“Instead of leaving in a refrigerator, I left in a sofa”. Ukrainian soldier about rescue from Russian occupation

“Hollywood is no match,” Artem Lukianenko, a 25-year-old Kyiv resident and soldier with the 28th Mechanized Brigade recalls his experience with a smile.

His story resembles the plot of a dramatic thriller — fortunately, with a happy ending.

In the fall of 2022, he and his two brothers-in-arms hid in a cellar in the Russian-occupied village of Pravdyne in the Kherson region for more than a month. Then he spent more than a month in Bilozerka, the district center, which was liberated along with the entire right bank of the Kherson region on November 11, 2022.

But the most striking thing in his memories is the story of how the villagers transported them from one hiding place to another through 6 Russian checkpoints.

Failed assault and trap in the encirclement

At the beginning of the Great War, Artem was 23 years old, so he was not subject to mobilization. When he wanted to volunteer for the Armed Forces, he was initially denied because he had no military experience.

Eventually, in June 2022, they agreed to recruit him on the condition that he sign a three-year contract. After a month of military training in the UK, he was assigned to the Odesa 28th Separate Mechanized Brigade, which was tasked with a counteroffensive in the Kherson region in late summer.

“I wouldn't say we were prepared, because it's impossible to prepare in a month, even in Britain. We hadn't even been under fire yet, we didn't understand what it was,” Artem recalls.

On August 28, his unit was tasked with grouping near the village of Stepova Dolyna and preparing for an assault in the morning in the direction of the nearest occupied village of Pravdyne.

At dawn, the soldiers wrapped themselves in colored tape for identification and, after the artillery fired on the enemy, went on the attack.

Artem was wounded as soon as they started moving towards the village. Enemy artillery was firing and a shrapnel pierced his helmet. They shouted at him to jump out of the armored personnel carrier and return. But the man did not listen, because his friend was next to him in the armored vehicle, and Artem did not want to leave him. This friend would later die in this battle.

Ukrainian forces failed to recapture Pravdyne at the time. According to Artem, the Russians probably had intelligence about the planned assault.

“When we approached Pravdyne, the Russians had already retreated behind the village. They were waiting for us to come in so they could surround us.”

The wounded Artem was waiting on the edge of Pravdyne for evacuation, along with his twice older colleague Serhii, who was shell-shocked during the battle. Later, they realized that they were surrounded behind the enemy's back, and their brigade had already left the village.

How they get in touch with the local

Serhii and Artem found an empty house with a broken window, and they entered it in search of food and medicine. After all, they had to hide from the Russians somewhere. The soldiers realized that they would not last long here — they found only buckwheat, crackers, and water, as well as expired medicines.

“Serhiy later admitted to me that he thought I wouldn't live long. He said I was living only on adrenaline because there was a bloody mass on my head.”

The next day, they saw a man from the window who came to the yard to feed the dog. They did not dare to talk to him because they were afraid that he was cooperating with the Russians and would betray them. But a day later, they realized that they had to take a chance because Artem was in danger of blood infection without medical care. So when the stranger came to feed the dogs again, Serhii whispered to him:“Man!”.

He was frightened but still approached. The stranger turned out to be a resident of the same street, 56-year-old Oleh Bilyi, who was looking after the pets of the people who had left.

Oleh explained to the soldiers that they would not be able to escape from the encirclement now because the Russians knew all the local men by sight. And even if they changed into civilian clothes, they would be quickly recognized as non-locals. He warned them that after the counteroffensive, the Russians checked all the houses and looked for Ukrainian soldiers hiding somewhere.

Oleh suggested waiting until late in the evening and trying to go to his house a few houses away and hide in his cellar. The man stunned Serhii and Artem with his confession: “There is already one of our guys hiding down there.”

On the day of the failed counteroffensive, Oleh saw 23-year-old Zhenia wounded in the arm near his house on the road. He took him to the summer kitchen and ran through the gardens to the village nurse, Liudmyla, asking her to help the wounded man. She agreed only on the condition that he was a Ukrainian, not a Russian soldier.

She was afraid to go back to Oleh's house when two more soldiers appeared there. Any movement in the village aroused suspicion among the Russians and the few neighbors who cooperated with them.

Therefore, the woman sent medicines and food every day through Oleh.

In addition to her, the rest of Oleh's family sent bags of ready-to-eat meals: his wife Sofiia and two stepdaughters, Sofiia's daughters from her first marriage. At the time, they lived a little further away from the shelling, in the district center of Bilozerka. Every other day, Oleh would go to them to pick up parcels, which he would bring down to the cellar at dawn and dusk.

The entrance to the cellar was from the street, over which enemy drones occasionally flew, so it was important to remain unnoticed.

