‘How I spied on my Russian patrons armed with just a negroni’
Women of Kherson reveal how they took advantage of invaders’ chauvinism to win back the city’s freedom
For the Russian soldiers occupying the Ukrainian city of Kherson, Anastasia Burlak’s cafe-bar was a popular place for R&R. The pizza was tasty, the booze flowed and their hostess – a smiley, tattooed 30-year-old – was always welcoming.
Yet as they downed Scotch by the bottle, and tried to flirt with Anastasia and her waitresses, the heavily armed customers relaxed a little too much for their own good. None realised that when her eye occasionally lingered on their uniforms, it wasn’t out of admiration for the men wearing them.
Anastasia was spying on her patrons for Kherson’s pro-ukrainian partisans. Details of any officer with highranking uniform badges would be relayed to her military handler, helping the campaign that brought Kherson’s occupation to an end last year.
“I remember the first time some Russians came in, my hands were shaking as I served them, I was so scared,” Anastasia told The Daily Telegraph. “But I was also angry. How dare they come to our land and try to decide our affairs for us? I passed on any information I could: how many soldiers there were, how many vehicles, any details of commanders.”
It was dangerous work. Anastasia communicated with her handler via private messages on her Instagram feed, which otherwise showed pictures of cats, holiday snaps and nights on the town. She choose a codeword to send if Russian FSB agents ever came knocking at her door: “Negroni”. It would signal she was now in jail, and for her handler to erase all traces of their contact. “If the Russians start torturing you for information, they can break the strongest person,” she said.
Vladimir Putin’s forces captured Kherson a year ago last Wednesday, making the port of 300,000 the first major Ukrainian city to fall to Kremlin control. During eight months of occupation, thousands were arrested and jailed, with hundreds more killed and many still missing. The Ukrainian flag was finally hoisted in the city again in November, after a counter-offensive that owed much to tip-offs from informants such as Anastasia.
The euphoria that greeted the city’s liberation has proved short-lived. Having retreated to the far side of the river Dnipro, Russian troops now simply shell Kherson from afar. Random mortar fire peppers the streets 24 hours a day, claiming 90 civilian lives in the past three months. The city is even emptier than it was during the occupation, when twothirds of the population fled. Freedom Square, where huge street parties took place in November, is deserted.
Yet for Anastasia and many others who acted as partisan spies, there is still the consolation of knowing that they did their own small bit to win Kherson’s freedom back. Most, like her, were not trained espionage agents. Instead, they were ordinary residents: cafe workers, hoteliers, taxi drivers and housewives, who all lived in daily fear of getting caught. Even now, only a few are willing to talk – and still have no idea who else was involved.
“It wasn’t a system – most of us acted just on our own initiatives, and that’s why the Russians could not stop it,” Anastasia says.
Before the invasion, Anastasia took little interest in politics. “I just saw Russians as my neighbours and cousins. I now feel ashamed that I didn’t pay more attention,” she says.
That made the shock of Kherson’s fall all the greater – especially when Russian soldiers first entered her premises one day and ordered coffee. “The whole bar went silent,” she remembers. “They were trying to be friendly, though: they asked if they could pay in roubles, and when I said no, they didn’t get angry.”
Kherson’s new overlords did not stay on best behaviour long. Despite their claim to be “liberating” the city, Anastasia had already heard of friends being arrested. By April, reports of atrocities were also emerging from Bucha, the Kyiv suburb that suffered the brunt of Russia’s assault on the capital. “That made me really angry. I had to do something,” she said.
Among those already on the run from the Russians was her friend “Vlad”, a member of Kherson’s territorial defence force. He warned her that she would be taking a “big risk” by spying on her Russian customers. But their increasingly boorish behaviour in her bar banished any second thoughts.
Anastasia never found out what her Ukrainian handlers did with her information, nor did she really want to know. “I hope it was helpful but I wanted a simple life,” she said. “I didn’t really want to take responsibility for people’s deaths.”
