“I grew up in Velyka Oleksandrivka during the occupation,” she recalled, referring to a village in the Kherson region. “The Germans evicted us. We had a small, simple house downtown. They lived there. We moved to another house near the forest.”
Eight decades later, it was Russian soldiers who came to his house. “They asked me to show my passport,” said Ms. Nikitenko, now 88. “I went to see him. One opened it, looked at it and said: ‘Get a Russian passport.’”
She refused. “I love Kherson and Ukraine.”
He accepted the money given by the Russians, because he no longer received his pension. It made her feel like a traitor, she said, “but how else was I supposed to survive?”
During World War II, Kharkiv, in northeastern Ukraine, changed hands four times in pitched battles that demolished much of the city. Now, many buildings are once again in ruins as bombing by Russian forces continues.
