Tetiana Horobstova, 70, and her husband, Volodymyr, on the balcony of their residence, the place their daughter was speaking on the telephone when Russian troopers got here to arrest her in Kherson, Ukraine.

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Tetiana Horobstova, 70, and her husband, Volodymyr, on the balcony of their residence, the place their daughter was speaking on the telephone when Russian troopers got here to arrest her in Kherson, Ukraine.

Laurel Chor for NPR

KHERSON, Ukraine — Tetiana Horobstova, a retired physics trainer born in Russia, didn’t imagine Russians would assault this metropolis based by Catherine the Nice.

“Assault a Russian-speaking metropolis, the place folks had household and associates in Russia?” she recollects, shaking her head. “No means.”

On Feb. 24, 2022, regardless of warnings from the West that Russia was about to invade Ukraine, Horobstova remembers waking to an attractive morning and watching the dawn from her balcony. It turned the sky pink and illuminated inexperienced fields bursting with the winter harvest.

“After which I heard the explosions. After which I noticed the explosions,” she says. “One close to the airport, then a second. The third at a fuel station that appeared to show the whole lot purple.”

She started to cry. She known as her family and friends to see in the event that they have been OK. Some have been packing their baggage to flee west. However Horobstova, her husband, Volodymyr, and her youngest daughter, Iryna, refused. Even with their Russian roots, their loyalties have been clear.

“We had a Ukrainian flag on our TV, and a poster that claims ‘Putin Get Out!’ ” she says. “My poster, by the best way.”

Their daughter in western Ukraine begged them to flee. However they stayed, together with their youngest daughter, Iryna, who meant to withstand.

The Russian military made quick work of occupying town

Kherson was the primary main metropolis occupied by Russian forces. With Kherson’s deep historic ties to Russia, Moscow didn’t count on it to be a middle of resistance. However the metropolis, like the remainder of Ukraine, defied the Kremlin’s expectations.

The primary days of the invasion in Kherson have been chaotic. Serhiy, a soldier from a neighborhood brigade, watched in horror as Russian troopers rapidly overran the riverbank on the opposite aspect of the Dnipro River.

“Ukraine did not even have time to mobilize forces,” says Serhiy, who will not reveal his final identify for safety causes. “All of it occurred so quick.”

Serhiy, a soldier who can’t present his face or reveal his final identify as he has household in occupied territory, poses in entrance of a World Warfare II memorial in Kherson, Ukraine.

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Serhiy, a soldier who can’t present his face or reveal his final identify as he has household in occupied territory, poses in entrance of a World Warfare II memorial in Kherson, Ukraine.

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Ukrainian troopers fought to maintain Russian paratroopers off the Antonivka Bridge, which crosses the Dnipro River into town of Kherson. Serhiy puzzled why Ukrainian authorities hadn’t blown up the bridge on the primary day of the invasion.

“It ought to have been blown up,” he says. “That might have slowed down the Russian troops.”

Serhiy bought his spouse and youngsters out of Kherson. Then, as Russian forces took over his metropolis, he turned to a particular mission.

“To destroy the enemy’s gear and enemy troops,” he says. “And in addition to seek out and kill collaborators.”

For a lot of, selecting to be a partisan was simple

Many civilians needed to assist the Ukrainian army. Oksana Pohomii, a 59-year-old accountant and metropolis council member, had been warning for years that the Kremlin couldn’t be trusted and says at first President Volodymyr Zelenskyy did not take the Russian risk significantly.

“I’ve been having nightmares that Russians have been going to invade Kherson since 2014,” she says, referring to the yr Russia invaded and occupied Crimea and the jap Ukrainian industrial heartland referred to as Donbas. “After which my nightmare got here true.”

Oksana Pohomii, a 59-year-old accountant and metropolis council member who had spied on the Russian forces throughout their occupation of Kherson, poses for a portrait within the bakery the place she now bakes and distributes bread to native residents.

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Oksana Pohomii, a 59-year-old accountant and metropolis council member who had spied on the Russian forces throughout their occupation of Kherson, poses for a portrait within the bakery the place she now bakes and distributes bread to native residents.

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Together with her dyed-fire-red hair braided right into a rattail, Pohomii appears like a cross between Cyndi Lauper and a Viking. Simply earlier than the invasion, she utilized to coach as a soldier with the territorial protection, however the recruiting workplace turned her down, saying they have been flooded with candidates.

Throughout the invasion, she helped evacuate Ukrainian troopers and their households caught on the opposite aspect of the river, with the Russians at their heels.

“They hid in shallow components of the Dnipro River, lined in reeds and dust,” she says. “And we organized automobiles to go choose them up.”

After the invasion, she joined protests in Kherson. Locals have been indignant however cautious.

