Police Officer Volodymyr Nikulin: "First time I was surrounded in Donetsk ten years ago, and in 2022 - in Mariupol..."

The film 20 Days in Mariupol begins with footage of Volodymyr Nikulin shouting into a walkie-talkie: "I see a tank marked V. The enemy is in the city"...  And it ends with him standing in the beams and hugging a Ukrainian soldier at a checkpoint – the first after 15 enemy checkpoints... The fact that the whole world saw the footage of what was happening in Russian-held Mariupol in March 2022 is due to  Volodymyr Nikulin. Because he knew where else in the city you could find the Internet and where you could transmit the video. It was he who took responsibility for the documentary team and brought them and all the materials to the territory of Ukraine. One can only guess what would have happened to Mstyslav Chernov, Yevhen Malolietka, and Vasylisa Stepanova if they had fallen into Russian hands... 

We agreed to talk to Volodymyr right after the documentary won the Oscar. But first of all, he had to undergo treatment - surgery on his arm, which was injured a year ago. So we were able to talk to him when he was undergoing rehabilitation in Pushcha-Vodytsia near Kyiv.

"EVERYONE WHO DID NOT WANT TO BE A TRAITOR MADE THE RIGHT CHOICE"

- Have you already held an Oscar in your hands? " I ask Volodymyr.

- No, not yet," the man smiles. - "Mstyslav came to Kyiv, and at that time I was on duty in Pokrovsk, Donetsk region. He went quickly because he is now working on his next film somewhere in the United States, as I understand it. He sent me the workflow.

- Is it interesting to hold the Oscar in your hands? You are directly involved in it...

- Let me put it this way: I want to meet my friends, talk to them, sit with them... Maybe not so much to remember what happened to us as to hear news from them.

- Are you being recognized? Does it happen?

- There's a director's technique in cinema where the movie starts and ends with someone. But I'm not such a figure in the movie - there are enough other moments. And the fact that people recognize me... When people ask me to take a picture, I take a picture. Then I remember the words I once heard from a journalist I know. His father was wounded, became a famous person, he was constantly invited for interviews, and he said: "I can't do it anymore! Here we go again !" His son answered him: "It's your duty!" Well, that's not really about me, but it's important for me that I react correctly when people are sincerely happy with me.

- I understand that you left Donetsk ten years ago. Why did you choose Ukraine? Some people stayed, changed their lives...

-  This is a very important issue. I can say briefly: everyone who did not want to be a traitor made the right choice. That time was difficult for Donetsk in moral terms. There were no commands on how to act in those circumstances. I had to stay in my place, do my job and not be a traitor. Just not to be a traitor, starting with your small division, department, main department, and then your state, your homeland.

- What position did you hold in Donetsk ten years ago?

- Deputy head of the department of the police protection department - at that time it was not the police, but the militia, the regional apparatus. It so happened that we kept our department, the Department of State Protection Service, and continued to work in the Donetsk region. It was a miracle. There were 12 certified officers, those who had a police rank, who later left Donetsk and started working in Mariupol. Twelve for the entire region! At the same time, our units continued to operate in the region - in Sloviansk, Kramatorsk, and Mariupol. It got to the point that our units were working in the occupied territory for the first time, and the occupiers did not even know that we were there. We stayed in Donetsk until July 23, when the city was completely captured. 

After all the referendums, we stayed! Now I can tell you that we continued to work in the occupation - a unit of the Ukrainian police! Every day, our supervisor from Kyiv held meetings with us by phone. And no one thought to say: "Guys, what will happen to you? How do you work there?"

- Did you feel that you were surrounded? That there was only the enemy around?

-  I will say this. The occupiers could not in any way ensure order in the city. Those who came - they are called differently: Russian proxies, mercenaries - could not organize anything. So maybe they deliberately left those who were working. We were subordinate to Kyiv, held meetings directly... 

By the way, the employees of the Main Directorate of the Ministry of Internal Affairs in the Donetsk region left on July 1, but we stayed and worked with the approval of the department's management, which was located in Kyiv. It was only on July 23 that the occupiers, either by accident or not, came to our department at night and asked what kind of unit it was. We answered them: "The police." - "What police?!" - "Well, the Ukrainian police!" They were shocked. Then their demands began - they were looking for the weakest who would go over to their side. But we had a team. No one doubted which side we should be on. Since we were exposed, we picked up and left.

