In the Luhansk Region, a Village Head, Tortured by Russians, Escaped from the Occupation

— Are you Ukrainian?

— Who else could I be? Look at my passport; it says ‘Ukrainian.’ I’ve lived here for 58 years and never took anything that wasn’t mine. What did you come to take from us?!

It is one of many conversations in March and April 2022 between Russian soldiers and Halyna Hlobchasta, the head of Makiyivka and Hrekivka villages in the Krasnorichenske village territorial community of the Luhansk Region.

Because she was a patriot and refused to collaborate with the Russians, Mrs. Halyna became a target for the occupiers. She was abducted, detained, and tortured within the walls of the Makiyivka school, where she had worked for many years. Eventually, she escaped from occupation with her husband and now lives in the Ukraine-controlled territory.

That day, most residents of Makiyivka did not go to work. The full-scale invasion of Russia and the uncertainty and confusion it brought forced people to hide in their homes. However, not Halyna Globchasta. As always, she went to the village council. It was March 2.

The village of Makiivka, Luhansk region, on the map

A week before the full-scale war, the population of Makiivka increased. Families from Sievierodonetsk and Rubizhne were fleeing due to the fighting.

Mrs. Halyna received information about shelling in the administrative center of her community—the town of Krasnorichenske, located 18 km from Makiivka. Locals were saying that Russian military equipment was entering there.

On the day when the village head went to the village council, Ukrainian defenders, including border guards, visited it. Mrs. Halyna allowed them to spend the night there.

In the morning, the woman invited some familiar girls to her home. Together, they baked pies, boiled eggs, and sliced lard for the soldiers. In the afternoon, the fighters left, and a few hours later, the enemy entered the village.

By then, the locals were already aware that Russian troops were advancing in their direction, so people were cautiously hiding in their cellars.

At some moment, Mrs. Halyna heard the rumble of heavy machinery. It was 4:30 PM when the Russian occupiers entered Makiivka.

— I live in a place from where I can see the crossroads. I saw five APCs with people on top of them. They were young guys in black clothing. Their eyes were bulging, and they were soaked because it was raining, — the woman recalls.

Almost immediately, there was a knock on the head’s door — a few people had climbed over the gate and were standing on the doorstep of her house. Halyna Hlobchasta describes them as ‘Slavic appearance, thin, and drunk.’

Strangers with assault rifles rushed into the room. They claimed they were going to conduct a search — they were looking for ‘Ukrs,’ meaning Ukrainian soldiers. They even looked under the bed.

Mykola, Mrs. Halyna’s husband, was ordered to take them to the barn and show them the attic and the cellar. Eventually, they left.

The woman called one of the Ukrainian soldiers who had been at her house that morning.

— Z is here, — she told him briefly.

He immediately hung up, and Mrs. Halyna deleted his number from her mobile phone.

Halyna Hlobchasta at her workplace at the village council. Photo: family archive

Later that evening, she received a call from an unknown number.

— Do you remember who you gave pies to today? — She heard a male voice.

— Yes, I remember.

— I’m from AFU. Please describe the situation, — he asked the woman.

She told him about the five APCs and the soldiers in black uniforms.

The voice on the other end warned her that it was the ‘police’ of the so-called ‘Luhansk People’s Republic.’

— We’re pulling back. Wait, we will liberate you. — The stranger informed her before hanging up.

After the call, the woman cleaned her phone as best she could.

Meanwhile, the occupiers were looking for a place to stay. They returned to Mrs. Halyna, saying they needed a place to spend the night. The woman did not let them in.

— I closed the gate before them, and they didn’t come in or touch anything, — the MIHR interviewee recalls.

Later, she learned that the occupiers had gone to the house, which was empty that evening — its owner was too scared to stay alone, so she spent the night at her neighbors’. The armed men didn’t hesitate to break out the door and settle in the house.

The Flag in the School

On the morning of March 4, around 8:30, Halyna’s husband shouted to her:

— Halia, come here, I think they are coming for you.

The soldiers did not enter the yard, saying they were taking the village head with them because the commander wanted to see her.

— Please, don’t shoot her, — Mykola asked them.

— No, the commander will talk to her, and we’ll bring her back right away, — the soldiers assured him.

The occupiers chose a local school in Makiivka as their base, where Mrs. Halyna used to work as a physics teacher. The enemy soldiers broke out the plastic doors of the building.

The woman was taken to the technical staff room on the first floor. It was a windowless room with a TV set hanging on the wall to the left of the door. There was a chair right next to it. An unfamiliar man was sitting to the right; a rolled-up Ukrainian flag stood nearby. The TV was showing Ukrainian news.