“I keep in mind this boy with an amputated leg within the central market,” she says. “He performed the guitar and sang the Ukrainian nationwide anthem. It was actually courageous. We’d collect round him and sing alongside quietly, like bunnies.”

Simply as quietly, an underground resistance shaped. Tons of of civilians secretly turned partisans, forming espionage cells reporting to the Ukrainian army and safety companies. Pohomii joined one. Her job was to doc who was collaborating with Russian forces and to ship her findings to Ukraine’s safety companies by way of the safe messaging app Sign.

“I noticed there have been three sorts of folks in Kherson,” she says. “Those that will die for Ukraine. Those that will die for Russia. And people who don’t care, who’re like, ‘Ukraine is OK, Russia took over, and that is additionally OK.’ “

Pohomii took images and movies of suspected collaborators and eavesdropped on conversations, then handed on the data to Ukraine’s safety companies.

The suspects included a few of her fellow metropolis council members, a outstanding physician who helped town survive COVID, and even a childhood classmate who was a trainer of Ukrainian historical past.

“Many lecturers give up,” Pohomii says, “however she determined to work with the Russians.”

Kherson’s novice spies went to work

Pohomii’s shut pal, Olha Chupikova, a 48-year-old panorama designer, additionally turned a spy.

She lives close to the Antonivka Bridge and served, she says, as “the eyes and ears of the Ukrainian army.”

“I instructed them the whole lot I noticed about Russian troops — the place they dwell, the place they put their autos,” Chupikova recollects, including that she adopted them wherever she may.

Olha Chupikova, a 48-year-old panorama designer who spied on the occupying Russian forces, poses contained in the bakery the place she now helps to bake bread to distribute to native residents in Kherson, Ukraine.

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“Generally I might faux I used to be going to the grocery retailer or ready for the bus, and I attempted to alter my garments as typically as I may,” she says. “I am not saying I am Agent 007. I simply did no matter made sense to me.”

Chupikova was exhausting to trace, partially, as a result of “I don’t appear to be a risk,” she says. Together with her pixie reduce and vivid blue eyes, she appears like a Minnesota soccer mother about to give you a freshly baked apple pie.

“They needed us to look common, unremarkable, not simple to recollect so we may work undetected,” she says, “as if we have been transferring between drops of rain.”

She recruited her husband, Valerii Chupikov, to work along with her. They used Google Maps to seek out coordinates of Russian convoys and despatched them by way of Sign to a contact of Olha’s in Ukraine’s army.

When the web was out and cellphone service was weak, she would climb to the roof of her home and throw her telephone up within the air, hoping for a sign to ship her messages.

“I used to be actually scared the primary time I used to be on the roof,” she says. “We’re not skilled spies. We’re amateurs. But when not us, then who?”

The hazard for Kherson’s partisans was fixed

Russian troops appeared to be watching everybody carefully. Olha Chupikova says residents have been getting arrested for merely giving Russian troopers soiled appears.

“I used to be frightened that Olha would get arrested too,” her husband says. “She had such a tough time hiding the hate in her eyes for them.”

Tetiana Horobstova, 70, and her husband, Volodymyr, on the balcony of their residence, the place their daughter was speaking on the telephone when Russian troopers got here to arrest her in Kherson, Ukraine.

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Tetiana Horobstova, 70, and her husband, Volodymyr, on the balcony of their residence, the place their daughter was speaking on the telephone when Russian troopers got here to arrest her in Kherson, Ukraine.

Laurel Chor for NPR

Tetiana Horobstova, the retired trainer who watched the invasion from her balcony, frightened about her daughter Iryna.

She says Iryna spent months driving everywhere in the metropolis, giving rides to nurses and docs secretly serving to injured Ukrainians.

“She additionally spent all of her cash shopping for medication to distribute to folks right here,” Horobstova says.

On Could 13, Iryna’s thirty seventh birthday, two automobiles pulled up exterior the home.

“There have been 11 guys, armed to the tooth, with their faces lined, sporting army fatigues and waving machine weapons and pistols,” Horobstova recollects. “Six went upstairs to our condominium and proper to her room. She did not deny something. She stated, ‘Sure, I am a Ukrainian patriot, and I hate you.’ And so they took her away.”

The armed males confiscated Iryna’s telephones, laptop computer and reminiscence stick, and Horobstova’s laptop computer, too, which she says was solely stuffed with classes for her physics courses.

“They even took my husband’s binoculars and his energy financial institution,” she says. “However we did not care. We cared that they took our daughter.”

One of many armed Russians grabbed on the Ukrainian flag on her TV and stored yelling, “You’ve got bought a breeding floor right here!”