Why did we stay? At that time, the security service was highly dependent on the financial service. The financial service servers and security servers were a huge complex, and it was impossible to dismantle and take them out immediately. Over time, it was moved to Kramatorsk. It was impossible to do it right away, so we stayed there to guard them and ensure their operation. I was in charge of the engineers who maintained these servers. That's why we were surrounded. But we did everything that was necessary at the time.

- Later, analyzing everything that happened in Donetsk, knowing the information, what do you think: could the occupation of the city have been prevented?

- It could have been done. If there was no collapse of the authorities. Both central and local.

- But Kharkiv was not allowed to be captured...

- Arsen Avakov, a respected person whom I personally have great respect for, made the decision, took responsibility, and coordinated all the issues with the management. It is a very big deal to take responsibility. That's why at that time, even if there had been the will of the leadership and the ministry, not the political will, if there had been clear, understandable, timely commands, we could have defended the city. Yes, everything was very, very dangerous, both for us and for those who made the decisions. But... 

- There were not many occupiers in Donetsk at first, were there?

- I know for a fact that the Russian army conducted an operation in Donetsk to incite an armed conflict. This was done for political purposes: to make blood flow in Ukraine, so that it could be presented as a civil conflict. That's when it could be called a special military operation, a hybrid operation, which they planned in advance and carried out on the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions. Why it was there - we can analyze it now, and I hope the time will come when we will have the documents to do so. I may be wrong, but one of the reasons is the huge border with the Russian Federation, with its military centers in the Rostov region. Kharkiv and other regions were not so suitable, while Donetsk and Luhansk were very convenient. The border was not completely blocked, and it was possible to import weapons. Now the Russians are no longer hiding this, they are openly saying that the attack on the Donetsk airport was carried out entirely by Russian forces. Although they hide behind civilians, it was Russian citizens who attacked. It was May 26, and I remember that day well. Maybe it wasn't career military people, but Russian mercenaries were there for sure. 

I used to work in the security unit and in the criminal investigation department, and there are no former police investigators. I have experience, and I understand what is happening when I see some actions. From the beginning of the staging riots in Donetsk, I and my unit defended the administration. It was clear that these were pre-organized actions. Once, I can say, I persuaded the organizers to postpone the storming of the administration.

- How?

- There was an organizer who was running around, consulting with his curators. I stayed ahead of my subdivision, which was standing near the Donetsk administration, even ahead of the internal troops. He was running up to me, trying to get me to take his side. He said: "Let's take down the Ukrainian flag". And the guys from the internal troops, the National Guard, were guarding the flag. I said: "Look at the guys - are you going to beat them now? They came from Kyiv. There were riots there". I spoke to him in the language of his curator - I kept pressing him: "Go ahead, start beating them! Start with me!" He ran to consult ten times - at the time I guessed it was the Russian curators, but now I know for sure. This went on until about six in the evening, it got dark, and they dispersed. The flag remained in place. I remember it was March 16.

"WHEN THE FULL-SCALE AGGRESSION STARTED, MY WIFE AND I DECIDED THAT WE WOULD NOT RUN AWAY, THAT WE WOULD STAY IN MARIUPOL"

- Did your family also stay in Donetsk?

- My family stayed in the city until June 2014, then I realized it was too dangerous, so I took my family to the coast to my friends, closer to Mariupol.

- Did they leave and never come back?

- Yes, no one from my family ever returned to Donetsk. I had a couple of visits.

- And when you left, what did you take from home?

- Frankly speaking, the same thing happened again in Mariupol... Ten years ago, the family left with a few bags of children's things... At that time, my daughter was very young, five years old. They took things only for the summer, no one expected the occupation to happen. That's why I didn't take any photos or a computer from home, nothing unnecessary.

I came back later. From the end of August to the fifth of September I was in the city. It was a conscious risk. Why did you do it? My eldest son was going to enter Donetsk Technical University. There was no way he could travel there from Mariupol to take the exams, and the documents were already at the university. I realized that something was going on, but there was no information. I consciously took a risk to resolve this issue. The university still had an admission committee, and they were accepting documents. I just had to write an application on behalf of my son. I did it and took the documents. Donetsk Technical University later moved to Pokrovsk, and I started working there in November. And I worked there for ten years, heroically, I think. The teaching staff left almost entirely. This is part of our history, the history of Donbas and Ukraine. I once asked my son about his education, and he said: "Donetsk Technical University, for better or worse, has always provided a high level of education." Those who graduated from the university with my son now have good jobs. The education provided by our specialists is competitive, real, and valued in the world. My son works for international companies. It was our people who preserved the university in Pokrovsk, our people did not abandon it, did not leave it.

