Young Man Tries to Escape Kherson Amid Russian Invasion of Ukraine: NPR

In early February, I traveled to southern Ukraine with an NPR crew, where we met a 22-year-old Ukrainian student who spoke near-perfect English.

His name is Vitaliy – we don’t use his last name for his safety – and he told us how nervous he was about a Russian invasion, especially as troops were gathering in Crimea at a few kilometers away.

A few weeks later, Kherson became the first major city occupied by Russia. It happened so fast that civilians barely had time to deal with it, let alone flee.

I have stayed in touch with Vitaliy while his city has remained occupied, and he sends me voice memos via the encrypted messaging app Telegram about what life is like under the occupation: what worries him, what he hears from his friends – all that really is.

His messages arrive almost daily.

For a while, Vitaliy was rather optimistic. He was worried, of course, but aware that the fighting was worse in other parts of the country, and that Kherson was relatively calm since it was already occupied and the battle had advanced. But as the war drags on, his messages grow increasingly desperate.

“I definitely have to get out of here before June,” he told me in early May. “Because when June comes I think it will be hell here, with heavy battles.”

Massacres of civilians in places like Ring and Borodyanka have come to light. He tells me he wants to leave Kherson with his mother and go west where he has family.

“In June or July, I think our military will act here. I’m afraid that Kherson will be the next Mariupol or Kharkiv,” he said.

Vitaliy has heard rumors that the Ukrainian army is moving and planning to launch a major offensive to retake the city. He is afraid of being mobilized to fight – for the Russians.

But then I lose contact with Vitaliy for four days.

When he finally reappears, he says that Russia has cut internet and cell service, trying to force everyone to switch to Russian SIM cards and networks. It’s part of the playbook in the regions after the Russian takeover.

“It’s really awful. I don’t know. I felt like I was stranded on an island,” he says.

Vitaliy worked around the problem, finding a weak Wi-Fi signal where he could – the corner store down the street, his mother’s office when she goes to work. And he tells me he’s still considering leaving. He heard rumors that the Russian army would open the roads leading out of town in mid-May.

“So going through the checkpoints, I heard that the Russians were actually stealing phones and computers,” he says. “And I have, like, a decoy phone. Just my really old phone, I’d say from 2016. So I’m going to use that and hide my iPhone.”

But the weeks pass. Russian troops never open the roads. Vitaliy hears rumors of cars being shot while trying to leave. He doesn’t want to risk it.

And then, Vitaliy becomes silent again.

I check in.

“Hi, I’m sorry, I’m here,” he finally replies one day with a new voice memo. “I had a horrible experience.”

He tells me that his mother and he left the city to go to a village to visit his grandmother.

“Well, that was a really stupid idea. And I knew it was a stupid idea,” he says.

The path was smooth. But on the way back they were stopped by Russian soldiers. This is the first time that Vitaliy has been so close to them.

“He wanted me to give him my phone. And yeah, so I gave it to him. But I had my decoy phone. And I had nothing there, no social media, no pictures. And, you know , he thought it was pretty suspicious,” says Vitaliy.

The soldier dragged him out of the car and started going through his phone.

“He was asking, ‘What is that?’ He was looking for a reason to detain me. And I remember, I thought that was it. I thought I might die today or something. I don’t know,” Vitaliy interrupts. . “It’s just a crazy feeling. I don’t know. I’ve never felt that before.”

The soldiers finally let him go. But Vitaly was clearly shaken. You can hear it in his voice.

“Yeah, but anyway,” he said with a nervous laugh, “there’s no way I’m going anywhere right now.”

Vitaly tells me that he and his mother have decided to wait out the fighting and until Kherson is hopefully liberated by Ukraine.

“We have our basement where we can go, and we’ll do our best to do whatever we can to survive,” he says.

But just over a week ago, Vitaliy reappears. He seems excited. He says they changed their mind again.

He tells me he has a classmate who recently decided to go the other way – south, through Crimea and Russia and across the border to Georgia, somewhere friendly for Ukrainians.

“And he says you have nothing to worry about. I thought it was pretty dangerous, but he kind of convinced me to go,” Vitaliy says.

Vitaliy is well aware that he is 22 years old, the ideal age to fight in the army. And the battle is getting closer and closer. So he and his mother pack up and find a friend who also leaves and can drive.

He erases his phone, deletes our chats, deletes me and other NPR reporters from his contacts.

“Because I know that Russians are looking for people with a pro-Ukrainian side,” he explains. “But if they find out I’m interacting with Americans, I mean, they’re going to kill me.”

They make another trip to the village to say goodbye to his grandmother—she’s going to stay—and they go.

“I’m pretty sure this whole experience will be like the movie Argo, if you have already watched it? Like, with Ben Affleck,” he wrote.

Vitaliy is really nervous for the trip.

“It will probably be the scariest and most difficult experience I will ever go through,” he said before leaving.

Vitaliy tells me not to text him. He’ll reach out when it’s safe.

And again, the days pass.

And then last week, an audio message popped up in my Instagram.

“Hey Kat, I drove through Russia, and I’m in Georgia now,” a familiar voice said.

They did it. Vitaliy is exhausted. They drove mostly at night, were interrogated at checkpoints and waited for hours at border posts.

But they finally got out of Kherson just as it became the center of the next phase of the war. And now the next phase of Vitaliy’s life — as a refugee — can begin.