Russian occupation policy has not been changing for centuries. All those captured by the Russians are immediately deprived of their native language and culture. Education of the occupied is the greatest crime in the eyes of the occupiers. Therefore, in Moscow-controlled territories, Ukrainian books are burned and Ukrainian teachers are tortured. This important detail proves the genocidal nature of this war and, unfortunately, has not received an appropriate response from the international community yet.
I believe in our victory. We’ll restore everything, but sadly, we won’t return everyone.
What makes people happy in their usual world is, among other things, when they are needed and useful to their community. But what happens to them when they suddenly lose everything: their native land, home, job, and often their family and social circle? And in addition to all those trials, they have to suffer in Russian torture chambers?
We met the protagonist of this article, Kateryna (her name has been deliberately changed because the woman is worried about the safety of her family and friends who are still in the temporarily occupied territory of the Zaporizhzhia region), shortly after she fled the occupation and barely recovered from the horror and suffering she had experienced. We talked about the meaning of life, the ability to resist and the burning desire to work for victory.
The occupiers started a criminal case against her – “for sabotage and destabilization”
The school principal’s authority in the village is unrivalled, especially in a school that was famous throughout the Yakymivska community, the Melitopol district, the Zaporizhzhia region, for its innovations and high graduation rates. So Kateryna, the principal, was known and respected by everyone. She taught several generations of villagers.
Before the full-scale invasion, the school, which was attended by 112 children of grades 1-11, developed and prepared to implement a project on introducing preschool training – they planned to open 2 kindergarten groups to ensure educational continuity – “all within the walls of one school, with a single soul.” There was a demand, and the number of children in the community was growing.
The teachers’ innovative approach did not go unnoticed. With a UNDP grant, they set up a school mobile digital center and distributed laptops to three villages. This made it much easier to organize an online educational process when quarantine was introduced due to COVID. And then, when they managed to increase the number of computers, schoolchildren began to teach computer literacy to their grandparents. The school opened a chic media library, a comfortable space for reading and chatting. The library collection was replenished with 700 new Ukrainian-language books. They took care of their arboretum, which is 50 years old, and were going to renovate it. They dreamed of their own orchard.
It was the first inclusive school in the district. Schoolchildren in wheelchairs felt at ease among their peers. The school was also known for its canteen. First of all, its design was developed by schoolchildren themselves. And they themselves took part in a grant project. Having received UAH 1,800,000 through co-financing, they bought the most modern equipment for the kitchen and dining room. The school arranged the most advanced distribution system, provided a buffet-style selection of dishes, installed a bar counter with high chairs.
Another evidence of the prestige of the school and its principal is that in 2020, within the AdCamp project (more than 200 teachers from all over Ukraine participated), the school won the Global Teacher Prize.
On the first day of Russia’s full-scale invasion, Kateryna was still on a business trip, attending a teacher workshop “On the Skills of the Future” in Sloviansk. She received a phone call asking what to do: the children were at school, but explosions were already heard, and helicopters with the letter ‘z’ on board were flying around. Enemy tanks and invading troops entered the village instantly.
Kateryna’s journey home was long and hard. She realized that she was returning to the occupation, but she had no choice. The school was still open until the end of the school year. The experience of working during quarantine came in handy. Later, the teachers secretly printed checklists, distributed them around the villages and gave them to children. When the school year ended, the school was still helpful. When there was no bread, the principal remembered how her granny had taught her to make a sourdough starter from hops, and they began to bake bread in the school canteen and share it with the villagers.
Then ‘some people’ started asking questions: why do you distribute humanitarian aid from Ukraine, not from Russia, since the Russian Federation is ruling here?
And they were not even Russians, but ‘our’ people, with whom we had worked together for decades. They convinced me, they said, you are a teacher, what difference does it make to you – Ukrainian or Russian, go and teach our children in Russian.
“Then I gathered my teachers and said I couldn’t force anyone, everyone should make their own choice, but I would not cooperate with the enemy,” Kateryna recalls. “In the fall, when the school year was supposed to begin, it started – interrogations for 5-7 hours, searches, pressure: 6-7 soldiers with machine guns burst in, snooping around, threatening with weapons. They tried to wear me down. They even started a court case against me for organizing the educational process according to Ukrainian curricula – for sabotage and destabilization.
