“ A swath of southern Ukraine, including almost all of its Kherson region and the majority of its Zaporizhzhia region, have been under Russian military rule since early March.
Russian occupation authorities are swiftly integrating*these areas into Russia, appointing collaborationist administrations and introducing Russian documents, education programs and currency. On Saturday, Russian authorities disconnected most of the occupied areas in southern Ukraine from Ukrainian cellphone service and internet providers by cutting fiber-optic cables and turning off power at base stations so as to hide “truthful information about the course of the war,” the Ukrainian government said.
The biggest fear, especially among men, in areas under Russian control is that they will soon be forcibly drafted to fight other Ukrainians. That happened earlier this year to men up to the age of 65 in the parts of eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk regions that Moscow has controlled since 2014.
“If they conscript you, and your family is left behind as hostages, what can you do? This was one of the main reasons why we got out,” said Mykola Murashko, 46, who drove to Zaporizhzhia on Wednesday with his wife and children from the Russian-occupied town of Vasylivka.
Russian soldiers at the checkpoint were turning around people who admitted that*they were heading to Ukrainian-controlled Zaporizhzia city, he said. Mr. Murashko told them he was driving on business to another Russian-held village near the front-line. “Every morning for weeks, I kept waking up with the thought: let’s try to leave,” he said. “And today, we have made it.””
- Wall Street Journal
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