Captives forced to proclaim pro-Russian slogans – or beaten. The story of Kherson doctor detained by Russians

During the long months of occupation, until June, Ukrainian flags hung in the Kherson City Clinical Hospital named after Athanasius and Olha Tropin. The chief doctor Leonid Remiha refused to cooperate with the Russians. For this, the occupiers arrested and tortured him.

In liberated Kherson, at his workplace, the 68-year-old doctor told hromadske how he and "Tropinka" – as the hospital is called by the locals – survived the occupation.

Russians were terrified of coronavirus

On February 24, the chief doctor Leonid Remiha received a call from friends from Henichesk. They said that the Russians had entered Chonhar. Explosions were already heard in Kherson, but he still went to work. "How could I leave? I have been working in this hospital since 1978. As soon as I came here from the institute, I stayed. I started as a district therapist and ended up as a general director," Remiha said when asked whether he considered evacuation. His family left, he stayed with the team.

Until March 1, the hospital was still working in "normal mode", and then the Russians captured the city. Doctors expected the occupation authorities to visit them immediately, but "Tropinka" was not touched for another week. On March 8, Russian medics appeared on the doorstep of the hospital together with the military. A serviceman in the rank of captain ordered to remove Ukrainian flags. Remiha refused. So the man promised to return in the evening. However, he never did. Yellow and blue flags hung on five buildings of the hospital until June 9.

Later, the leadership of the medical service of the occupation troops came to the hospital with armed soldiers. They demanded to give them the children's department to accommodate the Russian military there. Remiha said that there are covid patients there and it takes several days to disinfect. In "Tropinka", which was the main covid hospital, there were indeed hundreds of patients, but Remiha somewhat exaggerated the threat. In all departments, doctors hung signs "Stop. Covid. Do not enter", and doctors wore anti-covid scrubs. The Russians were frightened and did not touch the hospital until May.

This is not the only case when the doctors of "Tropinka" made fools of the occupiers. FSB officers demanded to report to them about all patients related to the army. When the wounded were brought to the hospital from Lilac Park, where the Russians shot the territorial defense fighters, the doctors recorded the Ukrainian soldiers as civilians in the documents, and changed their names.

"There were terrible injuries. Some with bullet wounds to the head I had already transferred to neurosurgery, and they died there. Then I even went there, we helped to collect corpses. I found two bodies in the basement there. The guys were crawling, apparently, and died there, poor things," the doctor recalls.

Arrest for "propaganda against the Russian Federation"

Before May 9, the occupation authorities intensified their work on the information front. Remiha was handed four stacks of Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper "under his personal responsibility" to put them on the tables of patients and doctors.

"Okay, I'll do it tomorrow," the chief doctor replied, and in the evening he burned all the copies in the hospital yard.

The Russians found out about it, but then they did not touch him. However, later armed FSB officers began to come for "conversations". They said that doctors must work "strictly according to the laws of the Russian Federation". They ordered to gather the team and conduct propaganda campaigns that Russia is in Kherson forever. The Russians never found out that the doctors were gathering in the reception department and secretly watching Ukrainian television.

The last time Leonid Remiha went to work was on June 7. Then the FSB officers came after him. The armed special service officers were accompanied by the "head" of the Kherson Department of Health Vadim Ilmiev, the Russian minion in the oncological dispensary Aleksandr Nesterenko and a man who introduced himself to Remiha as the "Minister of Health of the Tuva Republic". The invaders gathered the hospital administration and announced that by order of the "military administration" they were suspending Leonid Remiha from his work as a pro-Ukrainian member of the city council, who "was in Poroshenko's party, conducted propaganda against the Russian Federation". They took away his phone, where they found photos of Ukrainian flags, and reminded that the flags are still hanging in the hospital. One of the FSB officers said: "Take him to Perekopsk, under arrest".

