Ukraine: The hunt for Russian collaborators and the case towards an alleged disinformation journalist – Nationwide | Globalnews.ca

KHERSON, Ukraine — To the Kherson journalist Olena Shelestenko, the Russian invasion introduced a “peaceable life” to her southern Ukrainian metropolis.

Within the Kherson New Herald newspaper she operated together with her husband, they had been “heroes,” versus the “fascist regime” of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

She wrote concerning the “Nazis of the Armed Forces of Ukraine,” and in keeping with official Russian spin, referred to the invasion because the SVO — or Particular Army Operation.

However a score-settling is underway: Shelestenko is underneath investigation by a department of the Kherson regional prosecutor’s workplace attempting to carry to justice Ukrainians who sided with Russia through the eight-month occupation of town.

The case towards the pro-Russia journalist, accused of being a part of the huge disinformation marketing campaign supporting Moscow’s invasion, is amongst dozens which were opened towards suspected collaborationists.

“It’s a number of circumstances,” mentioned Oleksii Lehkyi, head of the workforce making an attempt to carry prices towards Kherson authorities officers and others who allegedly cooperated with the Russians.

These accused embrace a former Kherson mayor, Volodymyr Saldo, whom Moscow allegedly put into energy through the occupation. He now faces a cost of treason, which carries a potential life sentence.

Prosecutors have additionally gone after those that took positions within the police, prisons and forms. Two residents had been sentenced to 5 years on Monday for distributing ballots through the sham referendum Russia used to justify annexing Kherson.

Others helped implement Russia’s instructional curriculum. Prosecutors mentioned Wednesday they had been investigating a faculty director who allegedly organized the introduction of Russian textbooks and persuaded workers to “cooperate with the occupiers.”

Kherson residents resisted when Russian troops invaded town on March 2, 2022. Protesters waved Ukrainian flags at armoured columns and mounted partisan assaults. Mayor Ihor Kolykhayev’s refusal to cooperate with town’s new rulers received him arrested.

“Kherson is a Russian-speaking metropolis, however not pro-Russian,” mentioned Kherson journalist Oksana Naumova. “And through the occupation individuals proved it. Ninety per cent of Russian-speaking individuals switched to Ukrainian.”

However some residents aligned themselves with President Vladimir Putin’s expansionism, and now discover themselves going through potential prices underneath a Ukrainian regulation that particularly prohibits “data actions in cooperation with the aggressor state.”

The prosecutor mentioned the Shelestenko investigation was one of the essential on his desk. In a conflict that Russia has buttressed with depictions of a Nazi Ukraine subservient to NATO, the case could also be a uncommon probability to carry somebody to account for spreading falsehoods.

Disinformation impacted “how individuals perceive what’s taking place round them. On account of it, we have now the truth of what we have now round us,” Lehkyi mentioned in an interview.

“Additionally, as you may see, it has bodily outcomes,” Lehkyi mentioned, gesturing to the spoil behind him, which was as soon as Mykolaiv’s gymnasium. “Destroyed buildings, losses of life.”

The Shelestenko investigation remains to be within the pre-trial investigation stage. A statement revealed on the web site of the Kherson prosecutor’s workplace on Jan. 3 alleged she “cooperated with the enemy.”

“As a correspondent for one of many radical anti-Ukrainian Web websites, it’s suspected that she was spreading the narratives of Russian propaganda, and likewise she was justifying the Russian aggression towards Ukraine,” it mentioned.

Shelestenko declined to be interviewed, however in written statements she denied cooperating with or receiving cash from the Russian occupation administration in Kherson.

“The Prosecutor’s Workplace of Ukraine doesn’t trouble to correspond with us,” she mentioned. “We’re not conscious of any accusations, solely data from third events, the reliability of which is unsure.”

The collaboration allegations stem from “the truth that we by no means supported Nazism,” rejected Ukrainian nationalism and favoured the Russian language, she wrote.

“We’re not going to make excuses, we have now acknowledged our perspective on the pages of our publication,” she mentioned.

“There may be nothing invented from what was revealed in our publication, solely information.”

Since Ukrainian troops retook Kherson on Nov. 11, investigators have discovered proof of widespread Russian conflict crimes — torture, killings, sexual crimes, disappearances and in depth property harm.

Greater than 1,000 residents had been imprisoned through the occupation, many for months in detention centres often called “basements,” in accordance with officers. Ten suspected torture centres had been uncovered.

Greater than 200 civilians had been executed, one other 400 died in shelling and 112 had been killed by land mines, whereas about 500 are nonetheless lacking, Ukrainian investigators mentioned.

The chief prosecutor for the area, Andrii Kovalenko, mentioned he started documenting the extent of those suspected conflict crimes lengthy earlier than Ukrainian forces pushed the Russians again throughout the Dnieper River.

However he mentioned he didn’t understand how dangerous it was till the world was liberated and he was capable of go to. The Russian troops had been uncontrolled, he mentioned. As terrible because it had appeared from afar, “in actuality, it was extra horrifying.”

Prosecutors have opened about 9,000 conflict crimes circumstances towards Russian troopers — however readers of Shelestenko and her newspaper had been as a substitute instructed that Ukraine was an “synthetic” nation, and Russia solely needed to free it from “fascists.”

As Putin was struggling to justify his faltering conflict, Shelestenko appeared in a Russian information outlet discussing the “fascist slogans” and “hatred of every thing Russian” in Kherson earlier than the invasion.

