The roads leading to Balakliia, a former frontline town in Kharkiv province recently recaptured by Ukraine, were littered with the detritus of war; carcasses of Russian tanks, crates of abandoned ammunition and destroyed vehicles were scattered along the sides.
Three of the bridges into the town had been blown up. One had been replaced with a pontoon bridge, but that too was out of action after a truck turned on its side while crossing. Several houses on the outskirts were destroyed, as well as factories and farms Russian and Ukrainian forceshad used as bases.
Locals said they heard explosions every day from late February onwards and spent most of the last seven months at home and in their basements. Around the beginning of last week, they said, they heard an increase in shelling and shortly after, the Russian forces just fled, some even on foot.
Those on Balakliia’s streets on Tuesday, just a small part of the 6,000 square km Volodomyr Zelenskiy says Ukraine has recaptured during its counteroffensive, were mostly older middle-aged or elderly, wheeling bicycles. They said younger people who had children had mainly left for Europe.
What the people of Balakliia experienced appears to have differed to the residents of towns in Kyiv region and other northern parts of Ukraine that came under Russian occupation at the beginning of the invasion, suffering well-documented atrocities in commuter towns such as Bucha.
Luba, a 63-year-old grandmother who had Russian tanks at the end of her garden on the edge of town said the Russian soldiers did not respect her and the people on her street, but they had not mistreated them. She said that the soldiers were mostly in their early 20s and not dedicated to the Kremlin’s cause.
“They didn’t bully us,” said Luba. “I asked them what are doing here, your state is making money and you’ve just brought us grief … and they would say: ‘Yes, yes, we agree.’”
Luba had two pieces of shrapnel still stuck in her ankle and lower back – the result of two shells landing while she was in her garden.
Residents told the Guardian that they had little interaction with the Russian forces, who mostlybased themselves on edges of the town. They recounted the terror of shelling, getting by without basic utilities and looting by Russian forces – but not scenes of torture and execution.
Almost no one appeared to have heard about the atrocities committed by Russian forces against civilians in other regions, or the events in Mariupol, where at least 20,000 people are estimated to have died, amid a near information vacuum – with patchy phone signal, no mobile internet or wifi and TV for most of the period.
Some said they had heard second-hand stories that the Russian-occupying authorities had detained volunteers delivering food, former soldiers, or police officers – or anyone they perceived as a political or military threat. One man, Roman, said his friend’s father hid in his house for the duration of the occupation.
Late on Tuesday, Serhiy Bolvinov, head of the Kharkiv region national police investigation department, said that Ukrainian law enforcement officials had discovered a “torture chamber” where dozens of people were held in the basement of the town’s police station. Writing on Facebook, Bolvinov said that at least 40 people were detained for weeks in the makeshift prison where they were also tortured. He said that several locals were shot dead by Russian troops at a checkpoint on the last day of the occupation.
One 69-year-old man, Ivan Borsch, a former policeman told the Guardian he was detained after the occupying forces stole money from his house while they were searching for people collaborating with Ukraine.
“During a search [of my house] they stole $45. I insisted they give the money back and they were annoyed. So, they put a bag over my head and threw me in a prison cell. It was the very same cell I used to throw people in when I was a policeman. I never imagined that one day I would be thrown in there,” said Borsch.
Balakliia sits at the western edge of the recaptured territory and is around 30 kilometres from the new frontlines. But it is clear Russia’s plans have been scuppered for now.
One resident, Liudmyla Voloshyna, said the Russians had told her she would need to soon re-register her property and would be given a Russian passport. “They said the Kharkiv People’s Republic is going to be here,” she added.
The issue of collaboration with the now-departed occupying authorities was however playing on the minds of some locals – a potentially difficult issue for Ukraine as it regains control over areas many had believed it had lost. Oleksandr Horvoy, a 62-year-old, who had continued working with the town’s heating company said he believed he had an important job to do but now feared he might be labelled a collaborator.
“People had to have heating, right? And I had to earn money for my family,” said Horvoy.
When asked how people felt about the occupying authorities and Ukrainian forces recapture of the town, Horvoy said: “Listen, no one at this point is going to tell you want they think … but I think everyone is glad that there’s no more shelling.”
Serhiy Smak, 44-year-old, said that there were many collaborators in the town. “Some remain but the majority have left and went to Russia,” said Smak. Many who remained in the town had supported the occupation, according to Luba.
“I’m a Ukrainian, I’m a patriot but I can’t say the same for everyone,” she said. “I would say the majority wanted this to happen.”
Oleksandr Richardovych, a local doctor who was injured on 8 September when two shells landed either side of him and was recovering in a hospital that was still waiting for the electricity supply to be reconnected, said that the situation with collaboration was not black and white as society “can only be grey”.
“Everyone dealt with it in their own way,” he said.
Additional reporting by Artem Mazulin
