Still here

“Is that you?” the soldier asks.

“It is,” she replies.

Her bed stands in a row of identical beds in a large hall, women of different ages perched on them idly. A wall calendar marks the date — 28 August — and beams of sunlight dance on the floor. A table stands laden with melons and watermelons. This is the Sudzha boarding school, which has become a shelter for all those who have lost their homes.

“Who could be looking for you?” the soldier continues.

“Could be Mum,” she replies flatly.

“What would you tell her?”

“That I’m fine,” she shrugs. “Mum left immediately, I think. And my grandma and I thought that maybe it’s not so bad and will be over in a day. And now we are waiting for a green corridor…”

Ulyana’s grandmother covers her face with her palms. Their house burned down on 20 August, when the Ukrainian military had already been in Sudzha for a fortnight. It was hit by a Russian aerial bomb.

“The horror that began on 24 February 2022 was started by our government, the Russian government,” Ulyana says on camera.

The video was posted on 30 August 2024 on the YouTube channel TRO Media, which is managed by the communications division of the Ukrainian Territorial Defence Force. It became the first episode in Abandoned by Putin, a series which, to date, has 40 episodes, and more are in the works.

All the videos were filmed in the Ukrainian-occupied area of Russia’s Kursk region, where the Ukrainian military police are currently responsible for maintaining public order and providing the civilian population with water, food, and medicine.

A humanitarian project

“There are no prospects. The Russian side ignores appeals from families of local residents,” says Oleksiy Dmytrashkovsky, a representative of the Ukrainian military police in the Kursk region.

People in Sudzha have had their mobile devices confiscated, Dmytrashkovsky says, citing security considerations. “Cell phones can be used to report coordinates, share location data, and alert the enemy to the whereabouts and number of Ukrainian weapons,” he says, adding, however, that some residents of Sudzha have nevertheless managed to hang on to their phones discreetly.

“We know that they have them hidden, and the probability that these phones are not being used is small. Cell phones are likely the reason why residential buildings are now being hit — they can be geolocated.”

Dmytrashkovsky says that the Russian authorities continue to ignore appeals from the families of those in the Kursk region who suddenly found themselves living under Ukrainian control. “The Defence Ministry gives them all the same boilerplate response: your relatives chose to remain on occupied territory, so it is now up to them to figure out how to flee,” he explains.

The interview project was an initiative of the TRO Media channel, Dmytrashkovsky says, adding that it’s not actually the job of the military police to find people whose relatives are worried about them.

Dmytrashkovsky says the project was launched “for humanitarian reasons”. People themselves provided biographical details and addresses to receive a “video greeting” and make sure their loved ones were alive because others had already been told that their relatives had been shot by the Ukrainian forces. Dmytrashkovsky says that he has personally spoken to at least three people who were alleged to have been “executed by killing squads”.

‘There was no evacuation’

Margarita* recognised her parents, who found themselves stranded in Sudzha, in one of TRO Media’s videos.

Her parents had called her on the morning of 6 August — the day the surprise Ukrainian incursion into the Kursk region began — to find out why there was no electricity or water and why there was such a commotion in town. Margarita saw the reports of Sudzha’s partial destruction and immediately called her parents back, urging them to leave.

“Mum said that the authorities kept silent but insisted they wouldn’t be left there. She said they would leave town if something serious happened and if the authorities informed them of it,” Margarita recalls.

Despite her attempts to coax them into leaving during short, barely audible phone calls, Margarita’s parents insisted on staying. That evening, the phone connection was finally lost.

“A week later, I learnt that a neighbour of ours had left town on foot, came across the Russian military, and they helped her,” Margarita recalls. “She told me there had been no evacuation. Nobody came, nobody asked if people were going to leave.”

Margarita contacted the Red Cross, the search-and-rescue organisation Liza Alert, and even wrote a letter to the Kremlin. The latter was forwarded to the Kursk regional administration and then directly to officials in Sudzha, but Margarita still got no response. She filed a missing persons report with the police, but rather than beginning a search, the police asked her whether her parents could have left town.

