Bay Harbour: July 05, 2023

Bay Harbour News Wednesday July 5 2023
6
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 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 PHOTOS: DYLAN SMITS
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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