EAST SOS Publishes Testimonies of Resistance to Occupation: “Ukraine Cannot Be Erased”

35 years of Ukraine’s Independence. Independence is more than just a date on the calendar or national status. It lives in our actions, thoughts and hearts.

Today, many Ukrainians mark Independence Day while living under temporary occupation. Yet even there, they continue to preserve their Ukrainian identity and resist russian aggression.

To mark the occasion, the EAST SOS Charity Foundation publishes testimonies of people who refused to abandon Ukraine despite pressure, threats and danger. Their stories remind us that resistance to russian aggression continues, and that independence is something Ukrainians defend every day through their actions, thoughts and deeds. The names of respondents have been changed for security reasons.

Ukrainian symbols as one of the forms of resistance to occupation

In the temporarily occupied territories, having Ukrainian symbols or other signs that may be interpreted as expressions of support for Ukraine creates an additional risk for civilians.  As early as 2014, members of illegal armed formations began interfering in the work of educational institutions, including forcing schools to remove Ukrainian national symbols from classrooms. Despite this, teachers continued to defend their civic position. According to the testimony of a local resident, Oleksandra, in 2014, in the city of Sverdlovsk, Luhansk Oblast (renamed Dovzhansk in 2016), one of the teachers refused to remove the Ukrainian flag: 

“They wanted to force him to cooperate, but there was still a blue and yellow flag in the classroom. When the armed men came in and saw the flag, they asked one of the representatives of the sports school administration why the Ukrainian flag was there. And he replied that he was raising future world champions for Ukraine. I don’t know if anything happened to him afterwards because of this, but I think he was a very brave person.” 

Suppression of peaceful demonstrations and abduction of activists by russian military forces 

Following the occupation of Kherson and other settlements in Kherson Oblast in 2022, local residents demonstrated peaceful public resistance to russian military forces. Thousands of people took to the streets carrying Ukrainian flags, joined demonstrations, and publicly declared their rejection of the occupation. All of this took place in the presence of armed russian military personnel and under a real threat to the lives and freedom of participants. Such actions required extraordinary personal courage and became a vivid manifestation of civic resilience among the population of Kherson Oblast and their refusal to accept russian occupation. Witness Anna provided her account of these events: 

“On March 6, we went out to the first big demonstration. I had never seen so many people as I saw that day. People came to express their position, walking through the whole city with flags and yellow-and-blue ribbons. The residents walked along the central streets towards the city authorities. After the russian military occupied the city, they removed the Ukrainian flag and raised the russian flag instead. And then, on March 6, a young man and a young woman replaced the flag with the Ukrainian one again. At that time, not only russian military personnel had entered the city, but also the rosgvardiya [TN: the russian national guard, an internal security force often tasked with suppressing peaceful demonstrations], and they clashed with each other. They could not agree who’s in charge and whether to shoot at the peaceful crowd or use tear gas. They ended up firing at each other. I know that 14 people from their side were brought in wounded that day, but there were also two of our people who were wounded and later went home.” 

russian military forces attempted to suppress the peaceful resistance of the population and stop pro-Ukrainian demonstrations. To disperse protesters, they used threats and force, including gunfire, smoke and stun grenades, as well as tear gas. Witness Petro provided the following testimony of these events in Kherson Oblast in 2022: 

“It was probably already the end of February or the beginning of March when I began participating in the demonstrations. At the first demonstration, they dispersed us using weapons. At the second one, this did not happen, and the occupiers did not approach us. Some activists were abducted. I saw it, but I was too far away to do anything or say anything. They simply took a person, twisted their arms and put them into a vehicle. After that, the person would just disappear, and that was all. In order to stop the demonstration, russian military personnel used tear gas and fired shots into the air.”

Witness Yana told the EAST SOS documenters about the suppression of protests in Nova Kakhovka, Kherson Oblast, in 2022: 

“There was a demonstration taking place there, people were gathering all across Kakhovka. russian military personnel started firing rubber bullets and dispersing these rallies with batons. Even so, people still continued to gather for an entire week. It was only after they shot someone – hit him in the leg, and he bled to death, people started being afraid to come out. Because life comes first.” 

Local government officials also demonstrated resistance to russian occupation by continuing to preserve Ukrainian state symbols on administrative buildings even after russian control had been established over settlements. Ukrainian symbols were removed only when people faced direct physical pressure and coercion on the part of the occupying forces. In one of the temporarily occupied settlements in Kharkiv Oblast, a civil servant was forced to remove Ukrainian symbols while being held at gunpoint, as reported by local resident Natalia: 

“At first, they threatened her because of the Ukrainian coat of arms hanging on her wall. They took it down themselves. They just walked up, removed it and threw it away. But when they came back for the flag, they forced her to take it down herself while holding her at gunpoint.” 

Another form of pressure on civilians under temporary occupation was the demonstrative intimidation carried out on Ukrainian state holidays, which remained significant symbols of local residents’ connection with Ukraine. According to the testimony of Inna from Kherson Oblast, on such occasions russian military personnel deliberately highlighted their presence in the city and demonstrated force, which was perceived by civilians as a means of intimidation and a reminder of the armed control they had established: 

“It was August 24, the Independence Day holiday, and the russian military personnel deliberately drove in a column past a huge line of people at one of the checkpoints in Kherson Oblast. They were driving with russian flags and started simply shooting into the air. That’s how it was – a large queue of people, and they drive past shooting into the air and to the sides.” 

Occupiers forced civilians to remove Ukrainian symbols, threatening them with weapons 

Intimidation with weapons and the destruction of national symbols 

russian occupying forces sought to remove Ukrainian national symbols not only from public spaces but also forced local residents to stop displaying them. The destruction of Ukrainian national symbols became one of the manifestations of coercion and the suppression of Ukrainian identity in the temporarily occupied territories. The russian military personnel attempted to force Maryna from the city of Oleshky (Kherson Oblast) to trample on a coat of arms that she had crafted with her own hands: 

“I embroidered the coat of arms with beads. And he came and threw this coat of arms right in my face. He said: “Here! Trample it with your feet!” I picked it up and held it in my hands. “I said: trample it with your feet!” And I just kept holding it… He said: “What, are you deaf?” And he started hitting me in the face, hitting me in the face. But I still kept holding it, I did not let it go from my hands, I didn’t drop it.”

This publication was prepared under the project “Protection and Psychosocial Services for People with Limited Mobility and Persons with Disabilities Affected by the War”, with the support of the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA). The publication is based on testimonies collected by the EAST SOS documentation team since the start of the full-scale invasion.