The World Stories

Lyudmila Mamrekhova loves her native village. Although now mostly in ruins, it’s easy to see that before the war, Merlobioka would have been a peaceful oasis in the fields surrounding the city of Kherson. All houses have their own land. Wild birds sit on piles of wood in search of insects. Ducks, chickens and geese roam the overgrown gardens of owners who have moved on months ago. The Ukrainian army recaptured the village in September. The walls and roofs of some houses here are intact are One of them is Lyudmila, where there are still neat rows of fruit trees and rose bushes that need pruning. His great-grandson Anatoly, a toddler, was playing in the next room. Lyudmila told me that she wanted to go home and how her beloved village had become a living hell when the Russians took over her village in March. They told me how they survived months of terror and how they were beaten, beaten and raped in their own room. Lyudmila 75 is a strong-willed woman, a widow who was a teacher until she retired, and is known locally as the village historian. At the beginning of the year, she did not believe that President Putin would allow his troops to invade Ukraine. “We used to think of them as a brotherly nation,” she says. I couldn’t imagine that (they) could do something like this to people.’” Russian soldiers arrived in her village on March 24. Lyudmila says that the first people came through Crimea and they What was good behavior? In most wars, soldiers on the front lines are more disciplined than those behind them. The worst damage to Luhansk and Donetsk came from the east, when militia groups born in separatist, pro-Moscow Ukrainian governments moved in. . They spread panic in the village, demanded vodka and alcohol, stole cars and fuel and ransacked houses. The militiamen took the men to the camps, and tortured them. Lyudmila says the Russian soldiers, who were quite frightened., ‘did not consider the militias as human beings.’ There was an opportunity to leave together, but they refused to leave at Olha’s request, as she wanted to protect her property and especially the documents she had collected about the history of her village and her family. were When his daughter Olha and a close friend left So Lyudmila was alone and always scared, she took medication for high blood pressure. Her dogs barked whenever strangers approached her house. heard a very loud knock on his window. My body trembled wondering who it could be at that moment, I felt as if my hands and feet were paralyzed, I had closed all the windows of the house, I looked out of one and saw a soldier standing there. I hesitated to invite him in and slept What should I do now? I had nothing to kill him with. Can I control it? Such questions were revolving in my mind. “As soon as I opened the door, he punched me in the face, breaking two of my teeth and the bone of my nose,” she says. I was covered in blood and he started hitting me on the head and he started hitting the butt of the gun on my body and chest, I didn’t understand what I had done wrong. ‘ He pulled my hair and it was dark in the kitchenSo he couldn’t figure out where he was and he stopped by the furniture and pushed me on the couch and started choking me. I could not even swallow water for two weeks. “Then he took off my clothes and raped me,” she says. He stabbed me in the stomach and even now one of the wounds is not healed. Lyudmila recognized the man, who was around 60 years old and smelled of alcohol. They believe that he belonged to the separatist militia. He also stole diesel from his house earlierhad come And also brought the soldiers who were staying there. Rapist demanded tobacco from them and when they did not get it, he started beating them again with his gun. He started firing indiscriminately in the room. And Lyudmila felt that the time of her death had come, she thought of her family. She says that ‘I said goodbye to my children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren, I thought that I would not live anymore. will.’ She says he didn’t leave until 05:20 the next morning and he told themIf she told the Russians what had happened to her, he would come back to kill her. She kept pretending to the neighbors that she had fallen in the basement. Talking to her daughter Olha on the phone, the fear in her voice made her realize that something very bad had happened to her. She urged her mother to tell her everything about what had happened. Four days after the rape, she managed to reach a local town with other Ukrainians, still occupied by the Russians. I am but themShe is away from the attacker, and was able to cross the border from there to meet her daughter and two other family members. Lyudmila, sitting with her daughter Olha in the kitchen of her makeshift home, explained why she wanted to speak out about the atrocities that had happened to her. And during this conversation, his eyes filled up. She also had the bullet in her hand, which she said the man had left at her house threatening her. She says, “I want to shout to the whole world to stop all this.”Go, this bloody war should be stopped as soon as possible. I want Russians to know how their husbands, their sons, their parents are torturing Ukrainians. How guilty are we? We are hard working peaceful people. We don’t bother anyone. I asked Lyudmila how she coped with such bad circumstances. She says, “How did I stay strong?” Out of love for my land, my native village and my people. We are peaceful and hardworking people and we supported each other during the occupation. He finished the breadThe piece was also shared. People were starving. We ground the wheat in a coffee grinder into pie crusts because there was nothing to eat. “It was horrible and horrible, Putin and the Russian soldiers will never be forgiven until the end of the world… there will be no forgiveness for what they did to the Ukrainians,” she said.