A mayor disappeared, but questions of his loyalty did not
KHERSON, UKRAINE>> The jailhouse near the Dnieper River where the Russians imprisoned and tortured hundreds of Ukrainians sits empty now. Many of its inmates were freed when Ukraine’s forces liberated the city more than three months ago.
But one prominent prisoner is still missing: the city’s former mayor, Ihor Kolykhaev.
The mayor, who refused to flee and for a while remained at his post after Russian forces swept into Kherson, was arrested in June and put in solitary confinement. In the fall, as Ukrainian forces advanced on the city, Kolykhaev’s jailers moved him deeper inside Russianheld territory, according to witnesses. He has not been heard from since.
The disappearance has deepened questions swirling around Kolykhaev and the role he tried to play. Although he refused to acknowledge the Russians’ authority or swear fealty to them, he remained at his desk, working to keep the lights on and the buses running. The decision helped to ensure a livable city but also smoothed the way for Russian forces to create an occupation government.
Many city residents consider the 52- year- old former mayor a hero for staying put even as much of the political and security establishment fled in the opening days of the war.
But others harbor suspicions about the mayor’s loyalties that even his arrest and imprisonment have not dispelled.
The competing views about Kolykhaev underscore the complexities of assessing loyalties in wartime Ukraine, particularly in occupied territories.
With Russians in control, what counts as treachery is often fuzzy. It does not have to be something as serious as abetting the Russian military. Teachers and police officers who did nothing more than continue to show up at work have been disparaged by those who fled, and in some cases, they were arrested after liberation.
“There’s a lot of talk and leaks saying that he’s a traitor, he gave up the city,” said Dmitry Poddubnyi, a Kherson City Council member, who remained by the mayor’s side until his arrest. “We spent so much time with him. We slept all together in the City Council building. Every day we were together, and I never saw anything like that.”
Kherson’s prosecutor has opened a criminal investigation into the mayor’s disappearance but said in an interview that he had no information regarding his whereabouts. The lack of progress has angered Kolykhaev’s son, Svyatoslav, who said 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 don’t know.”
Supporters say Kolykhaev never intended to collaborate with the occupiers. Days after the invasion started, heavily armed commandos marched up to his third- floor office and demanded he capitulate. The Russian military 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 can’t do that because I am a citizen of Ukraine, because the people elected me and I won’t abandon them,’ ” said the bodyguard, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Why Russian forces let the mayor remain in place remains a mystery, but it was an uneasy accommodation.
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.
“I’m 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, Lahuta said he had advised Kolykhaev to leave as well.
“On Feb. 25, Kolykhaev definitely understood that the enemy would enter Kherson,” 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 doesn’t exist. Those lines will eventually cross.”
That viewpoint, held by others who left Kherson, helped foster suspicions about Kolykhaev’s loyalties that still linger today.
Kolykhaev dismissed the criticism: “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.