"These Stories Are About Khersonians. All I Did Was Make the Call": How Theater Director Serhii Pavliuk Rallied Kherson for Pro-Ukrainian Protests
Serhii Pavliuk, originally from Kyiv region, moved to Kherson in 2007 after receiving a job offer from the head of the local Mykola Kulish Theater. Before the full-scale invasion, Serhii had directed 135 productions in Ukraine and abroad as the theater's chief director.
It was in Kherson that Serhii saw the sea for the first time. Here, he settled down with his wife, Tetiana, and their five children, bought a house, and began to feel deeply rooted in the community. But it was also in Kherson that he experienced the Russian occupation—and from the very beginning, he actively resisted it.
Serhii Pavliuk shared how he ended up being interrogated by the Russians during the first pro-Ukrainian rally, how he lived on the edge but managed to avoid being captured, how some local theater professionals sided with the enemy, and how he eventually managed to escape the occupation, taking the Ukrainian flag with him.
Long-Awaited Premiere: February 23, 2022
In February 2022, Serhii was deeply immersed in his work at the theater, with little time to pay attention to the world outside. He and his team were preparing for the premiere of the play Eternity and One Day. The production had been in the works since 2020 but was postponed twice due to the pandemic.
On February 23, after the much-anticipated premiere, Serhii returned to the house he had recently bought and begun renovating. He calls it his "place of strength": when his children planted trees there, he felt rooted and truly became a Khersonian. At the time, the Pavliuk family lived in an apartment provided by the theater a few years earlier. However, after premieres, Serhii preferred to retreat to the house for some solitude:
“I had this tradition. My wife made me holubtsi, and they were waiting for me in the house. But there was one odd moment: the taxi driver who drove me congratulated me on a holiday. I asked, ‘Were you at my premiere or heard about it?’ And he said, ‘I’m congratulating you on February 23, Defender of the Fatherland Day.’ It felt like some kind of omen.”
At six in the morning, Serhii’s wife called him, sobbing, to tell him that the full-scale war had begun. His house, located on Donetska Street on the outskirts of Kherson, was only seven kilometers from Chornobaivka, so he soon heard the first explosions. Still, he decided that the house would be the safest place, reasoning that Russian forces might enter the city from the Antonivskyi Bridge on the opposite side of Kherson. He quickly gathered his children and wife from their apartment and took them to the house:
“We immediately taped up the windows and set up blackout curtains. The house is small, with no basement. There’s just one room where we all slept together. For a while, I slept in the kitchen by the entrance—at first with a knife and later with a Makarov pistol borrowed from some gangster acquaintances. I knew it wouldn’t stop the Russians, but it could scare off looters.”
At the time, Serhii wasn’t thinking about leaving Kherson. Looking back now, the director regrets his decision and considers it reckless to have stayed in the city for nearly two months. But back then, he resolved to help and be as useful as he could.
On February 25, Serhii joined the municipal guard, a group of active Kherson residents who organized to maintain order in the city in the absence of the police. However, after just one night of patrol duty, he was asked not to return because of his distinctive appearance: he sported a long beard and equally long hair, which he hadn’t trimmed due to the pandemic and the prolonged preparation for the premiere. Dressed in a leather jacket and high boots, he stood out too much.
Instead, Serhii focused on humanitarian aid: buying food wherever it was still available, delivering medicine, and repeating his personal mantra, “Everything will be fine.” Starting on February 27, he began livestreaming updates on his Facebook page about what was happening in the city. This was his response to a comment made by a journalist from the 1+1 TV channel, who had said that Kherson, being predominantly Russian-speaking, would surrender quickly.
During his live streams, Serhii showed how Russian forces attempted to enter the city and highlighted that Ukrainian flags still remained in Kherson. On March 2, during one such stream, he came across the memorial stele for the Heavenly Hundred and noticed a Ukrainian flag lying in a nearby puddle. He quickly picked it up, climbed onto the stele to tie the flag back up, and then heard a whistle:
"I turned around, and across from the Officers' House, there was another large flag hanging. Beneath it, a Russian soldier’s face appeared. He rudely asked me to leave. I said, 'Can I take the flag?' There was a pause. I looked at him, and he looked at me: 'Take it and go.'"
