IZIUM, Ukraine — The first time Russian soldiers forced their way into the home that 26-year-old Sergei shared with his elderly father, the troops inspected their phones and threatened to “take them to the basement,” referring to a nearby torture chamber, if they found anything they didn't like. They questioned Sergei's loyalty to Ukraine and asked him endlessly about his knowledge of partisans in the city.
Every time Sergei subsequently left his house in Izium, a city in eastern Ukraine, he had to show his passport and again pass whatever loyalty test the presiding officer had settled on. It was a moving target — one day, it might include a full body check for patriotic tattoos, the next a phone search for any suspicious content related to the war or Ukraine, and the next questions about whether he was thankful to his Russian saviors for his freedom from the “Ukrainian Nazis.”
Residents would receive a knock on the door followed by multiple interrogations if neighbors sympathetic to Russia said they had committed even so simple an offense as owning a Ukrainian flag, or other signs of national allegiance.
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