The Star: June 29, 2023

The Star Thursday June 29 2023
8
NEWS
Latest Canterbury news at starnews.co.nz
Building a life in Lyttelton after
Oleksandr Stoliarov fled Russian-occupied
Kherson in southern Ukraine last year.
Now he is settling into a new life with his son.
Dylan Smits reports
A UKRAINIAN university
teacher who lived through
the Russian occupation of his
city has found a new home in
Lyttelton.
Oleksandr Stoliarov (right), a
69-year-old university teacher,
was going about his normal life
until Russian troops occupied
the city of Kherson.
With a pre-war population of
280,000, the port city’s capture
was a significant victory for
Russia.
Stoliarov now lives with his
son Max Stoliarov in Lyttelton.
Stoliarov said his life in Kherson
before the occupation “was very
good”.
“But when the war started,
living in Kherson became
impossible.”
Cut off from supply chains,
food and medicine shortages
became the norm in the city.
“People were really struggling
to find specialist medicine. There
were long queues everywhere,”
Stoliarov said.
Before the troops rolled in, he
had seen and heard the rumours
Russia was planning to invade
Kherson but did not truly
believe them. The Russians
faced little military
resistance in the city
after the Ukrainian
forces retreated to
more defendable
territory. They
PHOTOS: DYLAN SMITS
had occupied it a
week after the war
started on March 1
last year.
The Russians
immediately
took
control
of the
media
and
internet, Stoliarov said.
“Russia started to suppress
all the information sources and
provide only their point of view
on everything.
“So if you wanted to get the
real news, you had to be a bit
sneaky.”
The night the Russian convoys
entered the city, a group of
civilians armed with molotov
cocktails tried to ambush them.
Stoliarov said the locals waited
behind some trees
in a park. They
aimed to take
the soldiers by
surprise in the
dark and burn
their vehicles.
But the Russians
could see them
through their
night-vision.
“They just
killed them all
in that park,
without people
even having a
chance to do
anything. There
was 18 people
there. They didn’t
allow anyone to
take bodies. They
had to lie there
for weeks. They
use it as a sign of
threatening others of what will
happen if you resist,” Stoliarov
said.
Yet the people of Kherson did
resist, he said.
The Russian presence within
the city was light for the first two
months of the occupation.
Stoliarov said his daily routine
at the university continued,
while the Russian soldiers
mainly stuck to the outskirts of
the city.
Pro-Ukrainian activists seized
the opportunity and organised
peaceful street protests against
the occupation. Stoliarov
watched the protests online
through street cameras.
A small contingent of Russian
soldiers stood in the main
square as protestors shouted pro-
Ukrainian slogans.
Stoliarov said after the
Ukrainian revolution in 2014 –
which culminated in the ousting
of elected President Viktor
Yanukovych and the pro-Russian
government – Ukrainians “chose
the European way”.
He said the people of Kherson
do not want to join Russia.
“Russia has just been ripped
back to Soviet times in all
aspects of their lives.”
Their protests continued until
May last year when the Russians
tightened their grip on the city.
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