Visits of Russians and Kadyrovites to the yard with the hiding place

One day, when Oleh went to his family's house to pick up bags of food, Russians came to his yard.

“They knocked once, knocked twice. Then they broke down the door (gate — ed.), and walked around the geese and chickens. In the end, they took two bicycles and left,” Artem says about what he saw through the crack.

The men were saved by the fact that autumn flowers were still blooming in the yard. They hid the entrance to the cellar from prying eyes.

For the second time, as many as 17 Kadyrovites came to the Bilyi family's yard to check on them. This happened on September 17, after a repeated counteroffensive by the Ukrainian armed forces, which failed again.

From house to house, the Kadyrovites were looking for Ukrainian soldiers hiding somewhere.

The day before, Oleh's wife, Sofiia, had just come to visit her farm in Pravdyne, and Oleh went to Bilozerka. At the checkpoint, the Russians wouldn't let him back home, saying that the fighting was still going on.

Sofiia, who had been frightened by heavy shelling earlier, experienced another shock. With shouts of “Is there any Ukrops (derogatory term for Ukrainians — ed.)?!” the militants shot at the windows and doors of her house. But the woman did not lose her temper.

To divert their attention from the searches, she faked fainting in the yard. It worked: they left.

“I was in a panic. Even though it lasted about five minutes, almost my whole life flashed through my mind. I was thinking what I had done wrong in this life to deserve to be here,” Artem recalls.

How they survived in the cellar, where “there was less space every day”

In the early days, the men lived in the cellar in anticipation of Ukrainian troops returning to the village to drive out the enemy. When they realized that they would be stuck underground for a long time, they asked Oleh to bring them books.

The owner also charged their phones. Although there was no connection, they were entertaining themselves with games.

Artem had the hardest time at night: “Serhii and Zhenia snored a lot. Zhenia could also scream in his sleep when he dreamed about something. And across the street from us in the house were Russians. If they heard this snoring, they would have a lot of questions for Oleh. So I had to stay awake to wake the boys up when they snored or screamed.”

The longer it went on, the harder it became to endure the life in the cellar.

“When Oleh told us the news that our troops were being pushed out, it was very hard. It seemed like the cellar walls were pressing down on you more and more, with less and less space left every day.

We used to joke with each other to keep ourselves from going crazy. We would say: ‘Go for a walk!’ which meant climbing a ladder and looking at nature and the sky through the cracks. Those were the days when the sun was shining, everything was blooming, it was beautiful, it was amazing.”

A plan to escape from the village inside a sofa and with other people's documents

In the first week of October, Oleh came to the boys again with bad news: the Russians ordered him to move out of the house! They said that Russian troops were to be deployed on this side of the village. Then Oleh warned the men that they would have to be taken from there.

Oleh's wife was at home again at that time. All night long, she stayed awake thinking about how to save Artem, Zhenia, and Serhii. She realized that if they were found, she and her husband would be shot.

They decided where to take them right away. Their daughter rented a house in Bilozerka, closer to Kherson. Although the city was under occupation, there were no such scrutinizing checks due to the greater distance from the front.

But how do you get three non-local men to Bilozerka past six Russian checkpoints?

Sofiia woke her husband up in the middle of the night and happily announced that she had finally come up with a plan.

She suggested that Zhenia, the skinny boy, the shortest one, be transported inside a folded sofa, Artem — in the refrigerator, removing the rubber from the door to allow air to enter, and the oldest, Serhii — under someone else's documents in the passenger seat of the car. For this purpose, the woman suggested using the birth certificate of her deceased first husband. At the checkpoints, they could explain that other documents with photos were burned during the shelling.

Sofiia also has her own documents with her former surname from her first marriage, so she and Serhii had to introduce themselves to the Russians as a married couple.

And her real husband, Oleh, was supposed to act as a driver, helping the family with all their belongings to leave the village, which was being heavily shelled.

The road in a sofa through 6 Russian checkpoints

However, from the very beginning, the plan almost failed. When Zhenia got inside the sofa on the car's trailer, he panicked within minutes. He asked to be let out.

So they decided to try to fit Artem in it. Sofiia threw some rags and 6 ducks on top. This is in case Artem starts to move. To explain to the Russians that these are not sounds from the couch, but just ducks fussing.

They put Serhii in the car. Unshaved for a month, he was dressed in rags and sprayed with moonshine. This made him look like a local unkempt old man older than his years.

As they set off, Artem was wondering whether it was advisable to go deeper into the occupation. He thought: what if Pravdyne, near which active fighting has resumed, is liberated in the coming days, and he continues to stay in the uncontrolled territory?

