Kidnapped people, partisan headquarters, and a small child: how the family of a pilot from Kyiv region lived and fought during russia’s occupation

With his wife and six-month-old daughter, Artem lives in Prybirsk, Ivankiv district, Kyiv region. Behind the man's back are the tourist business development, numerous trips, the construction of his airfield, a month of life in the russian occupation, and partisanship.

How russia's invasion began

One empty airfield

Three years ago, Artem and his wife lived in Slovakia, where Artem studied to be a pilot. After returning to Ukraine, he decided to realize his childhood dream — to manage his airfield. At the same time, he organized horseback trips around the Chornobyl zone, rafting on kayaks and hiking in the mountains, and worked as a guide in the Exclusion Zone.

The family bought a house in Prybirsk purposefully near the airfield, which caught the guy's eye, but it didn't work out for him.

"I decided not to touch this airfield. I found another one, 40 kilometers from my house. I have flown by it many times but have never been there. I drove there and saw the airfield was a pretty cool place. I found a renter—a fan who wanted to implement a similar project, but it didn't work out. We cooperated, and everything started to come to life.

It was just a runway—an ordinary agricultural airfield of Soviet aviation. Since the beginning of the 1990s, it has been completely abandoned, and no one needs it anymore. It is just a concrete strip in the forest 400 by 20 meters under the corn plants used to fertilize the fields. We have thousands of such airfields on the territory of Ukraine.

Everything there was in trees, bushes, no water, no light—just an airfield in the middle of the forest. We started to restore it. The project for installing a solar station was ready. We wanted it to be a complex where you can come and fly and stay in summer houses, a winter hostel, and spend time in a location where you can hold lectures and seminars. Fishing, hiking… Everything was routine before the start of the war," says Artem.

Now the airfield, although survived, is mined. The hangar, with two hang gliders, aviation radio stations, special lighting, and other valuable equipment, burned to the ground along with all its contents.

"It was all stored in one place, in this hangar. Well, it all burned during the bombing. There's nothing left. We lost everything except that we had one empty airfield left. But it doesn't count as ours."

The airfield is leased. The rent costs 43 thousand hryvnias per year. Artem doesn't know yet what to do with it next.

First hours of russia's full-scale war

"The sky was black…"

I'm asking about February 24. Artem says the war caught him off guard with his wife and six-month-old daughter at home. He and the child were asleep, but Artem's wife had a lot of work on the computer, so she hadn't gone to bed at four in the morning. After 4 am, she already heard explosions.

"Then she wakes me up and says: 'Get up, something has started. Most likely, the war has started.' I open my eyes. I think, what war? Has she overworked herself? It can't be it. She says to go outside and look. I go out and see explosions.

We are very close to the border, about 15 kilometers away. Here you can see rockets flying from Belarus. It was still dark, and you could see the flashes. The sky was black with sharp flashes like daytime light. Darkness changed to flash, and vice versa. Explosions began," Artem recalls.

The first thought was that they should pack up and go. The only question is where? So the couple decided to wait for the morning. Then there was news about heavy battles. In the evening, Artem's colleague sent him a screenshot from the surveillance camera at the Dytiatky checkpoint entrance to the Exclusion Zone. At 18:47, the occupiers had already broken through there. Judging by the video, border guards and the police at that time were no longer there; they were evacuated.

Artem decides to go to Ivankiv to inform the police about the checkpoint breach and refuel. The man doesn't find any policemen, nor any working gas station there, so he goes to another town.

"I'm driving, and I see that some searchlights are shining. I thought they were trucks. I see a Skoda Octavia standing in front of me. I approach it, brake the car, and stand in line. At that moment, the searchlights light up, and I understand it is a column of russian equipment. The BTR-80 vehicle stands directly on this bridge and shines its searchlights on me. They raise their large-caliber muzzle and release a series of tracer ammunition into the air.

I see a flash and understand that it is for me. I engage the reverse gear, start to back up, turn around, and they start shooting at the car. I see that Skoda, standing in front, has been shot. The woman had already fallen out of the vehicle with shots in her chest; the man received a direct shot in the head. The russians killed him through the glass, and he fell on the steering wheel. As he sat, he pressed the brake pedal, and his stoplights were on.

I turn around and start driving in the other direction. At the same time, the russians start shooting at the car. People also drive along the highway without knowing anything. I slow down, turn them around, and they begin to follow me. We turned the cars back all the way together," Artem recalls.

On his way home, he called the police to inform them where the russians were. After 15 minutes of trying, finally, the call is answered. Around then, Artem finally gets home.

"We live 80 meters from the central highway. We can feel the tanks going at their own pace. You can hear an incredible roar from these 60 tons when the tanks are driving. There were hundreds of them. They started to go through us.

The first thing that we could do was to at least count them and share this information. Feeling patriotic, I put on camouflage, crawl across the field to the columns, and lay down by the road. In a small ditch, I just lay like that for an hour and a half, waiting for another column to arrive and counting equipment. They passed, I stepped onto the asphalt and was so surprised, but it survived after such a big column! In 40 minutes, I counted 170 units.

I returned home and told my wife that Kyiv could not be held with such an enormous number of tanks. At that time, I thought that it was a lot—these 170 units. I have passed this information on. My friends and acquaintances living in the same settlement counted the equipment all night, and when we called in the morning, they said they had counted 2,700 units overnight. I thought that was it. That Kyiv will not hold the fort. Then we were under occupation."

Partisans under russia's occupation

"We captured their equipment, took diesel fuel out, and then distributed it among people"

On February 25, the electricity and internet went out in Artem's village. A day later, the water supply disappeared. Only gas was left. The family was saved because, besides electric heating, they had a wood stove in the house and a well nearby. As for Ivankiv, Artem says, residents had to drink water from the river.