That flag remains with Serhii to this day. He brings it to every one of his premieres. Back in March 2022, it became the backdrop for his evening live streams. It was one of these broadcasts that later helped rally Kherson residents for protests.
"They Called Me the Organizer of Protests"
Serhii Pavliuk had previous experience participating in protests. In 2004, he joined the Orange Revolution in Kyiv, and in 2014, he was part of the Revolution of Dignity in Kherson. Although he grew somewhat disillusioned with the second Maidan and wasn’t particularly eager to attend protests anymore, he felt he couldn’t skip the ones in Kherson. It was crucial to show that the city opposed the Russian occupation. Looking back, Serhii says his participation was more instinctive, and talking about it now feels stranger than it felt actually being involved.
Serhii attended his first protest on March 4, when Kherson had already lost its connection to the outside world.
“There’s this nagging feeling that something important is happening, and you’re not there,” he describes. “I don’t even remember where I got a pair of brown sneakers in my house. I put them on, thinking it would be faster to run to the city center, which is about a 45-minute distance. At 10:13 a.m., I left the house. I ran about 300 meters before realizing I was out of breath. Then my feet started to hurt. By 2:00 p.m., I barely crawled my way to Freedom Square.”
By the time Serhii arrived, the small protest was already wrapping up. According to his recollection, 15–20 people had gathered. The protesters agreed to meet again the next day at 10:00 a.m. Serhii recorded a video announcing this, found a young man whose phone still had some signal, and uploaded the video online. An hour and a half later, he found himself having a conversation with his wife:
“I got home, and my wife asked, ‘What have you done? My friend called me from Israel and said you’re rallying people to protests.’”
As it turned out, Serhii’s video had been broadcast on the Unified National Marathon. The response from Kherson residents was overwhelming—people sent messages, called him, and promised to attend the protest. Serhii began to feel uneasy, worried that the Russians might attack unarmed civilians. He immediately called some acquaintances from the municipal guard to help provide security at the next morning’s protest.
On March 5, 2022, people began gathering in Freedom Square. Looking back, Serhii can’t quite explain why, but he decided to approach the occupiers stationed in the regional administration building, known locally as the "White House," to explain the purpose of the protest:
"They took me to a captain, a man nearing 60, short in stature," the director recalls. "I said, 'Sir, we are about to hold a peaceful protest. I kindly ask you not to fall for provocations and not to open fire on the peaceful residents of Kherson. We have the right to protest.’ And then, just like that, they dragged me into the courtyard."
This marked the beginning of Serhii’s first interrogation. He was escorted inside the building by a different soldier, one wearing a black uniform. As a director used to noticing details, Serhii made a point of remembering everyone he interacted with. The Russians confiscated his phone and power bank before leading him into an interrogation room. Inside were two soldiers, one of whom identified as an intelligence officer.
"I behaved quite boldly and deliberately spoke Ukrainian," Serhii recalls. "And I remained very calm. This is my home, my territory—why should I be nervous?"
The room’s windows faced the square, where the crowd’s noise was steadily rising. To Serhii, it resembled the sound of the sea, which he had first seen in Kherson. The memory brought him a sense of calm.
Meanwhile, an FSB officer entered the room. The Russians took Serhii’s documents and accused him of working for Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU), threatening to "throw him in the basement." Serhii tried to explain that Ukraine is a democratic country and that its people have the right to protest. Outside, gunshots rang out, and the crowd grew increasingly angry. The Russians eventually released Serhii, ordering him to calm the people outside.