“At the first and second checkpoints, the Russians took both geese and a washing machine off the trailer. They asked: ‘What else do you have here, maybe you can leave us something?’ I was thinking how they would ask: ‘What's in your sofa?’ - it would have been a surprise.”

Artem decided that if he passed the first 3 of the 6 checkpoints unnoticed, he would hardly be found.

“The further into the Russian rear, the laxer they are at checkpoints. They say that if there was something suspicious, they would have detected it earlier. It also helped that they all knew Oleh well because he often traveled and took people out.”

Serhii, disguised as an old man with a hangover, did not arouse suspicion either.

“The smell from us after a month in the cellar was not very pleasant, and he was given rotten eggs in his hands. The person who checked the documents opened the door, smelled it, and didn't want to talk any further.”

The operation was a success! However, Zhenia was still waiting in Pravdyne.

Sofiia and Oleh left Artem and Serhii with their daughter and immediately returned. At the checkpoints, they explained that they were going home for the rest of their belongings.

They returned to Zhenia with a new plan ready — they would take him out as their son. Sofia had the birth certificate of her son, who had not lived in Pravdyne for a long time.

The next morning, Sofiia gave Zhenia, who was very excited, as many as 7 sedative pills. And within an hour and a half, they were in Bilozerka — the plan had worked completely.

Another month in occupation and new inspections of Russians

Although it was safer in occupied Bilozerka, no one was safe from unexpected visits from the Russians.

A few days after the move, Russians suddenly entered Sofiia's daughter Svitlana's yard. Her husband came out to them — the occupiers explained to him that they were looking for their deserters. The oldest soldier, Serhii, was next to Svitlana's dog at the time and pretended he was just a local. They didn't even approach him.

Artem was inside the house. He was supposed to hide behind a false wall in the kitchen in case of sudden inspections. However, all the risks could not be taken into account: Sofiia's talkative three-year-old great-grandson turned out to be a weak point.

“When I jumped in, he started asking loudly why Uncle Artem was put there. And we were afraid that he would ask again, but in front of the Russians, if they came inside.”

However, the Russians inspected only the yard and the cellar outside and left.

It was dangerous to crowd into one house as a large family, including three rescued soldiers. Sofiia found a house on the other side of the city, where she took Artem and Zhenia, whom she called her sons.

There, too, they had to invent different scenarios on the fly. Since Sofiia's two daughters sometimes came to visit her, the neighbors asked her how many children she had. The woman joked that she could not remember how many she had. And when they were surprised that the boys did not look like her, she said that they were all from different men.

Liberation from occupation

“We saw that a counteroffensive was underway and the liberation was approaching us. We realized that it would happen any day now (de-occupation of Bilozerka — ed.). But it was not clear whether it would be liberated with or without fighting.”

The day before they were liberated, Artem and Sofiia saw Russian soldiers heading to the outer high-rise building in Bilozerka to prevent Ukrainian forces from entering the city.

“We did not sleep the whole night before the liberation. We followed the news, where it was written that our troops were hitting Antonivka Bridge. And it was close to us, we heard everything. They kept hitting and hitting.”

In the morning, a neighbor came to their house and happily informed them that there were no more Russians in the city. And there is a Ukrainian flag in the center.

Artem went to the city to assess the situation and saw soldiers from his brigade, but from a different battalion. He briefly told them his story, but they explained that they could not take him and his comrades without an order from the top.

The very next day, a delegation led by the chaplain of the 28th Brigade arrived to pick up Artem, Zhenia, and Serhii. They had been in touch with the command for a long time: while they were still in the cellar in Pravdyne, they texted their brothers-in-arms in messengers about what had happened to them. Later, Oleh took their phones to Bilozerka to send news from the occupation via Wi-Fi.

What has changed over the year?

After a month in a hospital in Odesa, Artem returned to the frontline again. He also fought in the Bakhmut sector.

In December 2023, we met him in Kyiv, where he was undergoing treatment at a psycho-neurological dispensary.

“I am physically and mentally exhausted,” admits the 25-year-old soldier, who was sent for treatment after a nervous breakdown in the positions.

He also has long-standing back problems that would have made him unfit for service in peacetime.

Artem dreams of discharging, at least to take a break for six months. But he says that because of the three-year contract he signed with the Armed Forces, it will be extremely difficult to do so.

Currently, the military medical commission has recognized him as partially fit.

“Where was it harder — near Bakhmut or hiding under occupation? War is generally difficult when you are constantly under fire and when you are also under moral pressure to follow orders, but you are physically or mentally unable to do so.”

He hopes that some of the newly mobilized will come to the front to replace him. By the way, their rescuer, Oleh Bilyi from Pravdyne, voluntarily mobilized after the village was liberated. Although he is already 57 years old.