They took her from her home at 6 a.m. and kept her in the basement for 24 hours. She didn’t know what to expect. She can’t talk about what happened there – she’s choking back tears. Although a lot of time has passed, who could ever forget this?! Finally, they said they would deport her from the “territory of the Russian Federation” for subversive activities. They practically threw her out in an open field – get out as you wish.
She found temporary shelter with her daughter, in a dormitory in one of the regional centers, far from the frontline. AdCamp helped a lot. It got her involved in the Israeli-Ukrainian project Hibuki Therapy at the Center for Mental Health Recovery.
“The Russians destroyed our books, stole our equipment, but I’m working for our victory and waiting for our return. That’s what I live for,” Kateryna insists. “We’ll restore everything, but sadly, we won’t return everyone”…
They have to recover psycho-emotional integrity
“When citizens who were held captive during the occupation and suffered physical and psychological torture get to the Ukrainian government-controlled area, they need proper comprehensive assistance,” explains Ksenia Kornienko, specialist at the Regional Human Rights Center (Kyiv). “They have to recover their psycho-emotional integrity, improve their health, get adequate financial support, etc. At present, such citizens are mainly cared for by civil society institutions –NGOs, charitable foundations, volunteers.
In Zaporizhzhia, these tasks are performed quite effectively by the Posmishka.UA charitable foundation. The foundation says it has been working since 2013 for people who are in difficult life circumstances and unites those who want to help them. A separate area is helping victims of gender-based violence.
The center provides comprehensive assistance: psychological, social, legal. Among the beneficiaries are people who left the temporarily occupied territories, were in civilian captivity, including men, women and children. Victims who come here have physical signs of torture, psychological signs (aggression, anxiety), social (social disruption), economic (lost property and savings) and need long-term recovery.“If we talk about the needs people come with, of course, these are (if we talk about IDPs – internally displaced persons), first of all, basic needs – financial assistance. But in almost every case we consider, we see a referral to psychological assistance,” says Anastasia Perepelytsia, coordinator of the case manager department in the Eastern region of the CF Posmishka UA. “Our foundation has been providing psychosocial support for many years. We have enough psychologists who work professionally with both children and adults.
Expert advice
Kateryna Rakytianska, crisis psychologist at the Zaporizhzhia Survivor Relief Center, gave some tips on communicating with people who have been in captivity.
- Do not ask about traumatic experiences just out of curiosity. A person may avoid anything that resembles captivity, or be in denial – “it wasn’t with me.” A person shields themselves from memories and cannot cope with them, denying them, and then they can suddenly reappear. It will be difficult to deal with such an array of feelings and memories. Therefore, if a person starts talking about what happened there, you should listen and not ask clarifying questions. Let them say only what they think necessary.
- Do not touch a person’s body, personal belongings, or hug them without permission, since personal boundaries – physical and psychological – were violated in captivity, and a sudden touch can lead to retraumatization and flashbacks.
- Do not suddenly change plans without warning. In interaction, you should establish clear, transparent relations with clearly marked boundaries. It gives a sense of security and certainty that a person can control something in their life (for example, they know that they have to see a psychologist on the same day and time, once a week). All this is because some people can develop a “prisoner’s dilemma” – it can be hard to take responsibility – they are used to being punished for any choice they make. The freed, on the one hand, are intolerant of not being given a choice. On the other hand, it is hard for them to make decisions and choices. This leads to inactivity, indifference, apathy, lack of initiative.
- Don’t just see a person as a victim. Some human qualities helped them survive captivity. These qualities should be recognized as resources that can help them.
- Do not heroize. The role of a hero can be too heavy a burden to carry on daily.
- You have to stick to the time frame, because prolonged deprivation leads to losing the sense of time.
Author: Natalia Zvoryhina.
Supported by the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine. The views of the authors do not necessarily reflect the official position of the U.S. Government.