That Anastasia never had to resort to codeword “Negroni” may have been because of the old-school attitudes of the Russian army, a blend of chivalry and chauvinism. They tended to view only men as a threat, and seldom stopped and questioned women in the street. Even if they had done, they would have probably ignored Irina Kabycheva, a 42-year-old housewife who was another member of the spy network. When walking around the city on reconnaissance missions, she would take her 10-year-old son Timur with her, looking the picture of motherly innocence.
“I’d take him out to his judo class, sometimes with my husband as well, and we’d just look like a family going for a walk,” she said. “Nobody suspected us at all.”
In reality, she was monitoring various hotels and goods yards, noting any requisitioned by the Russians as barracks or vehicle depots. One of her tips was that Russian officers were using the Don Marco, a restaurant also popular with Ukrainians. Her handler told her it would not be targeted because of the risk to civilians. But a hotel called the Ninel, she said, was hit by a Us-supplied Himars rocket in October, killing several Russian officials living inside.
The informants did not keep their eye only on Russians. Oksana Pohomii, 59, a member of a pro-western party on Kherson’s city council, passed information on Ukrainians she suspected of collaborating with the Russians. Some were fellow members of the 54-strong council body. Others were seen attending pro-russian demos, or helping to organise September’s Kremlin-rigged referendum to become part of Russia. “I passed the information via a Signal chat group – just an inner circle of a few people,” she said.
Oksana herself went into hiding in May, after Russian troops came looking for her at her house. She continued to post videos denouncing the occupation via a closed Facebook page, having “unfriended” anyone whose loyalties she was unsure of.
As the months passed, the spying campaign yielded results. Several officials in Kherson’s Kremlin-installed administration were assassinated. The tip-offs helped the Ukrainian military pinpoint targets for its Himars missiles, destroying the supply bases the Russians depended on.
Anastasia would later learn how she had become a bit-player in a very ruthless game. “Vlad” disclosed that, one night, he’d followed a drunken Russian soldier out of another bar and stabbed him to death. It wasn’t quite the shock she expected. “It felt absolutely normal to hear that,” she said. “I know the Russians are human but, after all this time, I hate them.”
Neither Irina nor Oksana has a troubled conscience. During eight months of Russian rule, they too lost any empathy for the occupiers. As Irina’s husband put it: “They came and took our property, torturing people, kidnapping people.” The hatred wasn’t just born of the serious human rights abuses, but petty indignities. At checkpoints, Russian troops would stop and search entire bus-loads of residents if they did not say good morning cheerfully enough.
The bitterness lingers. For while the Russians have now moved on, many residents who were accused of collaborating remain. Some are even suspected of directing the mortar fire that now rains on Kherson daily.
Just a few doors from Irena’s home is a house spray-painted with the “Z” symbol used by Russian forces. The graffiti also denounces the occupant as a “Ruscist” – a play on the words Russia, racism and fascism.
Living there is Valentina Haras, 74, a neighbourhood cleaner accused by several locals of supporting the Russians when they came. “She was walking around with the Russian flag in her hand and accepted Russian humanitarian help,” claims Irena. “She has painted Ukrainian flags next to the Zs, to try to show she’s a patriot, but she has always supported Russia.”
Had she really? Asked by The Daily Telegraph, Valentina insisted: “I’m not pro-russian – I have a daughter who lives in California,” she said. “I’ve nothing to be ashamed of.” To prove her point, she even brandished a small American flag. She confirmed, though, that Ukrainian police had visited her and taken her phone for investigation. “They asked if I made lists of local people for the Russians – I did, but only so the elderly people could get help.”
Whether the police deem Valentina guilty as charged, or just the victim of malicious gossip, remains to be seen. Such is the rancour in Kherson, however, that many minds already seem made up. “She was collaborating for sure” said a neighbour standing on a street corner with two other men, who nodded in agreement. “She should be punished by the process of law, though, not by the neighbours.”
Might they, as neighbours, then forgive her? With the same certainty that they had just nodded, all three shook their heads.