An article from her newspaper, posted on Shelestenko’s Fb web page, described grateful Kherson residents receiving meals packages and drugs from the Russians.

“Lastly!” it claimed a lady had instructed them. “I’m so glad you got here!”

A 42-year-old mom of 5 whose husband can also be accused of collaboration, Shelestenko has written that she is a descendent of a Russian naval captain who constructed Kherson’s first road.

In an interview with Russian information outlet Ria Fan, she referred to as herself “Russian by blood and Russian by spirit,” and mentioned she had no time for Ukrainian nationalism. “As a result of I do know the reality. I went to a Soviet college and (was) taught true historical past.”

She went on to lament the difficulties she mentioned her household confronted in Ukraine previous to the invasion. She claimed she was “ridiculed for being Russian” and “confronted harassment in her metropolis.” Ukrainians “threatened to throw acid on the youngsters,” she claimed, and he or she “by no means acquired any advantages and materials help from the Ukrainian authorities.”

The Russian troops, she wrote in her column for the Russian information outlet Kuban Information, had offered the meals, medicines and provides town lacked. “Firefighters and ambulances had been introduced in, even police automobiles had been introduced in. They opened all of the hospitals and did every thing there at no cost.”

“Many individuals lived a peaceable life that Russia established, all establishments, faculties, schools, universities, hospitals, banks, theatres, cafés, eating places, retailers, markets labored within the metropolis,” she wrote.

“The whole infrastructure was working,” she continued, “there was electrical energy, water, fuel, they even managed to activate the heating, the elevators had been working. The town lived.… Repairs had been made, deserted buildings and premises had been up to date.”

Requested about her depiction of Kherson, she instructed World Information the Russian invasion was justified by worldwide regulation, and people arrested had been launched. “The town was capable of survive solely because of the assistance of Russians,” she maintained.

Shelestenko launched Khersonsky Visnyk New together with her husband Gennady after the native newspaper Khersonsky Visnyk closed, mentioned a Kherson journalist who fled town after it was taken over by Russian troops.

The free publication mirrored the previous one in design, however was identified for its “Russian narratives and propaganda,” Yevheniia Vinnych mentioned in an interview in Kyiv.

“Utilizing this type of device, they created disinformation,” Vinnych mentioned. “It was the main focus of their work. Mainly, they created a picture for the occupiers that Kherson was ready for the Russians.”

Vinnych mentioned she welcomed the investigation into Shelestenko, saying the picture she created of Kherson was false. Whereas there have been pro-Russian parts within the metropolis, they had been a fringe.

Fellow journalist Naumova mentioned she crossed paths with Shelestenko at press conferences through the pandemic and famous she each was pro-Russian and flouted town’s masking guidelines. “Additionally, it was very aggressive anti-vaccination,” Naumova mentioned.

Shelestenko justified Russia’s army actions and portrayed Kherson as a Russian metropolis, she mentioned. “So it was open data that they joined the Russian facet.”

Whereas Shelestenko’s protection was permitted, Naumova bumped into bother with the Russian army over pro-Ukrainian posts on her Fb web page, she mentioned.

“They got here to me first as a result of I’m a journalist, and second due to my Fb web page,” she mentioned. A metropolis official helped her flee in July. “As a result of they understood that if I didn’t go away town, one thing would occur to me.”

She mentioned it was honest that Shelestenko was underneath investigation for collaboration. “As a result of we live in a rustic of regulation, so these individuals ought to reply for his or her guilt,” she mentioned.

Intense Russian shelling of Kherson has prevented her from returning to her dwelling metropolis. As an alternative, she is adjusting to Kyiv, and shakes her head at purveyors of disinformation.

“How are you going to lie like this? I don’t know. It’s tough to say one thing about these individuals and to not use dangerous phrases,” she mentioned. “I feel she believed that Russia was right here ceaselessly.”

It wasn’t.

Earlier than Ukrainian forces freed Kherson, Shelestenko fled to Russia, however left a path of columns, social media posts and interviews as notable for what they omitted as for what they mentioned.

From exile, Shelestenko continued writing about Kherson, claiming in Kuban Information it was underneath the management of “fascist evil spirits,” and was burning and unable to perform, amid “squeals” of Glory to Ukraine.

Though she left lengthy earlier than Ukrainian troops arrived, she claimed that “raging crowds of waiters with yellow-blue flags and horrible cries of ‘Glory to Ukraine’ had been operating across the metropolis.”

Residents had been “sitting at dwelling with out meals, water, mild, in chilly flats,” too scared to go outdoors. “Nazis” had been going door to door taking individuals away and capturing them, she wrote.

World Information visited Kherson in January and located no proof to help any of those allegations. Her reviews within the Kubin Information company in Krasnodar, Russia additionally failed to say the relentless Russian artillery fireplace directed on the metropolis’s civilians.

Requested to reply, she accused World Information of solely seeing what its reporters “had been proven” and “pursuing the purpose of not seeing the Nazis within the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”

In one other column, she complained that Ukraine’s SBU safety service had searched her condo in Kherson “like burglars.” She mentioned they had been “silly” to assume they might discover proof of her cooperation with Russia.

“All my cooperation is that I’m Russian by nationality, I communicate and write poetry in Russian,” she wrote. “The Russian man has a soul. Those that are towards us don’t have any soul.”

She wrote that she was in Moscow and anticipated to obtain housing from the Russian authorities. “And, God forbid, we are going to take root in a brand new place.”

“And we are going to turn into part of Nice Russia.”

Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca