“They beat us with American missiles”: the head of the administration of the Kharkiv region speaks about crimes against civilians

- In Ukraine, a bill is being prepared to introduce criminal liability for obtaining Russian citizenship.

Ukrainians who have obtained Russian passports could face five to 15 years in prison.

If we talk about the territories of the Kharkiv region, which until recently were under the control of the Russian Federation, how many civilians managed to obtain Russian citizenship?

“About half a thousand people.

Even more citizens submitted documents, but did not have time to get the passport itself.

Now the military-civilian administration of the Kharkiv region continues to work, and we are doing everything so that already here, in Russia, these people can finally obtain Russian citizenship.

Nothing is canceled for them.

- Did the administration staff manage to take out the documents of those people who applied for Russian citizenship?

Is there a possibility that the Ukrainian authorities will find these documents in the Kharkiv region and start persecuting citizens?

“Our employees who accepted the documents removed the entire base.

Speaking specifically about this category of citizens, the documents confirming that they applied for Russian citizenship were taken out of the Kharkiv region.

In this we have confidence.

— How did the locals react to the idea of ​​obtaining Russian citizenship?

“At first, people were cautious about this possibility and gradually showed more and more interest in it.

Recently, one document acceptance point has ceased to have time to process all applications for obtaining Russian passports from residents of those territories of the Kharkiv region that were controlled by the Russian Federation.

It was a serious indicator of confidence in us.

"Foreign speech on the streets"

- On September 10, the Russian Defense Ministry announced that Russian troops were transferred from the Balakliya and Izyum regions to the Donetsk direction.

Allied forces have left most of the territories in the area that they have controlled for the past six months.

What impact will this have on local residents?

- I, like any Kharkiv citizen, now regret that we have lost control over almost the entire region.

Local residents of these territories are also depressed, because they were forced to leave their homes.

But even worse for those who could not leave the territories before the Armed Forces entered there.

A lot of civilians will be betrayed by repression, that's for sure.

We already know about such cases.

Ukrainian nationalists are now filtering, as they call it, to identify sympathizers for the Russian world.

Ordinary people fall under it: teachers, doctors who simply lived and worked on their land.

These people stayed at home under the new, Russian government - this is enough for Kyiv to declare them enemies.

- A few days ago, you said that in the Kharkiv region, foreign mercenaries, who, together with the Armed Forces of Ukraine, enter settlements, shoot civilians.

Tell me more, where did you get this information?

- Every day I communicate with people who leave the Kharkiv region.

Almost identical stories about mercenaries I heard from residents of Kupyansk and Volchansky district, who are unfamiliar with each other.

I personally heard from these refugees that in the last days before the evacuation, when the Armed Forces of Ukraine were already stationed there, they heard only foreign speech from the military on the streets, and not Russian or Ukrainian.

According to them, some residents tried to stop the looting of these military men and were shot on the spot.

A family from Kupyansk, who arrived in Russia on September 11, told me that a car drove around the city and the military shot the street and everyone who was moving along it from it.

People have seen it with their own eyes.

They walked out of their area, which by that time was already under the control of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, because the bridge across the Oskol River had already been completely destroyed (now the western bank of Kupyansk is controlled by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, the eastern bank is under the control of the allied forces of the Russian Federation and the LDNR. - 

).

On the east coast they were picked up and helped to leave for Russia through the LPR.

- This week, the British edition of the BBC, citing Kyiv officials, reported that the bodies of a thousand killed civilians were allegedly found in the city of Izyum, Kharkiv region.

The scenario is very similar to the situation with Bucha: after the Russian military left the city, Kyiv accused them of shooting civilians.

Do you think that a similar charge is being prepared in the case of Izyum?

- I think that the fate of Bucha will be repeated now in every settlement where the allied forces were.

And none of the Western media will remember that when the army of Russia and the LDNR stood in Izyum, the city was shelled by Ukrainian troops.

In the same way, for all eight years they said that Donbass was shelling itself.

Not a single building was destroyed in Kupyansk until the American HIMARS began to hit the city (the United States has been supplying HIMARS MLRS to Ukraine since July. -

).

I was at every point in the city where artillery flew in, examinations were carried out, missile fragments were studied, and this is accurate information - they hit Kupyansk, including with American HIMARS missiles.

"

Trust is the most painful issue

"

- The military-civil administration began to work in the Kharkiv region in June.

Was it hard for you to win the trust of the locals?