I already understood how to leave. I passed through the checkpoints pretending to be a civilian. If there was a traitor who knew me by sight... But I passed. I found out that at the checkpoint on the Mariupol highway, there are already lists of those who did not betray, remained loyal to Ukraine, and there is no way to leave. So I went across the front line, through Kurakhove, by bus. Even though the war had already begun, some social mechanisms were still working by inertia, and transport was still running. Trains did not run as long as buses. On September 30, I came to Donetsk again to pick up warm clothes. I left Donetsk for good on November 7. I was taking a computer for my son's studies, things for everyone. Frankly speaking, at that time I had only summer shoes with holes in them and short-sleeved shirts, and some raincoat miraculously remained in the trunk. So I took some things for myself.

- What was Donetsk like then?

- When I visited in late August and early September, the first Minsk talks had just taken place. It was a kind of phantasmagoria. I remember my emotions... I was walking around the city center with my cell phone, hiding from the patrols of the "DPR", and I was getting calls from the service department, from Kyiv, about reports. I was walking in the city center, on Lenin Square, which had already been captured, and there were soldiers in ''DPR'' uniforms, which were not yet of the Russian model. And I was speaking Ukrainian! I just moved away so that the patrols wouldn't hear me. I commented on all the figures in my report. We were leaving, and I had to report what we had done in a month. After finishing the conversation, I thought: if these so-called " DPR members" knew who was with them now... The tragedy of the situation is impossible to understand at first from the inside.

It's like a bad dream: you are in your city, but the city is no longer ours, and it seems to have been taken over by a disease, so that people walk around the same, but not the same... It's not that the city was "killed" then. We saw dead cities during the full-scale offensive. And then it was like some kind of crazy disease when people become not people. They walk around as if they were the same, but someone already considers themselves the authorities. The faces are the same, familiar, but everything has changed inside. Some kind of contagious disease that has changed a person internally.

- Was there a moment when you realized you would not return to Donetsk?

- It came gradually... I am a Donetsk resident. And now I will not say that I will not return to Donetsk. I will return to Donetsk, I believe in it. I was at the final and quarterfinal games of Euro 2012, I remember my sector. I know where I will sit at my home stadium. This is the faith of the people who did not stay, who did not become traitors... We had to go through a lot. Working in the militia, and then in the police. And this was during the war! No one in the world has such an experience. Now I communicate with foreigners, less with police officers, more with journalists, with the authorities, with caring friends I have in Romania and Germany. I tell them that no one has such an experience - reforming the service during the war. In 2022, I had a conversation with two respected generals who worked in our system. They asked me why I stayed in the service. I answered: "I'm ashamed of Donetsk in 2014 - not for myself personally, but for the situation, for the fact that no decisions were made. And I am not ashamed of Mariupol in 2022 at all." That is why I remain in the ranks of the National Police. 

When the full-scale aggression began, my wife and I decided to stay in Mariupol, although from the outside this decision may seem wrong. We decided that we would not run anywhere. Although later I realized that it was extremely dangerous for my wife and daughter... This monster had already taken off its mask.

- Where was your son?

- At the beginning of the full-scale war, he had already completed his education and was working. He had experience in IT and moved to Kyiv.

"I HAVE NEVER SEEN SUCH DARKNESS"

- When you saw the film crew, you didn't think: where did these crazies come from?

- I met them on 9 March, when the Russians attacked the maternity hospital.

- What have you been doing until now?

- Our main task was to prevent the capture of our building. Because when government buildings and administrative buildings are captured during a war, it is a loss. What the Russians are doing now is hanging their rag flag somewhere and saying: "This is captured". That's why we defended our central administration with our own forces. This is important because people came and asked: "Is there no more the central administration ?" - "What do you mean, there is no administration - don't you see?" - "Oh, that's good! What should we do, who should we contact?" - "The police are working in your neighborhood." Many men came, offered help, asked for weapons. But we are the police, we cannot organize territorial defense. 

