“Tears of happiness” in Pravdyne, a liberated Ukrainian village near Kherson

After enduring more than eight months of occupation by Russian forces in his village, near KhersonSvetlana Galak shed “tears of happiness” when Ukrainian soldiers arrived to free him.

“I don’t know when the Russians came (to the town), but I only know one thing, that yesterday, or the day before yesterday, I saw a Ukrainian soldier and I felt relieved,” she explains, still emotional, in front of her house, to an AFP journalist.

LOOK: Volodymyr Zelensky celebrates “historic day” after withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson

“We understood that the Russians had left because our soldiers were driving by,” He says.

“I had tears of happiness, that Ukraine is finally liberated”Add.

LOOK: “It is a humiliating setback for Putin’s plans”: what does the withdrawal of Russian troops from Kherson mean for the war in Ukraine

“Yesterday I asked our soldiers. Is it victory yet? Can we open the champagne? We try to think positively.” says this 43-year-old mother, who lost her 15-year-old daughter in a bombing attack on her town.

Pravdyne It is located about twenty kilometers northwest of Kherson (south), annexed by Moscow at the end of September, and which had been the first major city to fall after the Russian invasion that began in February. On Friday she was released, which was a severe setback for Russia.

LOOK: Kirill Stremousov, the head of the Russian occupation of the Kherson region, has died

The town, in the middle of an agricultural plain, had more than a thousand inhabitants before the war. Currently there are about 180.

Several buildings are destroyed, such as the school, AFP found.

On Saturday, volunteers were distributing food aid in a van. Two women were crying in each other’s arms.

Viktor Galak, 44, Svetlana’s husband, explains how they were mistreated by Russian soldiers during the occupation.

One day, when he went with a neighbor to check on his mother, “the Russians stopped us and forced us to kneel,” he says.

“I refused and asked them if they were fascists. And (the soldier) replied: ‘No, the fascists are on the other side (…) We are liberators’”, he recalls.

Viktor Galak poses with his wife Svitlana and their 10-year-old daughter Anna in the liberated village of Pravdyne, Kherson region, on November 12, 2022. (STRINGER / AFP).

Bound hand and foot

They then forced him to stretch out on the ground. “They tied my hands and feet. And one of them came and told me that he was going to put a grenade under it so that he would not run away, ”he continues.

One of the soldiers “put a grenade under me and they told me not to move because otherwise it would explode.”

Shortly thereafter, he was taken by car for questioning to a location where another soldier recognized him for having passed him in the street, and was released.

“We were happy when we saw the Ukrainian soldiers, because we are Ukrainians,” adds this man, who also recounts that he had trouble finding food during the occupation.

He admits, however, that “the Russian soldiers brought candies, preserves, food and everyone ate it because nobody wanted to starve.”

The occupiers “did not want to fight. They were sitting, not very happy to be here, not to be with their families,” he says.

Viktor Galak doesn’t want them back. “Let us live like before. We lived in bad conditions, but it was Ukraine, ”he assures.

Svetlana Striletska, 50, a school principal and deputy councilor from Pravdyne, says 23 people were killed in the village, where there has been no electricity or gas since early March.

Svetlana Striletska and her husband had to flee from Pravdyne.

“I will never forget it, a man from the village ran towards us and told me: ‘You have to run away, because (the Russian soldiers) are looking for you.’ I knew that he had to choose between dying or running away.

Source: Elcomercio