Remiha fell ill and had a hypertensive crisis. His deputies insisted on hospitalization, because he could have suffered a stroke. The FSB officers agreed, but forbade anyone to visit him and ordered staff to inform them when Remiha would be discharged. On the hospital bed Remiha held meetings, and the day before discharge he left the hospital. Then he holed up. In his place was appointed cardiologist Iryna Svyrydova, who worked in "Tropinka" before the Revolution of Dignity.

"She resigned and went to a private clinic. She had a history of alcohol abuse in the workplace. I warned her for the first time, warned her for the second time, and for the third time she resigned after she was found in a state of intoxication at the workplace," Remiha describes her.

Irina Svyrydova also found a deputy Pavlo Novikov, who had worked as a district doctor in "Tropinka".

"They took everything and took me to the place where they beat everyone"

Leonid Remiha was hiding in the apartments of his relatives and friends who had left Kherson. He did not return to his apartment for a reason as the Russians paid him frequent visits. Despite the fact that the hospital was already managed by collaborators, Remiha and his deputies continued to conduct some operations at the "Tropinka". They met secretly. They called each other and said "fish". This meant a meeting at the railway market. "Flowers" — at the trolleybus stop on Ushakova Street. They also had a safe house. On September 20, Remiha was on his way to the meeting when he saw unmarked cars and a hospital car with Novikov, the Russian-appointed deputy director of the hospital, sitting near the apartment. Remiha thought he would drive past him, but a car blocked his way. Armed Russians arrested the doctor.

"They took everything and took me to the place where they were beating everyone," the doctor said.

It was three Kherson remand prison, where Russians arranged a torture chamber. There, in the fourth cell, Remiha was held from September 20 to 28. There were eight people in the cell for four. Then he was transferred to the ninth cell, and in his place came a Russian colonel, whose soldiers, as the doctor found out, had deserted. The fourth cell was called "working".

"The ninth cell was for those who had already undergone all kinds of torture. These guys were there for almost 90 days, like Mr. Kolykhayev (Kherson mayor — ed.). Mr. Kolikhayev had a separate cell next door," recalls Remiha.

Prisoners had to learn Russian anthem

According to the doctor, the guards demanded that every time a guard entered the cell, the prisoners shouted "Glory to Russia", "Glory to Putin" and "Glory to Shoigu". Those who did not obey were taken to the corridor and beaten 50 times with a stick. Also, all prisoners had to learn the Russian anthem. Remiha refused to learn it. During interrogations, he was beaten and tortured with electricity. He was "accused" of taking humanitarian aid to Kalanchak, voting for the recognition of Russia as an aggressor state, decommunization and even corruption as a Kherson City Council member.

"One of the accusations: 'Why do you pay salaries in Ukrainian hryvnia?' They did not even understand the system of how we pay. They think that it was the city authorities who gave the money, but we had everything coming centrally from the National Health Service," the doctor explains.

After the torture, a lie detector was waiting for the doctor. The test lasted four hours. Remiha was asked whether he had a call sign "SBU", whether he transmitted data on the deployment of Russian military, whether he received illegal money for his activities during the occupation. He passed the test and the next day all the documents were returned to him. At the same time, they kept the car and did not allow him to come to the hospital.

Leaving Kherson, the Russians looted "Tropinka". They took the car, some laboratory equipment, an expensive gastroscope, computers.

As soon as the Armed Forces entered the city, Remiha returned to the hospital and told Novikov, who for some reason did not leave with the Russians, that the Armed Forces were in the city, so he was the chief doctor again.

Now, looking back on the experience, Leonid Remiha believes that staying in the city was the right decision.

"I am 68 years old. I deliberated two options: either I leave with my relatives in April (there was such an opportunity), or I stay with the team. I made a clear decision for myself that I would stay with the team to the last. And it was the right choice," Leonid Remiha reasons. He believed to the last that Ukraine would liberate Kherson. And when someone from the team expressed doubts, he insisted: "Without a doubt".