But then, as Russian troops left the city and the Ukrainian army retook occupied territory in the north of the country, she and her family fled what they expected would be swift punishment for collaborating with the Russian invasion force. . Evidence emerging from the newly recaptured territories shows that Russian troops routinely used force to quell any local dissent and maintain control. At the same time, some said they welcomed and helped the Russians. Others listened to the insistence of Moscow-based officials that they were here to stay forever and decided to cooperate or simply try to live quietly under Russian rule. For Moscow’s local allies, the sudden retreat of Russian forces, who ceded some villages and towns with little resistance, was a coup that bordered on betrayal. “Everyone had told us that we are here now, we are here, you have nothing to fear,” Irina said, recalling promises from officials sent by Moscow. He had taken a job in the accounting office of the new local government installed by Russia, he said. “Five days ago they were telling us that they would never leave. And three days later we were under bombardment… And we don’t understand anything [about the offensive]. “We don’t understand what the point of this is then,” he said of the Russian military operation. For months, Russia told people in the occupied territories of Ukraine that it was here to stay. The ruble was introduced, retirees were told they would receive Russian pensions, and pro-Russian residents were recruited into the ranks of civil servants. “The fact is obvious that Russia is never going away,” Andrei Turchak, leader of Russia’s ruling United Russia party, said during a visit to Kupyansk in July. “Russia will never leave here. And all necessary assistance will be provided.” This oath, along with the threat of violence, was crucial in projecting Moscow’s power in the towns and villages of Ukraine, assuring willing locals that they would never have to face punishment as traitors or collaborators. Map Now Russia’s retreat has dealt a devastating blow to the image of the Russian armed forces and the Kremlin among some of their most ardent supporters in Ukraine. Ukraine has vowed to catch locals who collaborated with the Russian military or cooperated with governments installed by Russia. The cases carry a prison sentence of up to 15 years. President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Wednesday that Ukrainian forces were seeking to root out “remnants of occupiers and sabotage groups” in the retaken towns and villages of the Kharkiv region. In Belgorod, a Russian region bordering Kharkiv, the governor’s office said nearly 1,400 people were housed in a temporary camp after crossing the border from Ukraine. Many are families with children who have escaped fighting. Hundreds more people are likely to live in rented apartments or with relatives. At a small aid distribution center in the city, half a dozen Ukrainians who had recently fled to Russia said they were stunned by Moscow’s inability to hold the Kharkiv region and withstand the successful Ukrainian counteroffensive that has retaken 8,000 square kilometers (3,100 square miles) of territory in just a few weeks. “The people there believed the Russian troops, they said we won’t leave you, that we lost so many people and we won’t leave you,” said Alexander, 44, who fled a nearby village with his wife and son. “Then suddenly they backed down. It took them several months to gather all this territory, and then they abandoned it in two days. They don’t understand what happened.” Alexander, a trained pipe welder, said he had not worked for Russia or been employed since the war began. He wanted to leave his village, which quickly fell to Russia in the first days of the war, because “he had neither a job nor a school, and I have to dress my child and send him to school.” They had planned to join a brother in Poland, but then Alexander was wounded by a shell and they left to stay with a relative in Russia. They left, he said, not because they opposed a return to Ukrainian rule, but because of the danger of war. “It was driving us into hysteria,” he said. “We took it while we could.” Like others, he asked not to be identified by his last name. He feared that he might be considered a traitor for fleeing to Russia. He said he still hoped to return home to visit his parents in Ukraine. Moscow’s efforts to integrate the territories by offering public handouts while imposing a culture of fear on occupied Ukraine were seen as a prelude to a formal annexation that could take place in some areas as soon as this fall. But the lack of security signaled by Russia’s sudden retreat has also shaken the confidence some had and makes it more difficult in the territories Moscow continues to hold. “We should have left earlier,” said Sergei, Irina’s boyfriend, who worked at the local railway. Now it was difficult to find a place to stay in Belgorod, he said, where thousands of people have moved since the war began. Irina and Sergei both said they still supported Russia in the war, but they believed less that it could protect its supporters in Ukraine. “Now I’m worried about the people in Kherson and Zaporizhia,” Irina said, referring to the regions in southern Ukraine also held by Russia. “They’re also being told, ‘We’re not going to leave.’ But if you look at what happened near Kharkiv, then no one can say what will happen tomorrow.” Why is Vladimir Putin so obsessed with Ukraine? According to multiple reports, Russian troops themselves and some of the Kremlin’s top boosters have come out saying that Russia is at risk of losing supporters in occupied Ukraine. “People here are waiting for us to start,” Alexander Sladkov, a Russian war correspondent, said in a television report. “To hit them so hard that they end up on their backs. Knockout that is. It is very difficult to win in the points. We’re losing a huge number of people, we’ve been injured.” Catching himself, he added, “And we’re having big hits.” Russia hasn’t had much success lately. And its problems may increase further as cities held by Russia since the first weeks of the war begin to emerge from isolation and tell stories of life under occupation. It also caused an exodus of people to the border. Earlier this week, Yulia Nemchynova, a local activist who delivers aid to Ukrainian refugees in Russia, shot a video of some of the hundreds of cars that had fled the Kharkiv region to the Russian border. One Ukrainian official described one such convoy from the Luhansk region as collaborators “packing up their loot, packing up their families and leaving.” Nemchinova, who has pro-Russian views, confirmed that many inside feared being branded as collaborators, although she described them as locals who she said were “just trying to live”. “They told people that Russia is here forever,” he said. “He was in a state of shock. People were just black. They were literally black in color. I asked the people where they were going, they said: to Russia. Just nowhere. Just to cross the border.” At the aid center, most said they would only return to Ukraine if Russia regained the territory. Others said they would never return, even if Russia did. “We’ll never go back,” said Irina’s friend Sergey, who was holding a small bag of shoes and a sweater from the aid station. “There’s nothing to go back to.”
