Grough day, dull mood, plus a cold wind. Otherwise there is little activity in Kosatscha Lopan, a small town north of Kharkiv, five kilometers from the Russian border. Shots are fired somewhere, smoke rises. Ukraine, it will turn out later, attacked a Russian customs post. A few bullets come back, land in the field. And yet here, in this dreary place in Eastern Europe, lives a woman who could hardly seem happier. Lyudmila Wakulenko, 62, a passionate bureaucrat and Ukrainian patriot, has been sitting where she likes best for a day now: on the brown leather executive chair, behind her desk, with the stamp of the local administration in her hand.
The crowd in front of her office is huge. Everyone flocks to her, needing help, especially to rebuild their homes. The scorpion brooch shines freshly polished on Wakulenko’s chest, almost lovingly she presses the blue ink into the paper. Before the start of the Russian invasion of Ukraine on February 24, Wakulenko was the head of the village council. Kosatscha Lopan does not have a mayor, the town managed itself until the war. And now, after the liberation, is doing it again. After the Russian invasion, Wakulenko did not flee. She stayed to continue to be there for the citizens. During the occupation, which lasted about 200 days, she risked her life.
In the first three weeks, Kosatscha Lopan was neither under Russian nor Ukrainian control, says Wakulenko. The Ukrainian soldiers had all fled. But the Russian troops only drove through, presumably to the front in Kharkiv. She was able to get groceries from a neighboring town where there is a large warehouse. “Then, on March 17, the time had come,” says Wakulenko, “and the first Russian soldiers settled here.”
The Russians left this tank behind in the Kharkiv region when they withdrew. Now it belongs to the Ukrainians.
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Image: Antoni Lallican
From that point on, people were only allowed to leave Kosatscha Lopan in one direction: to Russia. The place became a prison. Russian soldiers took down the Ukrainian flag in front of the local government building. Wakulenko went to the soldiers, asked them for the flag. “They gave it to me, I went there at night and hung it up again.” The Russians took it down again, Wakulenko again asked for the flag, even received it, and hung it up again at night.
Five killed by accidental shelling
But then, according to the former teacher, it got uncomfortable. The occupiers are said to have set up a torture room in the basement of the police building. According to Wakulenko, five civilians were killed during a food distribution because the Russians accidentally fired on the village. But giving up was not an option for her. Wakulenko continued. “I still had the Ukrainian stamps in the office. The Russians confiscated people’s passports and the only way to escape was on foot. So I stamped them to confirm their identity on paper so that they can be registered on the Ukrainian side.”
At some point, the occupiers became impatient with the Ukrainian bureaucrat. They saw her as a troublemaker. One day they put a gun to her head and escorted her outside. At the instruction of a police officer from the separatist People’s Republic of Donetsk, Wakulenko had to express her solidarity with Russia in front of the camera. She says, “It was the most shameful moment of my life.”
But Wakulenko held out until September 11th. Then the Ukrainian counter-offensive put the Russian occupiers to flight. When Wakulenko realized the Russians were gone, she jumped on her bike and drove straight to the city hall. She raised the Ukrainian flag as a sign of freedom.