I remember buying plastic bags of sugar to fortify the central administration on the first day of the war. The shops were still open. But people already looked scared. They didn't understand what was happening, but they could feel the catastrophe approaching the city. The bombing and massive shelling had not yet begun, because the Russians had not yet reached the city from the north. And people already felt that it was not like in 2014, that the enemy was not hiding anymore...

People called us on the 102 line - it was important. Dispatchers were sitting in the basement of the central administration, taking calls. We responded to citizens' calls. And the circle was already closing. Not every day we had time to watch the news.

In recent years, the world has never seen such a situation - a complete encirclement of a city, at least in the twenty-first century. With the scale of the war, a complete encirclement of a city is a siege. But we stayed and did our job. And no one could even imagine what was ahead.

Artillery shelling and bombing of the city began. At the meetings... well, it can't be called meetings... Donetsk police officers who were in the city gathered together with the leadership of other bodies, territorial defense, and all together decided and planned what to do next. And there were already many tasks for everyone, especially the police. People were no longer in their homes but in shelters. I will say right away: there were no pre-prepared shelters in the city. People chose their own shelters, cleaned them, and arranged them as best they could. I cannot call them spontaneous, but it was self-organization, of course, with the help of the police. We knew about shelters in the basements of the Pryazovskyi Technical University, a large shelter was made in the Terasport sports club, where a well-known volunteer Yevhen Tuzov was the head. People also stayed in the conservatory, the drama theater, the same tragic theater, where they hid in the theater and in the basements. People were gathering to help each other, to be there for each other. The city was surrounded, with no electricity, no water, no medicine, no food... There were no pre-prepared warehouses We were left alone.

- You once told me that when you are encircled, it is very sad... 

- The feeling that prevailed then was not fear, despair, or despair. It was a feeling that it shouldn't be like this, that it shouldn't have happened. How did we get into this in the twenty-first century? Why did we become hostages in our city? There was no anger. There were people who were angry, of course, more pro-Russian, who shouted: "Ukraine is bombing us!" and were aggressive. But the majority of people were hopeful, they did not give up on themselves, saying that let the cards fall where they may. That's not the case. 

- What day did you get scared? I couldn't help but get scared.

- A person cannot say that it was not scary. The only thing that saves a person in such cases, at least for military and police officers, is work. I'm not making this up. When you go to work at seven o'clock, it disciplines you. At the same time, there is no light in the city, complete darkness... I have never seen such darkness as in Mariupol in my life. My house in Mariupol, where I live (I won't say that I used to live!), is near our central administration. My boss and I agreed that I would be with my family for at least five or six hours a night. I went to work and the city was black as an abyss. I was walking, I didn't turn on the flashlight because I knew there could be a sabotage-reconnaissance group, and I saw nothing, not a single ray, everything was shattered, people were in basements. I was walking, feeling the way with my foot, on glass - everything was in glass near the houses, because the windows were smashed. If I walked on glass, I didn't turn sideways, I walked just outside the house. Once, I felt a tree with my hand... I have never experienced darker darkness in my life. I don't remember any city like this, even though nowadays there is light camouflage somewhere, even though they turn off the lights... It was impossible to use a flashlight, I could only shine a little light when I was already approaching the entrance to the house. And the silence... I have never heard such a dead silence either. It was in the first days when the assaults on the city began. Then there was no more such darkness - the city was red, everything was burning, everything was visible... In the first days, when there was no such bombing, people felt this silence with their skin. After that, I hate complete silence...

- How do you feel about the fact that the film left out the footage of the looters? This is shown to the whole world...

- Mstyslav Chernov showed only a small part of what really happened. It so happened that the film crew was in the places where they were supposed to be, and at the same time, they were not supposed to be.

We found warehouses, got permission from the owners - this is very important - to pick up everything and take it to people. This was the main part of our work. We loaded up at a large grocery store, there were alcoholic beverages, a lot of beer. There were also cookies and other things that people needed. We loaded this food into our large vehicles for the transportation of special forces (as they say, police buses) and delivered it to the places where there were people. I still have footage in my phone of us doing this - others were deleted when we left. One day, a man with big backpacks came by. I asked him what was in them. "It's all for the family!" - he replies. I said: "Stop! Take off your backpack. Show me what you are carrying for the family." He pulls out alcoholic beverages, champagne, beer... And at the very bottom is a small, small pack of cookies. I said: "Is this for the family? Put this pack of cookies in this big backpack and give me the beer." You should have seen his face! He didn't need a family, he didn't need anything - he needed to get drunk so that he couldn't see or understand anything. Frankly speaking, there were many of them.

