article by Olexsander Neberykut,  an analyst of the Civil Network "OPORA"

and Oleksandr Klіuzhev, an analyst of the Civil Network "OPORA", coordinator of the Ukrainian Nationwide campaign "The Publicity Index measuring local governance"

The recent arrival of the former head of government of the rf, Kirienko, in Kherson oblast marked the beginning of the stage of "forced integration" of the Ukrainian territories seized by russia. The final date for the fictitious referendum was not publicly announced by this candidate for the putin’s bloody throne. However, after his departure, the all local collaborators spoke fervently in one voice about the emergency preparation of the subdued regions for future pseudo plebiscites.

It is obvious that the kremlin wants to contrast the possibility of granting Ukraine the candidate status for accession to the EU with the imperial surrogate in the form of "accelerated integration" of the occupied territories. Without further ado, the self-proclaimed LPR/DPR entities and the temporarily occupied territories of Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions are being united into one "federal district" to be part of the rf.

However, one should not be that terrified of the very fact of legalization of forced “adjoining”. The major fear is triggered by the methods and style of occupation management that are already manifested in full swing. This is what Ukrainian citizens have to face every minute in the territories seized by the ruscists.

Unlike the creeping occupation of the TOTs of Donbass, which protracted for the long eight years, kremlin is trying to subdue the Kherson and Zaporizhzhya regions in a matter of weeks. Ukrainians who stayed in the newly occupied territories out of hopelessness or for their own choices have no chance of avoiding kremlin experiments or at least need to adapt to them.

What are these experiments about? Are the Ukrainian authorities aware of their existence? Do they do everything possible to help people not just to wait for the Armed Forces of Ukraine, but to survive and not to break down, and to bring our common victory closer? Is the President's word enough for the state machinery to build a clear policy for the residents of the temporarily occupied territories?

Rapid Occupation and Suppression of Freedom

Throughout the war with russia since 2014, it was possible to travel to free Ukraine from TOTs in Donbass or from the occupied Crimea without any additional risks. Before the large-scale phase of hostilities, more than a million citizens had crossed the demarcation line every month. Instead, the occupiers have now resorted to a complete blockade of the newly seized territories.

Mariupol has been virtually under lockdown since mid-April. Of the one hundred thousand residents of the temporarily occupied Ukrainian city, few manage to find themselves on the other side of the imaginary wall. Likewise, the inhabitants of the captured territories of Kherson or Zaporizhzhia regions have no real opportunity to leave the territories controlled by the occupiers. The only available option for voluntary escape is towards the russian border. In other words, to the enemy’s seat. In fact, this is the deportation under the guise of "voluntary" evacuation.

After all, in the TOTs of Donbass, residents had at least some chance to get unnoticed in the crowd of adapters or ideological "vatniks", showing no enthusiasm or demonstrative loyalty to the occupation regime. Now, even pensioners and teenagers can not escape the melting pot of filtration camps or the primitive terror hidden in "denazification".

In Mariupol, the recently chaotic and spontaneous repressive practices have become increasingly rational, systematic, and well-planned. The residents of the city are taken to the filtration camps of the villages of Nikolske and Bezimenne by organized bus trips, in the Hitlerian way. In the so-called compact accommodation points, people have to wait for "filtration" for several days, followed by the risk of forced deportation to russia.

In particular, recently in Zaporizhzhya region, the occupiers kidnapped the 18-year-old chairman of the student council of one of the local universities, Artur Yaroshevskyi. In total, more than a hundred citizens of Ukraine are held hostage by the kremlin in Zaporizhia. In Kherson oblast, the invaders hold about 600 people in their torture houses. Also, the abducted residents of the region are taken to Crimea. The facts of execution of people who have been found to possess the ATO participant's certificate are not uncommon. When the leaders of TOTs of Donbass announce the establishment of interaction and transfer of their experience to the new occupation administrations, it triggers the image and a terrible story of the Donetsk prison "Isolation", which is an integral part of the "unique" experience of repressive management that TOTs of Donbass are ready to share with everyone.

The scale of destruction and military violence faced by the inhabitants of the newly occupied territories is incommensurate with the previous phase of the war in Ukraine. The statistics of the civilian population killed prove the main target of the "special military operation". People are talking about survival in a literal sense — avoiding violent death, not just providing basic biological and material needs. The occupiers are no longer hiding to shell the controlled territories with artillery weapons: the front line is far away but the shelling is very close.

The recent pronounced example is Donetsk, which, according to russian propaganda media, was allegedly shelled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine. However, after regular "strikes" in the city, self-proclaimed "deputies" in TOTs of Donbass began to see more clearly. "Back shot — 2 seconds later, the shell burst. I bluntly don't understand what's going on," one of them wrote on social media a few days ago. We do understand well, though.

The campaign of issuing russian passports under the simplified procedure in TOTs of Donbass began as late as in 2019. Previously, it was possible to live there and work with a Ukrainian passport, without facing any conflict with the repressive machine. Today, in the newly occupied places, anyone who does not rush to sign up in the first place to receive a paper with a two-headed eagle is a potential traitor and outcast. The same is true about forced mobilization, which now applies to everyone. Besides, no one was forced to serve in the so-called LPR /DPR army in TOTs until recently.

Residents of Kherson oblast have been living in total isolation from any information for more than two weeks. At the same time, in TOTs, Ukrainian mobile communication providers operated in parallel with the russian cellular networks for a long time. There was some kind of access to the Internet, and even the signal of the Ukrainian radio would sometimes break through to the russia-captured territories.