As the man recalls, the occupiers passed through his settlement in transit for the first two weeks. No one touched the locals or destroyed anything; there were not even russian roadblocks. Two weeks later, the so-called Kadyrovites came to Ivankiv. They put their local head there, who was brought from russia's Krasnoyarsk Krai, and then the actual occupation began.

"They seized the police and local administration and were looking for the village head, hidden at the time. The authorities took the entire archive away. Because of this, the military didn't know the specific addresses of firefighters, police officers, and people in the anti-terrorist operation in 2014–15. They searched for information for a long time. Then they had their assistants, who gave them specific addresses of soldiers, police officers, and emergency services. And that's when the terror began.

Many people were killed and shot just on the streets when they were leaving… We lived in tension. Three weeks later, I drove to the district center for the first time. It is when they had already set up their checkpoints and said that was it, Ukraine would never exist again; next week, the ruble would circulate, and we must pay taxes to russia…

Their fake head of administration said that you needed to get passes to travel between settlements. Then there would be no problems. But we didn't take them. We drove through forests and fields. Along our paths, we came to the district center because there was an opportunity to buy some products. We had a supply for adults but not for our baby girl. The only pharmacy we had that hadn't been looted at that time was closed," says Artem.

When the baby formula ran out, Artem and his wife bought milk from neighbors, diluted it in half with water, and fed the girl that way. The child's father says that for almost a month of such nutrition, the child's weight gain was only 100 grams, which is critically low for such an age.

"After three weeks, the mobile service also disappeared. We had no light from the first day, but we had a car, and we lived like this: I stretched the led strip from the 12-volt battery into the house, so there was light. With a small child, you will not sit in the dark; she will be scared. Plus, we had to charge mobile phones and listen to the radio. The car served as a generator for us. We had diesel thanks to the occupiers.

We led a partisan movement. We seized russian equipment, took diesel fuel out, hid it, and then distributed it among people. So I had a reasonably ample fuel supply at home and a car generator working in this mode. While two batteries were in the house, I charged the third one. My car could work and charge the battery near our home for 5–6 hours. It was how we provided ourselves with light.

As we say, we had a partisan headquarters. We have people on our street with a large basement like a bomb shelter. There are thick concrete walls. We gathered and discussed some information, who heard what. The plus was, when heavy fighting was already near us, everyone gathered in one place, sat through the active phase, and then dispersed."

Artem also says that the locals actively passed on information about the location of russian equipment to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. Thanks to this, Bayraktar drones worked successfully against the occupiers even in the first weeks. Some partisans tried to burn enemy equipment by throwing Molotov cocktails. They resisted stubbornly, and they got revenge for it.

russian terror

"They'll return with broken arms, legs, and ribs"

"We were relatively lucky; nobody caught us. But five people from our village disappeared. There has been no information about them since March 19. They weren't partisans but went on bicycles to a neighboring town to catch the mobile service there. They tried to bypass the highway through the paths, forests, and fields because traffic was prohibited there. But somewhere between two populated areas, they were caught by a russian patrol.

The parents of these guys and their wives went directly to the headquarters of the russians to talk to their command officer and find out something. He said that the patrol perceived the guys as intelligence in favor of Ukraine and that the russians sent them to the main headquarters in Belarus.

When the guys' relatives came to this officer the next time, he said that some of their phones were 'clean' and some were 'dirty,' with some photos of russian equipment or correspondence that the russians did not like. The guys also filmed these columns and passed the data to the police. Maybe there were some photos/videos. They looked at all the correspondence.

He said that if they were lucky, they would be alive. At most, they will return with broken arms, legs, and ribs but return alive. Maybe. After that, we know nothing about them," says Artem.

Artem talks about a military chaplain shot when he got out of his car with his hands up; about a man who tried to take his six dogs out and was blown up along with them; about a family with two children whose car the russians shot; about the children who didn't survive in this car.

He says that when it became clear that the russians would have to retreat, they began to engage in theft and looting. They wanted to take out as much as possible.

"Somewhere from March 25, we saw that the columns began to leave. Then massive robberies started. The russians took everything. They searched houses, seized cars, and removed agricultural machinery, tractors, harvesters, and planters. They took everything away in massive columns and took diesel fuel and all the grain away.

When the battles near Kyiv were still happening, we saw in the morning tanks transported on sweepers toward Moshchun, and after 4–5 hours, these same sweepers came back without tanks. The sweepers had a tractor with the trailer, a car trailer, lawnmowers, and some chainsaws.

Or we saw an armored personnel carrier drive, wholly covered with mattresses, and a washing machine attached to these mattresses. It was pretty funny to watch, but it's real. They came in and took electric kettles. It was pretty interesting when Buryats stole electric kettles from us but at the same time left platforms for them. I wonder if they will just put the electric kettles on the stove without a platform?" says Artem.

When the Ukrainian forces approached Ivankiv ​​and nearby settlements, the locals were just as active in helping our guys as they were hindering russians at the beginning of the invasion. For example, Artem, when the Ukrainian troops were already mopping up, was a translator for volunteers from abroad.

"We had no direct transport connection with Kyiv; all the bridges were blown up. So, at night, fishers transferred volunteer battalions from Sukholuchchia, the former residence of Yanukovych [former russia-backed Ukrainian president, ed.]. From Sukholuchchia, they were transferred across the Teteriv River to the village of Straholissia, to our side. On April 1, volunteer battalions already came here. They mopped up the villages, and we actively helped them."

Artem and his family are gradually returning to a healthy life. His daughter is gaining average weight again. They are making plans and waiting for victory. However, the experience will remain with them, like each of us.