There are many American films about mass riots and disasters that show how people go wild, lose their humanity, and become like the walking dead. Our police called them avatars... I don't really like this word. They look like zombies, with nothing human in their eyes. I knew not to ask them to help me with anything - they wouldn't do anything. After that, frankly, I have a very bad attitude when a person gets drunk in such conditions - they lose their humanity.

So we were delivering food, water, diapers, baby food. I was distributing near the Main Department of the National Police, because people from my house were sitting in the basements, and there was nothing to feed the kids. I remember a man came up to me and said: "My child is sick, I don't know what to do, where to get medicine..." Back then, there was still a connection. I said: "I'll give you the phone number of my pediatrician, call and ask what to do." Then I met him when I was walking to my house, and he thanked me: "At least she advised me what to do in such circumstances."

- Did you ever feel like none of us would survive?

- Despite all this, it was not. Hope still remained.

- But there is hell around...

- And I can't say that we were fooling ourselves. Look, we were not just delivering food. After the power stopped working, television and the Internet disappeared, people were left without information. And they sent us a news summary to the main office - we had a generator. We printed them out in stacks. At a meeting, we decided that we should distribute them to people because they didn't know anything, and they asked if Kyiv was already captured. I regret that I didn't keep a single leaflet like this as a souvenir... We handed out these news bulletins to people in shelters. It was very important, people asked for news even more than for food. 

Returning to your question about whether there was a feeling that we were all going to die, I would say no, not at all. How it works for people who are surrounded... I know for sure now. We already know that there are battles in the center of Mariupol... We are on Nakhimov Street, which is closer to the sea, and the fighting is going on in the central part of the right bank, on Myru Avenue. People come running to us and say: "Our guys pushed them back to the plane, they pushed them back again!" And the mood immediately changes: everyone drinks coffee, is happy, feels elated... But you can say: people, come on! The city is surrounded, they are going to bomb everything, you will run away - where will you take the fight? No. Everyone rejoices in a small victory. This is how the psyche works. And how many times we hoped that there would be a counteroffensive, that they would break into Mariupol from the Zaporizhzhia region... I cannot count such moments.

Chernov's film is not meant to make people despair or hurt their feelings... How many children died a terrible death from shells in basements! How they suffocated and died in shelters without water... We need to see these children, the whole world needs to see them. It is necessary for the sake of the memory of those who died like that.

When I saw the film crew, at first I thought they were foreigners. Their equipment met the requirements of foreign representatives. They were working. I approached Mstislav Chernov: "Do you guys work here?" - "Yes, we stayed." I don't even remember if he said he was from Kharkiv or not. I got in touch with our manager on the radio station and asked: "There are foreign correspondents here. Maybe you should take them to your place?" It was intuitive. Of course, Artem Ivanovich said: "Take them here". There was an immediate reaction.

We really understood that they could convey something, tell the truth. Later, I heard foreign journalists talking, and they said that during the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, it was impossible for a journalist who was left alone - not at the base, not with the police - to survive. If Chernov, Malolietka and Vasylisa Stepanova had been left alone in Mariupol, looters, pro-Russian people, sabotage-reconnaissance groups, the very Russians who entered the city, would have either killed them immediately or taken them prisoner.

- There's a moment in the movie when you bring the cameraman to the stairs of a store and say: there's internet here. How did you know that?

- "The police always know about it," Volodymyr smiles, "At first we would go up to the top floors, catch Kyivstar and try to send it through it. The Kyivstar office was still working. They connected a generator for power, and there was access to the Internet. Our policemen told us about it, and we went there, sat under the stairs and sent them. There were a lot of people there, a lot of civilians came because it was the only place where the Internet worked. We came there many times. And then the office stopped working, because the Russians started bombing the city center, and Kyivstar employees stopped coming to the office, they were scared. And we started going to other places - to the patrol police department, where our military and patrol police officers were located. My friend (I'm honored to call him that) Mykhailo Vershynin had a Starlink, so we went to him as well. And we had a small Internet channel in the Main Department of the National Police. But journalists had to send a lot of videos. And when the Internet is not working well, it is very difficult to send videos.