To date, the video filmed by the Ukrainian military police in Sudzha has been the only news Margarita has had about her parents. After seeing it, along with a group of other people who were also searching for their relatives in Sudzha, she drafted a petition to the authorities asking them to open a safe corridor for civilians to flee the occupied areas of the Kursk region.

“It’s very hard to explain. There was the joy that they’re alive. And then the fear, the desire to get them out of there. It’s unclear how to do that. And the biggest fear is that no one is likely to help us. The authorities don’t want to help, and they keep ignoring us. And we don’t know how else to get through,” she said.

Margarita finds it rather perplexing that in the three recent swaps that included POWs from Sudzha, there were no civilians.

Interviews and exhibitions

Dmytrashkovsky and his team use open source intelligence to search for missing persons, monitoring social networks and Russian media outlets, approaching passers-by to ask if anyone could be looking for them, and offering to record a video to let family members know how they were doing.

When the rumour spread that one could send news to loved ones in this way, queues began forming in the Sudzha boarding school dormitory. The missing persons lists published by Novaya Gazeta were of great help to the project — these were printed out and pasted on the walls inside the shelter. The information was collected by a local priest, as taking a census in the temporarily occupied area was, of course, out of the question.

Dmytrashkovsky notes that while the film crew travelled to interview the people on the list, they also asked others how they felt about the war and whether they’d voted in the Russian presidential elections. “We were very surprised that out of 500 or so respondents, only one person had taken part in the elections, voting for Putin. All the others claimed that they didn’t vote and that everything had been decided for them,” he says.

When asked whether such answers might have anything to do with the fact that they were posed by the Ukrainian military currently controlling the area, Dmytrashkovsky replied that TRO Media “conducted a whole study” on how the media space impacts perception. “That’s why we needed 500 respondents.”

Dmytrashkovsky said he doesn’t carry a weapon when carrying out interviews, though he claimed his colleagues find this a little unusual due to the high risk of getting shot, seeing as he is a Ukrainian colonel and at least two settlements in the area have been rumoured to have been hiding Russian soldiers since August.

Though the Ukrainian military has carried out mop-up operations, complete safety is out of the question, Dmytrashkovsky said, adding that locals are allowed to keep their gates and doors closed — unlike during the Russian occupation of Irpin and Bucha. “In their own yards, people may do as they see fit, and nobody persecutes them,” he says.

Dmytrashkovsky is aware that the videos may be interpreted as confessions made under duress. “Yes, I know that’s how they talk about it in Russia! As if all the comments were recorded at gunpoint.”

TRO Media brought a photo exhibition documenting Russia’s invasion from the very beginning to the present day to the Kursk region. Most of the exhibits were placed in the boarding school lobby, while the rest were taped to the pedestal of a statue of Lenin in the town square.

The statue was hit by a drone, but the pedestal remained intact. Pictures of devastated towns and villages, dead civilians, and rushed evacuations under artillery fire are on display to allow locals to compare the Russian military’s actions in Ukraine with how the Ukrainian troops behave here. Dmytrashkovsky stresses that the only two buildings in Sudzha to have been damaged when Ukrainian forces entered the city had both been used by Russian troops putting up resistance. Residential buildings were not damaged.

TRO Media also organised screenings of the documentary “On the Other Side of the World” about the crimes committed by Russians in Bucha, Borodyanka and Hostomel. Dmytrashkovsky claims locals were “afraid to watch” the film, thinking of it as Ukrainian propaganda.

‘We have to save her somehow’

The Ukrainian offensive in Sudzha came as a big surprise to Alyona*. She had deemed such an eventuality impossible: “My brain refused to believe it. I still can’t. It seems like this is just a terrible dream which will soon end, but alas…”

In the first days of the offensive she was able to call her family. Her mother-in-law stayed in one of the villages in the Sudzha district, where cell coverage was intermittent. “The connection was terrible, it was hard to make anything out. But at least she could get through, and we could hear fragments of her words. At least we understood that they were alive,” Alyona recalls.