The municipal guard worked to hold back the protestors, while armed Russians surrounded the square. According to Serhii, provocateurs began to appear, urging people to charge at the Russians with claims that, while the occupiers might take out the first few rows of Kherson residents, they wouldn’t be able to handle the full force of the crowd. Some wore medical masks. One such provocateur was Oleksandr Tarasov, a media figure and activist who had previously been linked to the infamous collaborator Kyrylo Stremousov.
Serhii later realized that the protests actually served the occupiers’ interests. Until March 21, they refrained from dispersing the demonstrations, as it allowed them to easily identify Kherson activists and gradually eliminate them. Every day, another protest leader disappeared.
To prevent casualties, Serhii and the municipal guard decided to redirect the crowd from Freedom Square to the "Eternal Flame" monument. Serhii takes pride in suggesting this route, as it gave participants a sense of purpose and a clear destination, ensuring they wouldn’t leave feeling disappointed. From that point on, all demonstrations concluded with similar marches.
After the march ended, Serhii remembered that his documents and phone were still with the Russian soldiers. He approached one of them to ask for his belongings back, which led to a second interrogation. Once again, he was taken to the administration building.
The pattern repeated itself: Serhii was accused of collaborating with Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU). They warned him that nationalists would kill his family but offered to "protect" him by relocating him to Crimea. They also proposed collaboration. During this second interrogation, Serhii became certain that the protests were advantageous to the occupiers, who were actively monitoring them. Earlier that day, an elderly man had approached Serhii at the rally, asking him in Polish to take a photo. The Russians brought up this incident during the interrogation.
"They asked me who was at the protest. I said, 'Kherson residents.' — 'Are you sure they were from Kherson? What about people from Mykolaiv?' I responded, 'How would I tell a Kherson resident from someone from Mykolaiv?' They asked if there were any foreigners. I said, 'No, there weren’t any,'” Serhii recalls, adding that the commander’s next question stunned him: “‘What about the Pole?’"
The occupiers returned Serhii’s passport, told him they weren’t saying goodbye for good, and let him go. During these interrogations, Serhii realized that some of the Russians were FSB agents. While most people in the city believe that the occupiers’ special services didn’t arrive in Kherson until March 21—when the protests were forcibly dispersed—Serhii is convinced they were present from the very beginning of the occupation.
"During the interrogation, this big guy asked me if I worked 'using Stanislavski’s methods.' And as they were leading me out, I asked him, 'Where are you from?' He replied, 'I’m from everywhere. I’ve been fighting for 25 years.' That’s when it hit me—these weren’t conscripts or some clueless rookies. These were professional killers."
On the morning of March 8, some acquaintances showed Serhii a video of what appeared to be an interrogation of Oleksandr Tarasov. In the video, Tarasov named Serhii as the organizer of the peaceful rallies. After that, Serhii realized he needed to be more cautious in the city.
"You Sold Me Out, Didn’t You?" He Replied, "Well, It Just Happened."
By March 9, Serhii suspected that Russian security forces had started hunting him. That morning, he and a friend were picking up leftover groceries from a store near the director’s home. Suddenly, Russian military vehicles and a capture group began advancing down the street.
Serhii and his friend jumped into their car. On the way, he called his wife, instructing her to gather the children.
"It turned out that there used to be a kindergarten nearby, but I had no idea it was now housing SBU archives," Serhii explains. "The Russians were seizing SBU archives, and that’s the street where I lived. Yesterday, they announced me as the organizer of the rallies, so I thought, ‘They’re coming for me.’"
That day, Serhii was fortunate. However, on March 16, Russian forces broke into the apartment where he had previously lived with his family. Serhii wasn’t there, and he found out about the break-in through a Viber group where Kherson residents shared updates on the locations of Russian forces.
"In the morning, I woke up to a message in the group: ‘Zeds, Komkova Street, 92, entering the third entrance.’ I wrote, ‘Guys, I think they’re coming for me,’" Serhii recalls. "A few minutes later, my wife burst in, crying: ‘Serhii, they’re breaking down our door.’ They really had come for me. They broke down the door and interrogated the neighbors. The neighbors said that a woman with five children lives here, and they haven’t seen the man for a long time."