There were several very touching moments because the router was connected to Starlink, and our soldiers were near it, each trying to contact their families. I went in and said: "Guys, let's disconnect, we need to transmit information now so that everyone can see what's happening in Mariupol." And everyone turned off the Wi-Fi, sat and waited for Chernov to transmit the video. Then he would call and report: we are here, we are working. I watched the video from the maternity ward and other materials being uploaded. The Internet was working very badly, but I saw that these materials had already been uploaded and were spreading around the world. Mstyslav had worked hard before, the whole world trusted him. I later found out that he was near Snizhne, where the Russians shot down MH-17 in 2014, filming there on the spot. It was also dangerous, but he showed the whole world about the downing. That's why there was trust in him.

And I had only one thought: we need to make sure that no one forgets about Mariupol, that everyone knows what is happening here. The main goal of the Russians was (I'm not mistaken, I think so) to hide everything that happened here. This is their main task, part of their war - to hide crimes. And we did not let them do that.

In the movie, there is footage of a Russian tank pointing its gun at the hospital. Then it was shot at. Do you understand? At a civilian facility, an ordinary city hospital, where there were wounded and sick people. And he was shooting out of fright. Because the Russians were very afraid of Azov. The doctors later told me how a black, mud-covered " DPR soldier" ran into the hospital. "Where have I struck? Where have I struck?" - he shouted. "You killed people right here in the ward!" He waved his hand and ran out. He was afraid that he had shot his own men and that they would shoot him now. And when he saw that Mariupol residents were here, he waved at them and ran on.

I realized that the documentary filmmakers had to be taken out of the city with all the materials. I realized that it was very important. The decision was made very quickly. I remember the eyes of my comrades, who saw me in my broken car and in civilian clothes... One of them said: "Where is your weapon? You're running, so go hand over your weapon!" And I answered: "I am fulfilling a task!" I went to the head of the department - I didn't do it myself, it wasn't my own decision - Artem Kisko, now the head of the Main Department of the National Police in Zaporizhzhia region. I said: "Artem Ivanovich, I'm going to try to get the documentary filmmakers out." - "Go ahead!" Before that, I asked Mstyslav if I should leave my weapon in case we had to break through. He correctly advised that we should go without weapons. I handed it over to the police station and told my comrades that I was going to take the journalists out. They looked at me like this... It was very hard for me. The very next day after that, the police were ordered to leave Mariupol. But imagine how morally difficult it was for me to leave when everyone else was staying.

The car in which Volodymyr took the film crew out with his wife and daughter

When we started moving, there were huge columns of cars trying to leave. It was not an evacuation, it was a breakout of civilians from the besieged city. The tail of the convoy was in the city center, and the head was on the outskirts, on the Melekino highway towards the coast. Everyone who stood there was worried about their children, about their families. And no one would let anyone through. I was driving, the guys were behind me. We decided to do this: they would run out of the car wearing helmets and bulletproof vests with the inscription "Press," and I would also get out and ask them to let us through. People were shocked, they didn't understand - journalists were running in front of the car and asking to let them pass. People did not know how to react, that the press was rushing along somewhere, so they let us through. There was no other way out. At first, Mstyslav ran - there is one shot in the movie. But how far can a person wearing a bulletproof vest and helmet run in front of a car at least at a speed of 20 kilometers per hour? That's why Yevhen Malolietka sat on the hood. And when people saw a black car with holes in it and a "press" sitting on the hood, they were shocked and let us pass in the oncoming traffic lane. This allowed us to leave the city before dark because as it got darker, the Russians blocked the traffic.

After that, the stage began when we passed through checkpoints of the Russians and the so-called "DPR". If we had stayed somewhere, we would not have left, as I realized later. We went in the direction of Polohy, where the road was already cut by the front line. And we crossed this road in the dark, without lighting, without anything. There was no other option.

- They didn't undress you at the checkpoints, did they do it later?

- We couldn't give even a tiny reason for them to check us more thoroughly. Because the first such check would have ended everything immediately. No matter who the mercenaries were, if they saw something suspicious... 

