One got off the evacuation bus crying so much he could barely speak. The other, with tears in her eyes but immense relief drawn on her face. Svitlana Tytova and Tetiana Verjykovska They come from the Russian-occupied city of Berdyansk on the Black Sea coast.
The joy that Svitlana Tytova felt when she reached the land controlled by the Ukrainian government immediately carried her painful memories of what she has experienced in these months.
“We fled because eight men armed with automatic rifles entered our house,” says this 52-year-old reporter as she hugs her niece.
“They were gathering people”adds the woman, who doesn’t have enough strength to say more about it.
A few meters from her, Tetiana Verjykovska rubs her eyes and smiles. “This is freedom!” Says the 29-year-old choreographer. “I think I can do it now.”
However, Tetiana Chekoy not so sure about this.
The 45-year-old psychiatrist advised thousands of Ukrainians displaced by the first fighting in 2014 with Russian-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.
According to her, Russian tactics since her invasion of Ukraine, launched in late February, mix psychological intimidation and brainwashing. “Each of these people has post-traumatic stress disorder,” Chekoy says.
Chekoy and his fellow psychiatrist Ulyana Ilman offer an overview of the psychological tactics that the Kremlin seems to be using to persuade Ukrainians to accept that they are Russians.
Independent journalists have no access to occupied regions, and fleeing people destroy all correspondence or other evidence before approaching Russian checkpoints.
The two women spend their days in a specialized center, near the only checkpoint where Ukrainians can still cross the southern front line.
Only a handful of people pass this roadblock every day. The Kremlin has banned almost everyone, excluding mothers of small children and the elderly, it leaves the four regions annexed to it at the end of September.
“The Russians now see these people as their property. They are trying to wipe them out,” Ilman says. “And it leaves them with psychological scars.”
Chekoy tells the story of a woman from the village of Vasylyvka, in the occupied Zaporizhia region, who marked her. “The Russians ordered her to teach (after annexation) because she was highly respected and that could bring the students back to class,” Chekoy says.
The woman “He had to teach with a tank aimed at the school”, he adds, as if to remind him that the version of history and war taught in the classroom had to follow the Kremlin script.
According to Chekoy, the school was decorated with flags engraved with the war cries of the Soviets during World War II. The Kremlin labels the Ukrainian authorities as Nazis and justifies their invasion of Ukraine as something necessary “to save” the Russian-speaking population from “genocide”.
The woman also claims that “the Russians have blocked all (Ukrainian) TV channels and are now broadcasting their own”.
“My friends have told me that people who have lived like this for two or three weeks they had already changed their way of thinking“he says. Russian indoctrination methods” work, “he adds.
According to the two psychiatrists, the chronic shortage of basic necessities and food has contributed to weaken people’s resistance.
“They have a well-defined action plan,” says Chekoy. “First they morally destroy a person. And then they start indoctrinating. “
Both psychiatrists agree that many of the people who fled the occupied areas, especially children, appeared hungry, and point out the important role they believe lack of food plays in this traumatized country. famine in the 1930s and 1940s, in Soviet times.
Ilman says he “saw children throwing themselves on food” after reaching the territories controlled by Kiev.
“Some guys they couldn’t stop eating: They ate and ran to the bathroom and then came back and ate more, ”adds Chekoy.
But what worries both women most are the psychological scars.
“Many of those who come are bewildered. We ask them questions but they don’t understand the questions well“, To explain.
“Some cry and laugh at the same time. These are signs of hysteria, of stress.”
AFP agency
PB
Source: Clarin
