In Melitopol, at least 300 people have been detained by Russian forces. The primary targets for arrests and kidnappings have been elected officials, activists, business owners—anyone seen as influential or capable of shaping local opinion.
Svetlana Zalizetskaya is a one-woman media institution in Melitopol, a gadfly and a muckraker who has worked as a journalist in the city for two decades. She’s been a television news anchor and the editor-in-chief of a local newspaper, and, for the past nine years, has overseen her own news site, RIA-Melitopol, which reports on everything from local crimes to the cherry harvest.
Zalizetskaya could hear the voice of a man with a Chechen accent. “Tell her that she should be here,” the Chechen said. Zalizetskaya was terrified, but also furious. “You are holding a pensioner in ill health,” she said. Her father had a heart condition and had recently suffered a stroke. “I won’t come back and I won’t collaborate with you.” The Chechen hung up the phone.
Nearly all supermarkets were closed, not to mention cafés and restaurants. Pharmacies were running low on drugs. Ukrainian authorities tried to dispatch humanitarian convoys with food and medicine, but Russian soldiers intercepted them and seized their contents. An open-air market still operated every day, offering fresh meat and produce, but access to cash was almost nonexistent, a particular problem for pensioners who get their monthly payments on bank cards.
The occupying authorities devoted particular attention to the city’s schools, which had been closed for in-person classes since the first day of the invasion. Many students and their families had left town; others were studying online, joining lessons conducted elsewhere in Ukraine. The basements of a number of schools had been turned into bomb shelters. Reopening the facilities would be a way to signal to Melitopol’s residents that life was returning to normal.
Danilchenko appointed Elena Shapurova, the head of a local technical college, as Melitopol’s education chief. In late March, Shapurova assembled the city’s school principals for a meeting at the college. The educators who attended had conferred beforehand and decided to submit their resignations—none of them were willing to work with the city’s occupying authorities. From the building’s front steps, Shapurova implored them to resume classes and repeatedly motioned for them to come inside.
By most estimates, nearly half of Melitopol’s population has left the city. “I understand those who are leaving perfectly well,” Fedorov told me. “We are used to living in a different city, with a different mentality, and a different set of freedoms and values. And they are trying to force new ones on us.”
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