The Russians stole computers, all of Serhii’s plays, his documents, smashed the television, and ransacked the apartment. After this, Serhii no longer felt safe in the house. He understood that the occupiers might eventually find out about this residence as well. So, he gathered his wife and children and moved to a hotel that was operating as a center for displaced persons.
It turned out that his former theater colleague, Danylo Sanitar, had reminded the Russians about Serhii and his apartment. On March 18, the man paid Serhii a visit at the displaced persons’ center.
“He walked into my room, looking uneasy. For some reason, I blurted out, ‘Did you sell me out?’ He replied, ‘It just happened.’”
Sanitar also relayed that an FSB officer nicknamed "Tyson" wanted to meet with the director. Serhii recalls the situation as if it were a scene from a bad movie:
“We arrived at the SBU building, and there were gates leading to the garages. As we approached, they put some stinking hats over our heads and drove the cars into the garage. Why? Pure psychological pressure.”
The interrogation was similar to the previous ones: the occupiers accused Serhii of collaborating with the SBU and questioned his opinion of Bandera. This time, they also asked about Oleksandr Knyha, the director of the Kherson Regional Theater named after Mykola Kulish. Serhii approached the interrogation with a sense of curiosity:
“Will they break me or not? Why would they, if you’re telling the truth? I figured it out a long time ago—the best lie is the truth.”
Over the following week, Serhii was summoned to several more interrogations, each following the same pattern. The interrogators were particularly fixated on the theater, asking detailed questions about it. In April, Serhii managed to meet with Oleksandr Knyha, who was also being pressured by the occupiers to resume operations at the Kulish Theater. However, Knyha refused.
From Honored Artists to Collaborators
Through conversations with the occupiers, Serhii realized that they viewed culture as a tool for propaganda. After seizing the city, one of their first objectives was to reopen the theater:
“They kept asking why we weren’t reopening the theater,” Serhii recalls. “They said, ‘When the Germans were bombing Leningrad, the theater was still open.’ For them, it was a way to showcase normalcy—a signal that everything in the city was under control.”
At the time, the Kherson Theater building was being used as a shelter. Serhii only went there to deliver food and medicine. His colleague, video department head Maksym Prudkun, and Prudkun’s wife lived there for several weeks.
The Kulish Theater building was designed similarly to the Mariupol Drama Theater. Like in Mariupol, Kherson families used the bomb shelter as a place to live, with about 40 people residing there in total. They established a communal system: some cooked in the kitchen while others went out for supplies. This arrangement lasted until late March, when Russian forces entered the theater.
"That afternoon, we went to fetch water to bring down to the bomb shelter," recalls Maksym Prudkun. "Only women and children remained in the theater. Just a few blocks away, Russian APCs and military vehicles appeared. We ran back, but it was too late—they had already surrounded the theater. Russians were standing at the gates. I approached them: 'Can I go inside? There are only children and women in there.' They said, 'No, wait here.'"
The Russians searched the theater and those inside. Maksym is certain that among them were FSB operatives, distinguishable by their black uniforms. He worried the empty wine bottles in the building might raise suspicion.
“For a play, we had wine bottles stored in boxes all over the theater. We’d been collecting them for weeks,” Maksym explains. “Later, I realized—if the Russians had seen those bottles and thought they were for Molotov cocktails, things could have gone very badly.”
Fortunately, no serious issues arose, but the Russians evicted everyone from the bomb shelter.
According to Serhii, 16 out of more than 200 theater employees ended up collaborating with the occupiers. Among them was Ruzhena Rubliova, a People's Artist of Ukraine. Serhii notes that while she held pro-Russian views, she didn’t hesitate to teach others Ukrainian folk songs. He now regrets entrusting her with numerous archives of folk music.
Together with Ruzhena Rublyova, the occupiers were joined by Honored Artist of Ukraine Yevhen Hamayun, actor Viktor Ovsiienko, ballet dancers Iryna and Vladyslav Burenko, and a few technical staff members of the theater. The most astounding career leap after siding with the enemy happened to the theater’s retired facilities manager, Valerii Sheludko.
