MAR 16, 2022
In A Ukrainian Region Occupied By Russian Forces, People Are Disappearing. Locals Fear It's About To Get Worse. (rferl.org)
On the morning of March 12, just after 9 a.m., Serhiy Tsyhipa said goodbye to his wife and walked out the door of his home in the small southern Ukrainian city of Nova Kakhovka, along with his dog Ais, to meet colleagues in the next town.
[...]
The same day Tsyhipa disappeared, Oleh Baturin, a reporter for a local news site called Noviy Den, also went missing. His relatives and colleagues are still looking for him.
[...]
As many as 400 people have reportedly gone missing in the region in recent weeks,
according to Ukrainian military officials.
“These are activists, rally organizers,” Pavlo Keba, a resident of Kherson,
told Current Time. “They are trying to suppress any type of protests because they see that people are not absolutely afraid to march past Russian troops and we understand perfectly well what they are saying.”
[...]
Olena Tsyhipa told RFE/RL that after she began publicizing her husband’s disappearance she started hearing from other Nova Khakovka residents that he had been spotted at a military checkpoint.
“I found the dog. Some nice people called me and said that he was tied up” at a local administrative office, she said. “He's so scared.”
She said she believed her husband, as well as Noviy Den reporter Oleh Baturin, had been detained either because they refused to endorse the Russian occupation or had actively spoken out against it.
[...]
One Melitopol resident who gave only her first name, Anna, told Current Time that armed men were also going door-to-door in some parts of the city, including inside her building.
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“They broke down the entrance door late at night. They wanted to blow off the door of the apartment of a person they wanted. We had to talk them out of it, explain to them no one has lived there for a long time,”
she said.
“It’s a witch hunt or like the system in place in 1937. I do not know what it is, but it is alarming,” she said, referring to the height of the repressions that took place under Soviet dictator Josef Stalin -- a time known as the Great Terror.
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And she said patrols were confiscating phones, tablet computers, and other electronic devices from residents when they are stopped at checkpoints.
[...]
Serhiy Tomilenko, director of the National Union of Journalists, said his organization had received a growing number of reports from Kherson about unidentified men breaking down doors in the homes of journalists and public figures who have publicly demonstrated any sort of Ukrainian patriotism.
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. Anyone?