Without demonstrating loyalty to the occupation regime in the newly occupied territories, it is now impossible to do business. The TOTs of Donbass came to this much later. The loyalty marker is the voluntary submission of information about own property and assets to the occupation administrations. And even this gesture does not protect business owners from the forced nationalization of their property on the basis of ill-begotten decisions of self-proclaimed high-ranking officials. If someone likes the production facilities or vehicles, the owner is simply presented with the fact that it all does not belong to them anymore. You can risk buying yourself back, but in the end you can lose both your business and your money.

The capture of Ukrainian educational institutions with their subsequent inclusion in the educational system of the rf and the accelerated launch of the educational process according to russian models is another feature of the current experiment on people. Ukrainian territories occupied in 2014 were "denazified" in steps and bits. The current "integration" practices of the aggressor country in the educational sphere are designed to compromise as collaborators the Ukrainian educators who want to stay in the profession. In case of refusal to perform their duties in compliance with the "propaganda standards," Ukrainian teachers have already been promised to find a replacement among the educators of the occupied Crimea or other regions.

The current problem of functioning of local authorities (heads of communities, local officials, deputies), some of which, for various reasons, have not left and continue to support the functioning of cities. They often manage to keep in touch, remotely, with the mayor who left. It is not clear to everyone where the line between helping their fellow countrymen and collaborationism is. It will raise major questions after the liberation of these territories.

In conditions of complete isolation and total control, it is difficult to overestimate the value of even small acts of disobedience. Contrary to the strict opposition of the occupation regime, the peaceful resistance of Ukrainian citizens does not stop, but only changes its forms. It is becoming more conspiratorial, but equally revealing and symbolic. No enthusiasm was inspired in the residents of the Ukrainian regions by the propaganda celebration of the day of russia, loudly organized by the occupation authorities.

In the temporarily occupied cities and villages, people regularly hoist blue-and-yellow ribbons, place patriotic inscriptions on the walls, and distribute leaflets calling on the russian military to surrender. In temporarily occupied Kherson, 58 of 60 school principals refused to switch to russian curricula from the new academic year. In Mariupol, some pensioners still refuse to receive russian pensions. Despite all the circumstances, Ukrainian doctors continue to provide medical care to the population of the temporarily occupied territories. All of them hope to receive Ukrainian salaries, rather than payments in roubles.

The position of the government – where is it?

Unfortunately, instead of the expected government policy and clear signals on how to survive in the newly occupied territories, citizens were presented with the ostentatiously drawn red lines. Parliament has so far confined itself to increasing criminal liability for collaborationism. Judging by the list of its features, the choice for people in the occupation is simple: leave if you do not want to get the traitor's stigma.

Even if the occupied territories were not blocked, offering to Ukrainians the evacuation as a rescue from collaborationism means bringing grist to the mill of the occupiers. For the kremlin's strategy is to deport or otherwise get rid of all pro-Ukrainian residents of the occupied territories, having previously sifted them through the bloody sieve of filtration camps. It is safer for many Ukrainian activists, officials, and MPs to stay at home under occupation than to be unwittingly exposed to risk during a voluntary evacuation.

After all, it is one thing to expose collaborators in a territory free of the occupiers, and it is quite another to identify collaborators where people live and work alongside the occupiers (or their proxies). Although indirectly, they still interact with them.

What should a Ukrainian entrepreneur think when purchasing goods that are monopoly controlled by the occupiers, or a doctor or an employee of a utility company that receives a salary in rubles? According to the rationale of the current Ukrainian legislation, such actions quite entail suspicion of collaborationism. An instrument aimed at identifying and punishing provisional Saldo-s and Balitsky-s is very easy to turn into a means of discrediting all thosewho stay and exhibit vital signs.

As human rights activist Olena Luniova rightfully noted, "it is important to give people in the occupation something more than the new articles of the Criminal Code." To send the correct signals at the level of the law to the representatives of local authorities who stayed there, who did not side with the occupiers but maintain the municipal enterprises of the cities, etc., in working order. Today, it is more than ever important not to save on financial support to citizens in the temporarily occupied territories.

Rumors of delays in paying pensions or salaries to teachers frighten and demoralize much more than the news that the occupiers are being entrenched and consolidated the positions. Conversely, nothing convinces of the inevitability of our victory and the liberation of the occupied territories as much as the fulfillment of the government’s financial obligations to the people who stayed there. Even under a physical blockade, it is important and possible to maintain communications and provide public services (administrative, educational, financial) to the residents of the temporarily occupied territories, such as by using digital tools.

It is reckless to impose active resistance or underground fight as the only correct choice in the conditions of occupation. This can discredit and quickly cut off the inert but potentially decisive pro-Ukrainian majority. So far, the rf is slowly progressing in the capture and maintenance of Ukrainian territories but loses the war for the people living in them. 

The occupiers did not receive any tangible support among key local stakeholders such as security forces, councilors, or civil servants. Therefore, the ranks of the local police are replenished with the mercenary footmen from TOTs of Donbass and Crimea. Therefore, the managerial staff of the occupation administrations is almost completely staffed with proven personnel from the rf. The colonizers had already begun to bring their families here. Last week, the kremlin directly appointed for the first time a new head of the so-called "DPR" government, a citizen of the rf. Even proven local collaborators are gradually falling into disfavor.

For the same reason, it is so important that the red lines that the government puts up regarding non-cooperation with the aggressor do not become a scar on the neck of those who are looking forward to see Ukraine returning. The task of the government is to win the war for Ukrainian citizens in all territories, even before their liberation. The mission of the residents of the occupied territories is to survive while remaining Ukrainians. As we can see, citizens now understand and realize their mission much better than the government.

Read this article by Olexsander Neberykut  and Oleksandr Kliuzhev in russian and Ukrainian.