“He was an Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine. He served as a facilities manager, then retired, and Kniga [the theater director] asked him to become a security guard. And under the Russians, he became the theater’s director.”
On June 1, the Kulish Theater began operating under the Russian flag. Serhii recalls that they staged a performance for children outside the theater building while armed Russians stood guard around it.
Afterward, the troupe toured occupied territories and prepared premieres, but none were ultimately staged. Following the liberation, everyone who had collaborated with the occupiers fled with them to the left bank of Kherson Oblast. Maksym Prudkun recalls that the theater was abandoned hastily, just days before the de-occupation, and carelessly so:
“They left behind documents in their offices—records of payments, positions held by individuals. They even pre-printed birthday cards in Russian for staff.”
"It Felt Like Escaping from Mordor"
On April 3, Serhii managed to meet with the theater director, Oleksandr Kniga. Kniga told him he planned to leave Kherson because the Russians had been threatening him. That same day, as Serhii was walking through the city center, his former colleague, Danylo Sanitar, called him.
Sanitar had been one of the first to join Kherson’s municipal guard. On Theater Day, he sang the Ukrainian national anthem with Serhii and attended pro-Ukrainian rallies. However, he quickly switched sides, cooperating with the Russians, traveling to Crimea, and attempting to conduct business with them. Two FSB officers, known by the call signs “Spartak” and “Tyson,” oversaw his activities. Over the phone, Sanitar advised Serhii to leave his current location.
"I turned around and started walking while messaging Sanitar. He sent me a screenshot of a message from Spartak, who was already his handler: ‘What is Pavliuk doing in the square? We told him not to be in the city.’ That’s when you realize—they haven’t forgotten about you."
As Serhii headed back to the hotel, a thin man with scars approached him. The stranger said he knew who Serhii was and wanted to help liberate Kherson. He also claimed that when the Ukrainian Armed Forces arrived, they would free the city.
“Can you imagine such an absurdly chaotic energy?” Serhii laughs.
Serhii and his family stayed at the displaced persons center set up in a hotel until mid-April. He continued livestreaming updates about the situation in Kherson and was surprised that the occupiers hadn’t arrested him yet. But after another conversation with Sanitar, who mentioned that the FSB had brought up Serhii’s name again, he realized he was still on their radar. Nevertheless, he decided that only his wife and children would leave Kherson. The family planned their departure for April 18.
"I was at my country house, suffering, crying, thinking about how I’d manage without my children because I was convinced I needed to stay in Kherson," Serhii recalls.
Serhii was tricked into leaving by the writer brothers, the Kapranovs. His friends reminded him of his 2021 production of Tigrolovy (The Hunters and the Hunted) by Ivan Bahrianyi and told him that director Strutynskyi was waiting for him in Kyiv to work on a new play.
"They said, ‘Do you realize that you could create something truly groundbreaking during the war?’ That won me over, and by Saturday evening, I had made up my mind to leave."
When Serhii talks about his departure, he alternates between calling himself a complete fool and an incredibly lucky man. He had heard countless stories from acquaintances who tried to leave Kherson five or seven times, only to face grueling searches at checkpoints manned by Kadyrovites or to come under fire. But somehow, he and his family managed to cross into Ukrainian-controlled territory on their very first attempt.
They set off early on Monday at 5 a.m. Serhii recalls that it was pouring rain that morning. Without stopping much, they passed through more than seven checkpoints.
"Through the mud, off-road, across fields, we followed everyone else so we wouldn’t get lost. One checkpoint, then another, a third, a fourth. Somehow, they just let us through. Near Snihurivka [54 km from Kherson], there was the second-to-last checkpoint, and it was the scariest one. There weren’t any chmoni there, just three soldiers with a list and a German Shepherd. That’s when I felt everything go cold," Serhii recounts with a shiver.
