, and the teachers were forced to carry it through the streets. You can tell they know they’re being filmed — they hide their faces under it. But they carried it.”

Still, Nadiya Fedorivna believes that far more people are silently waiting for Ukraine than backing Russia. And once liberation feels within reach, they won’t stay silent.

“When the FSB came to my house, I told them, ‘I’m so glad I don’t have family in Russia — because I’d hate them right now.’ There are definitely people over there who feel the same way I do. They hate the occupiers with every part of their being. They’re just not as loud as the ones who cheered when Russia arrived. But if the tide turns, these people will rise up — they’ve been holding it in for years. The most important thing is to not break mentally”.

The question of the left bank’s future weighs heavily on her. As she begins to answer, her confident voice falters.

“I really believe it’ll happen — I don’t want them to…” she pauses, unable to hold back tears, “I don’t want them to stay there.”

And yet, despite the ongoing shelling of Kherson and the constant uncertainty, Nadiya Fedorivna remains hopeful. She believes she’ll return to her village.

“I always said I’ll be the first one back — it’s just across the Dnipro! I even bought myself an inflatable mattress,” she says with a grin. “I’ve got a mission: I need to get there to help my friend plant her potatoes. I know this for sure — no matter how hard it gets, we’ll be there”.

*Name changed
** Name changed