MS-NBC Documentary "Ukraine's Secret Resistance": A Moving Tale of Courage – and Torture

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2023 by Mark Gabrish Conlan for Zenger's Newsmagazine • All rights reserved

On February 24 at 7 and 10 p.m., MS-NBC showed a quite remarkable documentary called Ukraine’s Secret Resistance, hosted by NBC News foreign correspondent Richard Engel and featuring profiles of four individuals who became part of the partisan resistance in Kherson, Ukraine’s second-largest city and one of the earliest targets for the Russian invasion of Ukraine (which started one year ago yesterday) because it lies only 25 miles from Ukraine’s border with Russia. The show profiled four resisters: Vladyslav “Vlad” Nebolstup, Nastya Burlak, Mykhailo Kuanov and a 17-year-old identified only as “Sergei.” Their stories of resistance eerily paralleled the ones we’ve heard of people similarly organizing resistance networks against Nazi occupatioin during World War II, though with a few modern features. Vlad was a car-parts salesman, Nastya a bartender, and Mykhailo a cab driver,and the three of them originally became involved in resistance activities when they traveled around Kherson and looked for the Russian encampments. They were specifically interested in where the Russian troops were staying and storing their heavy equipment. The show didn’t come right out and say Vlad and Nastya were a couple, but it certainly hinted at a romantic interest between them; they recalled how she would make him drinks when he came into the bar where she worked. When the Russians captured Kherson, Nastya’s bar became one of their favorite hangouts. They talked a lot and drank a lot, and Nastya picked up information about what they were saying and passed it on to Ukraine’s official intelligence service. Nastya also reported that the Russian soldiers in her bar were nasty and frequently brutal – one waiter even found himself arrested because the Russian soldier he was waiting on didn’t think the service was fast enough. She said the Russians drank all manner of hard liquors, including whiskey (one wonders if they were taking advantage of being in Ukraine to have drinks they couldn’t get back home instead of being stuck with vodka all the time).

Eventually Vlad crossed the line from just collecting intelligence to killing a Russian soldier; he recalled the incident as he fingered the knife with which he did the killing. He sneaked up behind the Russian with his knife and grabbed him from behind – the Russian was listening to music on earbuds and so he didn’t hear Vlad coming even though, as Vlad grimly joked, he’s a big man and therefore not all that good at sneaking up behind someone silently. Vlad plunged the knife into the Russian’s back and the Russian felt toe knife go in, he turned to face Vlad, and the two wrestled briefly before the Russian finally succumbed to Vlad’s wounds. Richard Engel asked if Vlad had any guilt feelings about the killing, and Vlad said no: the Russians had invaded their country, they didn’t belong in Ukraine, and therefore he felt justified in killing one of them. (At the same time it occurred to me that the Russian he killed was probably a draftee and didn’t want to be in Ukraine aqny more than the Ukrainians wanted him there.) In some ways Sergei’s story was the saddest: unlike the others,who were in their 20’s, Sergei was only 17 when oe got involved with the resistance, and after a few missions he was captured by the Russians. Sergei was held in a makeshift warehouse the Russians had converted into a prison and torture center, and after a few days of torture he “broke” and gave the Russians the information they wanted, including the names and addresses of fellow resisters. One grim irony is that Sergei himself had been ratted out by another resister whom the Russians had already captured and tortured.

Sergei, alone of the four Engel profiled, insisted that his real name not be used and he be shot in shadow so his face couldn’t be recognized. He’s also the only one of the four who isn’t still living in Kherson. While the other three stayed in the city after Ukrainian forces retook Kherson in November 2022, Sergei moved to Kyiv, Ukraine’s capital (which Russians have steadily bombed since the war started but where life is still relatively normal; it’s like the difference between living in London and living in Paris during World War II), and he’s still traumatized by having yielded to torture and giving the Russians the information they wanted – which meant he subjected his friends to the same abuse he suffered himself. Today he’s a “broken” man in more ways than one; he told Engel he doesn’t know how he’s going to pay his rent in Kyiv,, and though he was an aspiring musician before the war started he doesn’t seem to have taken that up again – and it’s possible he can’t, since one of the things the Russians did to him when they held him was break all his fingers. He also said that one reason he moved from Kherson to Kyiv was none of his old friends would speak to him again, and he wanted to be in a place where no one knew him and therefore he wouldn't be hated as a man who broke down and compromised the resistance.

One comes away from Engel’s documentary impressed by the sheer courage and commitment of the Ukrainians – it’s the sort of story that makes you wonder whether you’d have had the guts to do what they did – and also the sheer meanness of occupiers everywhere. Among the things the Russians did during the nine months they controlled Kherson was jackhammer emblems of Ukraine from all the public buildings and order that all public schools should teach their students in Russian. It’s been clear from the get-go that Vladimir Putin’s long-term ambition in Ukraine is not only to subjugate the Ukrainian people but obliterate any idea that Ukraine was ever an independent state or anything other than an integral part of Russia. Though Putin’s army has not (at least so far) set up extermination centers the way Hitler’s did, the war against Ukraine (or, as Putin euphemistically calls it, a “special military operation”; his captive legislature has made it a felony, punishable by a 15-year prison sentence, to call the war a “war”) still constitutes a genocide.