Story 20: Anton

Together with other 200 residents of a nursing house in Kakhovka, Anton was forcibly deported to Russia after 8 months under occupation. When the occupiers entered the city,  the director from the Ukrainian administration remained in his position for a while, and then the Russians removed him and appointed their manager: a female collaborator who worked in our nursing house as a nurse. Anton, Bohdan, and Oleksandr asked the new director to allow them to leave for the territory controlled by Ukraine. At first, they were promised it,  but the next day two Russian soldiers with guns and in masks came, locked the men in a room, and interrogated them.

On November 5, four buses and many ambulances from Russia arrived at the nursing house. All the residents were taken by force to buses going to Voronezh, Russia. At the station, Russian propagandistic TV broadcasted the arrival of these forcibly deported Ukrainians. Anton and Oleksandr were then taken to a boarding house in Lower Karachan Village, Gribanovsky District, Voronezh Region.

There, Anton felt isolated. He didn’t have access to any goods of civilization, he couldn’t move around freely, and he was bullied as “NazI’ by other Russian residents of the boarding house in Voronezh. After two months, Anton found volunteers who helped him reach the Russian-Estonian border. At the border, Russian soldiers interrogated him for three hours, but eventually let him go. 

Anton landed in Norway, where he stays now in a refugee camp. He is one of few people deported from the nursing house in Kakhovka who made it all the way out of Russia. Many lost hope of returning from deportation.