- The way you hug a Ukrainian soldier in the beams will probably always bring tears to people's eyes. It is simply impossible to imagine these emotions... 

- Sometimes people communicate without saying anything... In fact, the commander of the Ukrainian soldier who checked us first should have given him a call to task..." Volodymyr smiles. - "The inspection was like this: the door opens, everyone - Mstyslav, Maloletka Zhenia, Vasylisa, my wife and daughter - looks at him. And I get out of the car in civilian clothes. We hug for a minute or so. That's the whole test. I hardly said anything to him, just: "Friend..."

-  When you realized that you had broken free, what did you talk about, do you remember? 

- I remember well what we talked about between checkpoints. I'm a police officer, so I knew how to behave at checkpoints, that we had to put on a show. If there were professionals there, it would have been much more difficult for us. I saw professionals already in Polohy. I recognized them by their eyes - they had wolfish eyes, and I realized that they were the guards of prisons and zones. And there, even if I played or didn't play, it would have been a different matter, completely different. And in front of the mercenaries, we had to play civilians who were very friendly... Vasylisa Stepanenko and my wife played along. Of course, they spoke Russian, saying: "Guys, all the best to you, have a good life!" And when I got into the car, they would say: "I'll wish you such happiness some other time..." That was our conversation. And when we left, we could not believe that we had broken free. 

- You continue to serve. Almost a year ago, in Pokrovsk, you were wounded while rescuing people from the rubble after a rocket attack...

- We knew there would be another strike on the same place. Now is the time... Russians do this almost all the time. We are there, there are a lot of dead and wounded civilians: young girls, old people... I have a video of why I stayed in that place: we were carrying a girl on a blanket to the car to transport her further. 

A man who was on the fourth floor when the missile hit the fifth floor was walking near our car of the Main Department of the National Police. He was moving as if he was drunk. He had all the signs of post-concussion syndrome. The man did not know where he was, he was disoriented. I asked him to get into the car. I realized what was wrong with him. We had already put the girl in the car and were trying to find out the man's data, persuading him to get in with us to go to the hospital, because we knew there would be a second attack. As soon as he got in, the second attack happened. The girl was unharmed, he was unharmed, the car was intact, but I did not make it. I heard the sound of the missile, but it was impossible to run anywhere...

On 7 August 2023, Russians fired missiles at Pokrovsk. As a result, ten people were killed and 88 were wounded, including two children. It was then that Volodymyr sustained an injury that still makes itself felt

- Debris got into your arm, lungs...

- A piece of shrapnel entered my lung, closer to my heart. The second fragment entered my elbow, I didn't even feel it at first. Later they found it and removed it. But that fragment damaged the nerve that goes to my little finger. I could not feel my finger, and there was weakness in my hand. In the spring, the nerve was sutured. Now it is gradually growing back. The fragment in my elbow was about two centimeters. It was not immediately seen. I was doing push-ups and pull-ups with it, not knowing it was there. Nothing seemed to bother me, but my arm did not work. I thought I would recover in this way. But nothing happened. So I went to the doctors, and they took an X-ray in Kyiv at the diagnostic center in Obolon. I asked: "Come on, girls, let's see if I have a small fragment." The doctor called out: "Come and see what kind of fragment you have". And it was almost two centimeters! 

- I won't ask you if you watch footage from today's Mariupol.

- You know, I have no such desire.

- I think it's too painful.

- I know that this is such cynical Soviet propaganda: to kill a person and start decorating him in a coffin... They make a marathon on the ruins of the city. I don't know what it was like after World War II, how people perceived it, how many people died after the German bombing, how people felt. But life takes its course. They can't pay tribute to those people because they are murderers-how can they pay tribute when they themselves killed them? The psychology of a criminal is such that he makes up any excuse. When people ask me: "The Russians say one thing or another..." I say: you just don't have experience in law enforcement, you haven't read the interrogation protocols of murderers. How they tell why they committed the crime! None of them killed for no reason, they all have an excuse... If they killed children, their parents are to blame for not doing something. Everyone is trying to shift the blame to someone else. That's why everything the Russians do in Mariupol is to justify their own crimes! 

If they do not feel the war on their territory properly, they will not feel anything. That is why they are fighting in a privileged position: we follow the rules of warfare, and they do what they want.

Violetta Kirtoka, Censor. NET