A Ukrainian Mayor Disappeared, but Questions of His Loyalty Did Not
in a concerted diplomatic push to show support for Ukraine.
A War of Words: Russia and the West have been
arguing for months
about which side is more willing to negotiate ending the war in Ukraine peacefully.
Khersons prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation into the mayors disappearance but said in an interview that he had no information regarding his whereabouts. The lack of progress has angered Mr. Kolykhaevs son, Svyatoslav, who said that he had started his own inquiry, interviewing as many as 20 people who laid eyes on his father during his incarceration. But he has come up with little more than rumors.
I got information that he got sick, he said. For now, I honestly dont know.
Supporters say Mr. Kolykhaev never intended to collaborate with the occupiers. Days after the invasion started, heavily armed commandoes marched up to his third-floor office and demanded he capitulate. The Russian military already effectively controlled the city, and a refusal could have resulted in arrest, imprisonment or worse.
He refused, according to his bodyguard, who was present.
The mayor told them, I cant do that because I am a citizen of Ukraine, because the people elected me and I wont abandon them, said the bodyguard, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he feared reprisals over his own role during the occupation.
Why Russian forces let him remain in place remains a mystery, but it was an uneasy accommodation.
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Destroyed military vehicles on the roadside in a suburb of Kherson in January.
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Drawings in the cell of the prison where the mayor, Ihor Kolykhaev, was held.
The Russian forces seemed happy to have him at the helm at first, as he freed them from the responsibility of running the city as they set about building an occupation government. In exchange, the mayor refrained from openly criticizing them or publicly supporting the large protests against the occupation that broke out in the first weeks.
But the mayor refused to acknowledge the Russians authority. He rebuffed several attempts by Russian commanders, sometimes at gunpoint, to compel him to switch sides, according to people who were with him throughout the occupation. And he ensured that the Ukrainian flag still flew over the city administration building while he continued to work there.
In his frequent Facebook posts, which he wrote in Russian, the most commonly spoken language in Kherson, he tried to buck up the spirits of Kherson residents and often signed off with the phrase Kherson is Ukraine, accompanied by a Ukrainian flag emoji.
Im not a soldier, the mayor wrote in one Facebook post in June. My task is to preserve our common home and maintain our city in proper condition.
The stance earned him critics, among them the former governor of the Kherson region, Hennadiy Lahuta, who fled Kherson on the second day of the war. In a lengthy interview in June with the Ukrainian news outlet Glavkom, Mr. Lahuta said he had advised Mr. Kolykhaev to leave as well.
On Feb. 25, Kolykhaev definitely understood that the enemy would enter Kherson, Mr. Lahuta said. No matter his elected office and business, he should have left the city, because a parallel existence between the occupier and the Ukrainian government doesnt exist. Those lines will eventually cross.
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That viewpoint, held by others who left Kherson, helped foster suspicions about Mr. Kolykhaevs loyalties that still linger today.
Mr. Kolykhaev dismissed the criticism of outsiders whom he accused of failing to grasp the reality of life under occupation.
Unlike those who carry out their service to the country only through television screens, I am present in the city, responsible for its functioning and the security of those living in it, he wrote in one Facebook post. Only the city residents can judge me and my actions.
Among the mayors strongest supporters are those who suffered most during the occupation.
Andriy Andryushchenko, 28, was a nightclub director before the invasion and helped form an underground resistance group. He said he was arrested over the summer and tortured for 47 days at the same prison where Mr. Kolykhaev was held. Russian guards, he said, knocked out half his teeth and administered electric shocks through wires attached to his genitals. He and his fellow inmates were given one cup of macaroni and a glass of water per day.
Mr. Andryushchenko is now a member of the Kherson military administration overseeing the distribution of humanitarian aid. He said he had known the mayor for years.
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With Russian forces continuing to shell Kherson, civilians in January boarded an evacuation train bound for the western Ukrainian city of Lviv.
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Andriy Andryushchenko said that he was tortured for 47 days at the same prison where Mr. Kolykhaev was held.
I dont think hes a traitor, he said of the mayor. He supported the city and didnt give it up. Of course, he had to be in contact with them, but under the barrel of a gun.
All the mayors efforts at accommodation did not save him from imprisonment. In April, Russias military commandants expelled him and his team from the city administration building, installing a puppet mayor as Mr. Kolykhaev continued to work from another location. In June, Russias domestic intelligence service, the F.S.B., arrested him and his bodyguard and threw them into a jail for political prisoners. His bodyguard was released months later.
The Russians were quick to use the ambiguity of the mayors situation in their efforts to break resistance to their presence.
The first question a Russian interrogator asked Oleksandr Maksimenko after he was arrested in July was about the mayor, Mr. Maksimenko said. How would he feel, the interrogator asked, if he learned that the mayor had capitulated, obtained a Russian passport and abandoned his people?
I had doubts, said Mr. Maksimenko, who said he was imprisoned because he was head of the local affiliate of a Ukrainian government think tank. What if its true?
It was a few weeks later when, by accident, he saw Mr. Kolykhaev, who was largely kept out of sight of the other inmates. A guard in the prison had left the mayors cell door ajar, and he happened to be standing in the doorway.
We saw each other and looked each other in the eyes, Mr. Maksimenko said. He sincerely smiled at me and I at him. In that way, we supported each other.
That was the last I saw him, he said.
On the street where Mr. Kolykhaev had a private office in central Kherson, the facades of the little cottages are painted with the frescoes of angels and hot air balloons, a project that the mayor financed himself. Kher
Thursday, March 2, 2023 at 10:00 am