“And I stored saying ‘a breeding floor of what?’ ” she says. “I stated, ‘That is the flag of our nation, the place I dwell and the place my daughter lives. You even have a rustic, and you’ve got your personal flag.’ He simply stored yelling.”

The Russian occupiers have been identified for his or her brutality

Tons of of different residents disappeared, together with the elected mayor of Kherson, Ihor Kolykhalev, who was arrested in June.

By the tip of summer season, a number of members of Oleksandr Diakov’s espionage cell had additionally been arrested.

Diakov, a shy, bearded condominium supervisor, had spent months spying on Russian-installed politicians for Ukraine’s safety companies. He suspects the Russians might have discovered a approach to take heed to partisans’ conversations. However he says Russians additionally bought details about cells by torturing captured partisans.

Oleksandr Diakov, a Kherson resident, poses exterior the ability the place he was detained and tortured by Russian forces throughout the occupation of town.

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Oleksandr Diakov, a Kherson resident, poses exterior the ability the place he was detained and tortured by Russian forces throughout the occupation of town.

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“I knew that eventually, the Russians would discover me, too,” he says. “They arrested me after I was at a pal’s home.”

They lined his head and drove him to town jail. He remembers it being stuffed with fellow Khersonians he acknowledged.

The torture started nearly instantly. His arms shake as he recollects 4 lengthy torture classes, three of them particularly brutal. They electrocuted him and beat him with golf equipment, steel pipes and their boots. They requested him a few man in his espionage cell.

“And I might say, ‘He is a really good particular person,’ ” Diakov says. “And they’d beat me some extra.”

The screams of tortured partisans crammed the jail. Natalya Havrylenko, one other imprisoned partisan, remembers listening to Russian troopers rape a person in a hall.

“And also you’re listening to this cruelty, listening to his screams, after which they’re forcing him to sing the Russian nationwide anthem or ‘Katusha,’ this previous Soviet music,” she says. “Insane issues. The concern and psychological strain have been monumental.”

Collaborators have been quite a few and at instances sudden

After two weeks of detention and torture, Oleksandr Diakov may barely transfer. His Russian captors kicked his left leg so badly that it broke and bought contaminated. He pleaded for a physician.

On Sept. 2, Russian troopers loaded him right into a van and drove him to what regarded just like the outskirts of city.

“I assumed they have been taking me to not the physician, however to the forest” to be executed, he says. He had heard in jail that others there had died that means.

Oleksandr Diakov, a Kherson resident, sits in his residence and exhibits scars on his leg from when he was tortured by Russian troopers throughout the occupation of town.

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However the Russians did find yourself taking Diakov for medical care. He had two surgical procedures. Over the subsequent a number of weeks, he recuperated with Russian troopers stationed exterior his door.

By the tip of September, the Russian-installed authorities organized a referendum to pave the best way for Russia to annex Kherson.

Oksana Pohomii, town councilwoman and partisan looking out for suspected collaborators, noticed a listing of locals who helped set up the referendum and acknowledged many names, together with the son of her former classmate. She says that classmate additionally pressured residents to vote, driving them to the polls herself.

“She was a trainer of Ukrainian historical past and but, right here she was, proud to be a part of this referendum organized by the butchers,” Pohomii says, referring to the Russians. “She did not even attempt to disguise it.”

Pohomii laughs when she recollects the referendum outcomes, which confirmed almost everybody who voted needed to hitch Russia. She says even the Russians knew it was a sham and that it made Russian President Vladimir Putin look determined.

“The Russians misplaced the day they determined to assault us,” she says.

By fall, Pohomii and the remainder of the underground resistance had helped weaken the Russian maintain on Kherson.

Politicians put in by the Russians have been assassinated. When Ukraine bought subtle missiles from the U.S., army officers say the partisans helped Ukrainian troops goal websites just like the Antonivka Bridge, which reduce off Russian provide routes.

Lastly, town is liberated

On Oct. 24, when a physician helped Oleksandr Diakov escape from the hospital, Russian forces have been already looting town and beginning to evacuate. Russian-installed officers even eliminated the bones of Grigory Potemkin, the 18th century Russian commander, from St. Catherine’s Cathedral.

By November, Ukrainian forces had pushed the Russians to the opposite aspect of the Dnipro River. The Russians left behind tanks, vehicles and ammunition.

A constructing broken by a strike in Kherson, Ukraine.

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Diakov was hiding at a pal’s home when he heard a convoy of automobiles on the evening of Nov. 10.

“They have been blasting Ukrainian music, and I spotted our guys have been getting into town,” he says. “Day by day we have been ready for this. Once I was tortured, I stored imagining the day when the Ukrainian troopers would come residence, and all our work would imply one thing.”

The following morning, it was clear that Ukrainian troops managed Kherson. Residents poured into the streets and cheered. Diakov, unable to stroll, cheered from his mattress.