Like Margarita, she contacted various officials and organisations in an attempt to get her family members rescued, including to everybody who had reported on successful evacuations of Sudzha residents.

Alyona also saw her mother-in-law in one of the videos published by TRO Media and was very happy to receive some news from Sudzha.

“My emotions were very mixed. I wanted to jump for joy simply because I’d at least seen that she was alive. But at the same time I realised that she wasn’t doing well there and had to be saved. But I don’t know what to do,” she recounts.

Like so many others, Alyona is now placing all her hopes onto the creation of a humanitarian corridor for which no approximate dates have so far been given, as both sides accuse each other of sabotaging the plan.

“There’s been no action, not even any promises, as silly as it may sound. Absolutely nothing. Just some empty replies and excuses, and that’s it.”

So far it is unclear to Alyona how her relatives can get out of Sudzha — only those who dared to go on foot have been able to do so. According to her, one of her relatives “swam across the river and walked across forests and fields. Only grandma is left there now. Of course, we are very worried about her, we love her very much, and we miss her. And we very much hope that everything will be resolved in a good way for us. So we’ll have faith in that.”

‘Our own army is bombing us’

“Sudzha is currently rather similar to Bucha and Irpin when Russian troops entered them,” says Dmytrashkovsky, adding that 250 buildings, including infrastructure facilities, have been damaged “by guided bombs, drones, and artillery shelling.”

“We have information from locals with relatives in Russia that they’re planning to hit the boarding school, which houses all those who have lost their homes, the old and the infirm. We have started installing wood-burning stoves. Now we are urgently looking for empty, more or less intact houses to insulate and relocate,” he explains. “The locals understand perfectly well who is shooting.”

“We know that Ukraine has no air force and therefore cannot drop bombs on us. Our own army is bombing us, and we don’t know why,” Dmytrashkovsky quotes Sudzha residents as saying.

Many residents are afraid to make contact with the Ukrainian administration. Dmytrashkovsky recalls how some of the locals, having taken food supplies, would refuse to say anything, fearing punishment, especially if there were neighbours standing nearby.

“When a humanitarian corridor is created, could the Russian authorities see the locals that appeared in your videos as traitors?“ I ask.

“If the Russian leadership has no brains at all…” he replies. “They abandoned their own people, and now they want to punish them for associating with us, taking food and medicine from us? I wouldn’t want to imagine that.”

Dmytrashkovsky avoids providing exact figures on how many civilians in the Kursk region are currently living in areas controlled by the Ukrainian military police, only giving the names of the occupied settlements themselves. He says this is a security measure — so as not to prompt the Russian military to take any actions.

‘Live long, be happy’

This very short yet heart-wrenching video was recorded two weeks ago.

Nobody seems to be looking for 92-year-old Valentina Glushkova. She tells the void of the camera: “I’m still alive!”, then continues reassuringly: “They treat us very well here, feed us, share their rations…”

Glushkova’s face lights up with a smile when she addresses “her son Sashenka, daughter-in-law Laimochka and granddaughter Alisa in Riga”. She does not allow herself to cry so as not to upset her loved ones. She barely mentions how she’s doing, instead saying: “If we don’t see each other… My darlings! Live long, be happy, and remember your loving grandmother and mother…” The words sound like her epitaph.

With every day, the Russian shelling of the Sudzha district intensifies. The village of Sverdlikovo has been reduced to rubble. Some 23 bombs were dropped on the hamlet of Lebedevka between 26 October and 28 October. As expected, the Russian army is crushing its own civilians the way it has got used to doing in Ukraine. Last Monday, Dmytrashkovsky and his colleagues evacuated 15 more people, including five children, to the boarding school shelter, away from the shelling.

So far they are still alive.

* names have been changed