‘Killed 25 People in Front of My Eyes’: An Account from Kharkiv

I n this time of hardship, loss, and injustice, one tries to find hope to go on. Every day, the bombing of my birth city Kharkiv, my home, increases. Every day, I think of the people who are still there.

I remembered a boy we went to school with for ten years. He was my neighbor in our apartment building two floors above me. Every day, I could hear him sliding down the staircase, quite loudly, landing at the bottom in seconds thanks to his impeccable technique. I remembered his cheeks reddening every time he was happy or frustrated, and that he loved to draw.

After a few calls to a few people, I found him. His name is Vadim Pisarev. I call him Vadik. He is still there. What follows is what he told me (translated from Russian, and edited for length and clarity):

Q: Tell me, what became of you over these 30-some years?

A: At first, I got four years of military college education, and then I served in the Soviet KGB Border Troops. When the Soviet Union fell apart, I was a captain serving in the Lviv region. Then, there was Afghanistan and Pridnestrovie on the Ukrainian side. After that I was given an honorary discharge from the active troops and got a job in Kharkiv in the border agency between Russia and Ukraine. I got additional law and finance degrees and became the head of the main border customs between Russia and Ukraine. In 2004, after the Orange Revolution, I left customs and got involved in the business and energy sector. In 2006, I was asked by the minister of finance to become the head of the Dnepropetrovsk customs agency. Now I’m leaving and working in Kharkiv’s regional military administration as the head of the audit agency, and I have organized a humanitarian volunteer organization with which we are helping people who still live in Kharkiv and the Kharkiv region.

Q: What were your thoughts after the Soviet Union fell apart?

A: I was raised a believer in Soviet doctrine, and it felt strange and difficult on many levels. The country itself was a mess at times. . . . There were threats, so at some point we were forced to provide armed security to our kids going to school. . . . After Ukraine became independent, the problems disappeared by themselves. People who wouldn’t take oath to Ukraine went to Russia, and for me personally it was strange at first to take an oath for the second time, but the country that I took an oath for first ceased to exist, so it made sense in the end. I also then left the Communist Party. At that time, many historical facts became known, such as Lenin and Stalin’s direct orders of destroying whole communities and groups of people, which were Communist methods of achieving control and political objectives. It led me to realizations of real events that took place at the time of the Soviet Revolutionary War and World War II. It opened my eyes. So, I dug deeper into the history going back to the Scythian time period, to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and Ukraine’s constant fight for independence, attempts to establish statehood, their failures, and the causes of those failures. It is needless to say that the methods of the Ukrainians were similar to their enemies, with an eye-for-an-eye mindset. Historically, Ukraine was always forced to seek allies in the fight with Russian imperial aggression and could never break deep connections and blood ties by itself.

Q: What is the exact moment you can point out that made you a patriot of Ukraine?

A: I am half Russian and half Ukrainian, with a position nearly that of a general in Ukraine. I speak both Ukrainian and Russian fluently. I have friends on both sides of the struggle and until the very last moment was hoping for the possibility of a diplomatic solution to the conflict. Very few people believed it was actually happening when the conflict began. When the war started, we were in shock. Kharkiv is located 37 kilometers from Russia’s border, so when the Russians attacked, the first Russian divisions were eliminated in the center of the city. At first, few Ukrainian military divisions went to face the enemy, people were leaving the city in masses, all the businesses in the city were closed, and concrete and metal anti-tank fortifications were installed everywhere. The Russians damaged many historical buildings in the center of the city and practically destroyed the peaceful neighborhood of Northern Saltivka, the biggest of its kind in the former USSR, a neighborhood with only apartments, no military installations, contrary to the Russians’ claim that they are only destroying military establishments. In the morning on March 2, I was going to a meeting at my work in the regional government building and I thought that I had a few minutes to grab some coffee. As I was drinking my coffee right before heading to the building, I turned my head and saw a rocket hit the building. I was 500 meters away from it. It heavily damaged the building and killed 25 people in front of my eyes. They were destroying my home, and it was the turning point that changed me.

On February 26, we started gathering volunteers to find food and medicine for people that were left without electricity and water. People who had left the city gave us their cars, and we contacted the cities of Kyiv and Dnipro, which gave us the needed insulin and cancer-treatment medications that people were so desperate for. This was the beginning of our volunteering center, organized by the people and for the people. We now have a collection center with a computer program. The person calls and leaves his information such as name, age, address, and food and medication needs. We then set up routes for 20-25 volunteers, and they go to the destinations where they take photos of their deliveries for accounting. We do 300-400 deliveries daily around the city and surrounding villages, including those in the gray area where active military engagements are happening. Now, it is getting harder to get help from donors because lots of organizations are refusing to help, telling us there is a big backlog and they are running out of money. But we are not going to stop helping people. They need food and medicine every day, so we will work until they no longer need us.

Q: Is Ukraine at war with Putin or the Russians?

A: First and foremost, we are fighting with Russian imperial traditions and Putin and his entourage’s attempt to capture territories rich in rare metals, gas, and coal. All his talk of the “denazification of Ukraine” is nonsense. The Russians themselves have much more Nazism than could ever be in Ukraine, and they also have direct followers of Hitler’s teachings. Also, I believe they are green with envy of what Ukraine was able to do in the past 30-some years. I have been in the depths of Russia and saw how it was. Around 2014, every year for about ten years, I went bear hunting in the Kirov region in Northern Russia, 200 kilometers from the polar circle. This area was made up of a taiga forest, with very few, if any, villages, which had few inhabitants, living in wooden, lopsided houses with wood nearing a black color due to the constant freezing temperatures. Talking to the locals, I found out that these places were filled with Ukrainians sent there against their own will. The NKVD (a predecessor to the KGB) would bring families with women and children under military escort and drop them into the wilderness, giving them two shovels and two axes. They would tell them that they will come back in a year and those people are instructed to clear a given area of the forest. Those people were forced to live in dugouts, with a meter of snow every winter, and negative 30 degrees Celsius temperatures. Then there were the collective farms, a type of small industry like a sawmill. Then, year by year, people left those towns in search of better lives. Some towns went out of use, and nature began to take those places back. Those towns were built with such hardship and blood by Ukrainians. Besides Moscow, St. Petersburg, and a few touristy towns that they cleaned and made presentable to show off to the West, the majority of Russian people live in almost medieval conditions. They are destroying our land, defecating in the beds of Ukrainian citizens, and raping our women. They cannot take Ukraine. There is a Ukrainian saying that goes, “If I can’t eat it, I’ll bite off as much as I can.” This is what is happening with Kharkiv. It is too big for the Russians to take fully, so they send rockets there from a distance every day, terrorizing the city.

Q: What do you want Americans to understand about Ukraine’s fight with Russia?

A: We are fighting for our homes, for freedom to choose what laws to follow, what traditions to have, what language to speak, and our kids. Even if we would end up without the government to lead us, we would have fought anyway. We are grateful for the help of the U.S. government and private citizens of many countries who are helping my countrymen that are left without the means to survive, helping my country in the fight for its freedom.

Q: What are the specific ways the U.S. still needs to help Ukraine?

A: First and foremost, I wanted to thank the United States from the bottom of my heart for the help we received from the very beginning of Russia’s vile invasion. It is impossible to underestimate this on the military or humanitarian level, it is tremendous. But the war continues, every day Kharkiv is hit by five to eight Russian rockets. Half of the city still lives here. As we speak, they are sending rockets into the city. . . . The people of Ukraine are suffering. Please do not forget us. Please help us if you are able to. Every dollar counts. It will be used to get medicine or food. To help my countrymen, to help the inhabitants of Kharkiv to survive.