Pohomii, town councilwoman, helped substitute Russian flags with Ukrainian ones.

The previous classmate, the trainer of Ukrainian historical past who had helped Russians attempt to annex Kherson, tried to cease her.

“She stated, ‘What are you doing? Possibly the Russians will come again?’ ” Pohomii recalled. “However quickly she realized that we’d be sure that Kherson is Ukraine perpetually. So she left for Russia. And lots of others like her left, too.”

Kherson is again beneath Ukraine’s management however nonetheless weak

Greater than three months after liberation, Russian forces stay throughout the river — lower than a mile away.

They hit Kherson day-after-day with rockets, missiles and artillery. Greater than 80 civilians have died. Solely a fifth of town’s prewar inhabitants of 300,000 stays.

Serhiy, the soldier from the native brigade, is again in Kherson. He runs reconnaissance missions to the left financial institution of the Dnipro and is in contact with partisans there who inform him the place collaborators and traitors are hiding.

“I do know individuals who did a whole lot of hurt, who’re responsible within the demise of Ukrainians,” he says, “and so they’re nonetheless alive.”

Serhiy, a soldier who can’t present his face or reveal his final identify as he has household in occupied territory, poses in a park in Kherson, Ukraine. He had used data given by native civilians to focus on Russian forces throughout the occupation of Kherson.

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Serhiy, a soldier who can’t present his face or reveal his final identify as he has household in occupied territory, poses in a park in Kherson, Ukraine. He had used data given by native civilians to focus on Russian forces throughout the occupation of Kherson.

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Serhiy says he heard about Kherson’s liberation whereas combating within the Kharkiv area in northeastern Ukraine. His brigade had helped free components of that area in September. However he says his commanders instructed him they could not assist with the liberation of their hometown.

“I suppose they have been nervous and afraid that we’d search vengeance on traitors and collaborators,” he says. “I felt dangerous to not be there. However I perceive why I wasn’t.”

Oksana Pohomii now runs a volunteer bakery along with her pal Olha Chupikova, the panorama designer who used to spy on the Russian army close to the Antonivka Bridge. Simply exterior the bakery, a missile strike has left an enormous crater.

On a latest morning, they’re dusted in flour as they stack the nice and cozy loaves they name “Kherson Undefeated Bread.” The bread is free. Pohomii says they ship it to careworn residents.

“We by no means attempt to drive anybody to remain as a result of not everybody can take it,” she says. “I do know individuals who do not go away their properties. I do know individuals who may deal with the shelling at first however then one thing broke inside them after the shelling killed folks. They stopped consuming and consuming. And I stated, “It is time to go away.’ “

She typically telephones Ukrainians trapped on the left financial institution, together with the partisans there.

“They ask me, ‘Oksana, are you going to go away Kherson?’ and I all the time inform them ‘No, no, no. No means!’ ” she says. “I inform them that as quickly as we free them, I’ll bake bread for twenty-four hours straight, load the loaves onto a motorboat with the Ukrainian flag, cross the Dnipro River and convey it to them personally.”

The price of defending Kherson stays excessive, and the long run is unsure

Chupikova says Russian sympathizers stay in Kherson. Some properties have the phrase “collaborator” spray-painted on a wall or door.

“You may all the time acknowledge them, as a result of they’re indignant and aggressive, as a result of they selected Russia and now everybody is aware of they’re traitors,” she says.

She’s nonetheless in contact with the Ukrainian soldier she labored with throughout her spy days. He is in Bakhmut, the place the fiercest combating of the conflict is going down. She says she worries about him and appears again on the work they did along with pleasure – and bewilderment.

Two girls stroll previous a constructing broken by a strike in Kherson, Ukraine.

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“It was like a loopy journey,” she says. “However we did it as a result of we knew we needed to do it.”

Many partisans are nonetheless lacking, presumed to be someplace in Russian custody. Tetiana Horobstova’s daughter Iryna is amongst them. Horobstova hasn’t spoken to her daughter and is not positive the place she’s being held, although there’s proof she’s imprisoned in Russian-occupied Crimea.

“I fear that she is chilly, as a result of once they took her away, she was solely sporting a summer season prime,” Horobstova says. “She has no change of underwear, no hygiene pads, nothing.”

Horobstova is pleading along with her fellow ethnic Russians to free her daughter. She says her Russian roots are actually a deep supply of heartache.

“I really feel ashamed,” she says, and begins to cry, “as if it was me personally who began this horrible conflict.”

Hanna Palamarenko contributed reporting from Kherson, and Julian Hayda from Kyiv. Modifying by Mark Katkov and Pam Webster. Chad Campbell produced a model of this story for broadcast.