At that tense moment, Serhii made a pact with his wife: if the soldiers took him out of the car, she was to drive on with their children. But, just like in a movie, a stroke of luck saved him. A man in the car ahead created an unexpected distraction.
“The driver was shaking as he opened his door, and bread rolls tumbled out into the mud,” Serhii recounts. “The dog started barking and lunging for the rolls. The driver scrambled to pick them up while the soldiers told him, ‘Alright, go.’ They pulled the dog away and walked off. Meanwhile, we just drove through without even being stopped.”
Next came Snihurivka and the final checkpoint. The Pavliuk family’s car was searched, their documents checked, and then they were waved through. Somehow, Serhii had managed to carry the same Ukrainian flag he had found in Kherson back in early March through all the Russian checkpoints. All that remained was to cross the buffer zone between Snihurivka and Bashtanka.
“It was truly terrifying—complete silence in the car as we drove through the fog, past wrecked vehicles and fallen trees. Then, finally, you reach Bashtanka, see the Ukrainian flag, and can finally breathe,” Serhii recalls. He compares the scene to a moment out of The Lord of the Rings: “It felt like we were escaping Mordor. Torrential rain poured the whole way, drizzling in Snihurivka with fog, but no rain at all in Bashtanka. And when we entered Mykolaiv, the sun came out. It was as if we had left some dark, cursed place behind.”
Once on Ukrainian-controlled territory, Serhii raised funds for the center for displaced persons where he lived for about a month. He later returned to work; in September 2022, the Kherson Theater reopened in Kyiv. At one of the premieres, Serhii attended as a spectator. The performance, To Stay (Not) Allowed, was about the experience of living under and escaping from occupation. It allowed Serhii to truly grasp what his family had gone through for the first time.
"During that performance, I experienced a powerful catharsis. It made me realize that I had done everything right. Perhaps I’d do it again. But at the time, I wasn’t thinking about that—I wasn’t putting my family first."
While living under occupation, the Pavliuk family avoided discussing the war or their emotions. Only later did Serhii come to understand how traumatic the experience had been for each of them.
His eldest daughter cannot work in fields related to the war, as memories overwhelm her with tears. Another daughter still sees a psychotherapist and psychiatrist. A third daughter avoids long car trips, as they remind her of their escape from occupation. Meanwhile, his son developed stress-induced eczema on his scalp that lasted for two years.
"I’m Proud to Be a Khersonian"
On the evening of November 11, 2022, Serhii was returning from a production in Kropyvnytskyi, with a bottle of whiskey on him for reasons he can’t quite explain. Along the way, he read the news of Kherson’s liberation.
"I started crying, drank some whiskey, and realized I wasn’t celebrating," he recalls. "During the occupation, my friends and I had talked about how our forces would eventually liberate Kherson. But we knew they would only be able to push the Russians to the left bank. From there, Kherson is an open target—they’ll turn it into another Mariupol."
Serhii returned to Kherson on November 17, 2022. At the theater, they set up a Saint Nicholas room, and Serhii himself played the role. They were able to distribute gifts and hold performances for around 15,000 children who had remained in the city. Later, he resumed his humanitarian work: delivering food around Kherson and helping those whose homes had been damaged by shelling.
Currently, Serhii doesn’t live in Kherson full-time. Instead, he travels to cities where he is invited to work. The biggest change, he notes, is the escalating number of daily attacks on Kherson.
Serhii admires the courage of Kherson residents, who stood up to resist in the early days of the Russian occupation. The protests are what he remembers most vividly from that time.
"We were scared for 10 days, then we got fed up. Why should we be afraid? So, we stepped out just as we were. These stories aren’t about me; they’re about Khersonians. All I did was make the call."
Serhii is grateful that so many responded to that call.
"The most important thing is that Kherson proved how amazing it is. I never really loved Kherson—I’m just a guy from a village, and I hate cities and crowds. But for the first time, this was something! I said to myself, ‘I’m proud to be a Khersonian!’"
