LIUBYMOVKA, Crimea – During the morning drill on March 20, Colonel Yuliy Mamchur announced to his troops that Ukraine’s commanders had decided to withdraw from Crimea. The personnel of Belbek military airbase near Sevastopol greeted the news with relief and regret.
The soldiers now face a tough decision: to pack and leave Crimea, or quit the army and stay.
None of them was willing to take the third option: swear an oath to Russia.
But after a three-week standoff with Russian troops and aggressive Russian-backed militias, the decision not to fight for the homeland – or a strategic piece of it – was accepted. Only a day earlier, the Ukrainian soldiers were preparing to fight the Russians, first taking care to evacuate their wives and possessions, including pets and house plants.
They fired a few shots in the evening, after pro-Russian militants threw stun grenades at their base. “So we are moving forward slowly,” Mamchur told his unit after the tough night.
His deputy, Major Mykola Sobetsky, told the Kyiv Post that now the soldiers wanted to hear instructions about what to do with army property. “I don’t want to leave any of our possessions to the Russians,” he said.
The Russian invasion of the Crimean peninsula started on Feb. 27. With the support of local Russian-backed self-defense paramilitary groups, they started surrounding and later storming Ukrainian military bases, pushing the troops to swear allegiance to the people of Crimea.
The standoff reached its peak on March 18, when Ensign Sergiy Kokurin was shot to death during the Russian storming of a Ukrainian base in Simferopol. One of the attackers, a Crimean self-defense trooper, also died in the violent clash, prompting a flurry of accusations from the Kremlin propaganda machine that extremist groups in Ukraine shot at both sides.
Belbek, whose airfield had been occupied by the Russian troops in the first days of March, became the symbol of the spirit of Ukraine’s army when some 100 of its soldiers, armed with nothing but two flags, marched onto the airfield from the barracks to face fully armed Russian troopers who fired warning shots.
The Russian invasion caught Ukraine by surprise, including its soldiers in Crimea.
Sobetsky said on Feb. 20 that nobody on the Ukraine side believed that Russia was preparing to take over the peninsula. Living side-by-side with Russian-speaking civilians, as well as staging joint exercises with Russian military stationed in Sevastopol, the Ukrainian soldiers could not imagine that such a long-time relationship could be shattered so rapidly.
In Liubymovka, a village on the outskirts of Sevastopol that houses Belbek airfield, the attitude of the villagers to Ukrainian soldiers changed just as fast. They now refer to Ukrainians as “occupants.”
“They are just blind with Russian propaganda. Let them live under a totalitarian regime for some time and they will see what they’ve got and what they’ve lost,” Sobetsky said.
Born in Mykolayiv Oblast in southern Ukraine, he is now thinking about returning to his home region along with his family. He plans to continue to serve in the army.
His comrade Ivan, also a soldier who was afraid to give his last name out of fear of retribution, said he had to leave the army. A Sevastopol native, he wants to stay in his hometown, but won’t serve in the Russian army.
“My mom, who lives here, called me and urged to move to the Russian side, but my father understood me,” Ivan said
Family quarrels and even breakups over politics have become commonplace. Oleg, another soldier from Belbek, born in Odessa Oblast, said he is constantly arguing over his service with his wife, a Russian by nationality and Sevastopol native.
Tragedy, it seems, is all around. Olga, the wife of a Ukrainian navy officer, looks out to the sea at the huge Slavutych battleship, where her husband spent the last month without setting a foot on shore. It’s blocked by Russian ships and blasted by ultimatums delivered through loudspeakers to surrender or face a storm. On March 19, the Russians threw live grenades close to Slavutych, targeting and damaging the smaller corvette Ternopil.
Olga, who did not give her last name because of fears for her husband’s fate, is distraught because Ukraine’s navy has not been given an order to evacuate. In fact, they have not been given any clear orders.
“How long is Kyiv going to keep the fleet in uncertainty? They have already given the order to land troops to move away, but what about the navy?” Olga laments.
The order didn’t come even after the kidnapping of a fleet commander, Admiral Serhiy Haiduk, on March 19 from his headquarters in Sevastopol. He was released the following morning, after an apparent threat from the central government to cut off water and electricity for Crimea.
On March 20, Russian Admiral Aleksandr Vitko came to Slavutych in an attempt to persuade the Ukrainian officers to switch sides. But neither Slavutych, nor Ternopil crews gave in, unlike auxiliary ship Korets, which had a Russian flag flying.
Later in the day, three other Ukrainian ships were taken over by the Russian navy, Ukraine’s Channel 5 reported.
But the Crimean soldiers do not think their fight will stop on the peninsula. Those who want to continue serving in the army on mainland Ukraine expect the battle to move with them.
“I really worry that the Russians may try to invade our eastern border and it will turn into a real war,” said Sobetsky of Belbek.
Kyiv Post staff writer Oksana Grystenko can be reached at [email protected]. Kyiv Post photojournalist Anastasia Vlasova contributed reporting to this story. She can be reached at [email protected].
Editor’s Note: This article has been produced with support from the project www.mymedia.org.ua, financially supported by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Denmark, and implemented by a joint venture between NIRAS and BBC Media Action.The content in this article may not necessarily reflect the views of the Danish government, NIRAS and BBC Action Media.