- You know, now this is the most painful question for me.

At first, people were afraid: they did not know what to expect from the military of Russia and the LDNR, from the new government.

For example, the first thing they asked was: “What will happen to our language now?

Can you speak Ukrainian?

We always answered that they could speak the language they wanted.

Russia is a multinational country with many languages, religions and cultures.

This is where real freedom exists, because people are not oppressed on the basis of language or culture. 

One of my first decrees as head of the CAA was the decree on the languages ​​that operate on the territory of the Kharkiv region.

We have recognized Russian as the state language, and Ukrainian as a regional language.

For example, if parents wanted to, they left the Ukrainian language in the curriculum for their children at school.

When people saw that the new government did not oppress them and that they could live and work in peace, they believed us.

— Why did you say that the issue of the trust of local residents is painful for you?

“You see, I think that in some way I deceived them.

We in the administration told people that we came here forever, that we would not leave them.

For reasons beyond our control, we had to leave and leave our settlements, but nevertheless, the fact remains: people are now left there without us, although we said that we would not leave.

Therefore, I definitely have a share of guilt that I cannot remove from myself.

- Why were you chosen for the position of head of the military-civilian administration?

- I think that an important reason was the fact that I am a native Kharkiv citizen: I was born and raised in Kharkov.

In April 2015, I was forced to flee Ukraine: for my pro-Russian position, I was persecuted by the authorities, including nationalist military formations.

Lugansk and Donetsk became my second home.

A person who is ready to take such a position must first of all have a desire to return to his homeland.

This desire did not leave me all seven years.

- Have all the employees of the CAA now left the territory of the Kharkov region for Russia?

- Not.

The fact is that in the Kharkiv region there are territories that are controlled by the allied forces.

There, among the civilians, there are old people who, in which case, will not be able to hide from artillery fire or evacuate on their own.

Therefore, we have decided that administration employees will remain in these settlements to the last to help people on the ground.

I must say right away that I will not name the number of such workers who remained behind the border line.

- Why did you, as the head of the administration, leave for Russia, and did not stay to work on the territory of the Kharkov region, which is controlled by the allied forces?

- When the offensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine began, communication was lost on the ground.

We did not know exactly what was happening, at the same time there were reports that the enemy was already occupying the settlements of Veliky Burluk and Dvurechnoye.

The security service decided that it would be safer for the administration staff to retreat to the rear.

I said that we need to continue working here anyway.

Then activists were appointed who voluntarily remained in the territories controlled by Russia.

The main apparatus of the administration was taken to Russia in order to prevent the destruction of the VGA.

Then it would turn out that all the work that we had done before was useless.

You can say a lot of pompous speeches, but in fact, if you do not now save the backbone of the administration, which has built work with the local population over the past months, you can say that everything is lost.

And at the moment, I believe that the battle is lost, but not the war.

Administration continues to work

— What else do the employees of the VGA, who remained in the Kharkiv region?

- Including trying to find people who need evacuation in order to avoid repression.

Are there Russian teachers among these people who allegedly came to the Kharkiv region to teach, as they said in Kyiv?

- Not.

But, for example, not all the teachers who took retraining courses in Russia in the summer left to start teaching children according to the Russian program on September 1.

Most likely, the news that was dispersed in the Ukrainian media was about these teachers.

These are our people, our countrymen, residents of the Kharkiv region.

At that time and now they remain citizens of Ukraine.

That is, Ukraine exterminates and punishes its population.

Where they are now, we do not know.

— The main apparatus of the administration is located in Russia.

Do you continue to work or has the CAA of Kharkiv region been dissolved?

— The entire administration continues to work.

Moreover, we work not only here, but throughout Russia, where our Kharkiv residents have left.

People arrive in different regions of Russia.

Now our main idea is to continue working with Kharkiv residents, to fulfill our promise that we will not abandon them.

— What exactly are you doing for people from the Kharkiv region?

- First of all, everything must be done so that people continue to receive social benefits.

We have a lot of pensioners and socially protected sections of the population who were assigned social payments from the Russian state back there, in the Kharkiv region.

Now I have set the task for employees to identify all people, verify their documents, separate those who have not yet received payments, and first of all provide them.

This should not fall on the shoulders of local authorities.

- Can residents of the Kharkov region who left for Russia before the September events turn to you for help?

- Of course.

We help internally displaced persons from the Kharkiv region: it doesn't matter what month they were evacuated.

They are here, they need support, and we must provide it.