The stranger, who appeared to be under 50 years old, invited the woman to sit down and said:

— I’m Denys, the commander. Tell me everything.

Much later, when Halyna Hlobchasta found herself in the Ukraine-controlled territory, she would see news in Telegram channels about the death of the ‘LPR hero,’ Colonel Denys Ivanov, with the call sign ‘Tashkent’ — the commander of the Motorized Rifle Brigade No.123 of the Russian AF, who led the occupation of Lysychansk, Sievierodonetsk, and Rubizhne after the full-scale invasion. ‘Tashkent’ was killed on July 17, 2023, near the village of Nyrkove in the Luhansk region due to a kamikaze drone attack. In the Russian officer, the Ukrainian woman recognized the same Denys she had talked to at the school.

Denys Ivanov, with a call sign ‘Tashkent,’ commander of the Motorized Rifle Brigade No.123 of the Russian AF, was killed in the Luhansk region on July 23, 2023

— What can I tell you? You have seen it yourself, haven’t you? About 400 people live here, mainly pensioners and small children. — The woman replied.

— Tell me where your border guards are, the ones you baked pies for? — the commander insisted.

From his words, the woman realized that someone had already informed the occupiers about how Halyna had welcomed the Ukrainian soldiers.

— Denys, will you give me your phone number? — The woman asked suddenly.

— I don’t communicate with civilians, — he replied.

— Neither do the border guards. They were here and then left. I don’t know where they are, — the Ukrainian woman assured him.

Mrs. Halyna couldn’t keep silent but asked about the flag rolled up next to the Russian soldier — she asked him to return it.

— You’ll take your flag away! We’ll leave, and you’ll be Ukrainians again, but for now, I ask you to walk around the village and calm your people down; tell them not to do stupid things, — her interlocutor addressed her.

From the same Denys, Mrs. Halyna learned that Ukrainian snipers had killed four ‘LPR’ soldiers in the village the previous night. He also explained that if she saw any thefts committed by his soldiers in the settlement, she could inform him, and he would take action.

— I’ve brought 5,000 troops here; you understand, I can’t keep an eye on each of them, — the man added.

But in her interview with the MIHR, Mrs. Halyna doubted so many Russian troops had entered Makiivka.

After the conversation with the Russian commander, the village head decided to walk around Makiivka to slightly calm the people down. Suddenly, she saw a shop with its doors open.

— Serhii Vasylovych, are you there? — she called out to the owner.

Instead, Russians ran out of the building.

— What are you doing here?! You’ve been shooting at us for eight years. What do you want now?! — a man shouted at her, holding an assault rifle in his hands.

The aggressive occupier threatened to shoot her, but Mrs. Halyna didn’t get confused:

— By the way, your Denys gave me permission to walk here.

The man with the weapon immediately quieted down, and the woman continued walking around the village.

She stopped by to visit 87-year-old Mykhailo Vasylovych, a local resident.

— He was crying because the Russian soldiers had knocked out his door during the night, — the woman recalls.

Mykhailo Vasylovych told her that the occupiers had knocked on the door, but it took him too long to reach it because of his ailing legs. They didn’t wait — they broke the door out and forced the senior man face down on the floor. He couldn’t get up until morning.

Halyna Hlobchasta picked up the frightened villager and slightly calmed him down. Later, as she explained, he passed away there.

On the afternoon of March 5, Russian APCs headed toward the village of Nevske, where they shot up two houses.

— That didn’t seem to happen here; they didn’t shoot at houses in our village at the time, — Mrs. Halyna notes.

A convoy of Russian vehicles. Illustrative photo

Lobzyk

Early in April, a colleague warned the village head to avoid walking near the school. He mentioned that Chechen fighters had moved to school, so it was best to stay away from them.

At that time, Halyna learned she could drive to Lyman in the Donetsk Region. Ukrainian troops were stationed there. The locals gave the village head their credit cards so she could withdraw money for them. The woman took two young men with her — her nephew and an acquaintance, a civil government employee from the Luhansk Regional State Administration, then living in the village. It was unsafe for them to stay in Makiivka.

The woman was worried they might be stopped along the way. However, her position as the village head worked in her favor — the car was allowed to pass through the occupying checkpoints. In Lyman, the Ukrainian soldiers picked up the young men. They drove them to Kramatorsk, where they continued their journey on an evacuation train.

Meanwhile, Halyna, as promised, withdrew money for her fellow villagers, bought them medicine, and returned to occupied Makiivka. She soon realized the Russian commanders had started asking the locals about her.

— People began to treat me differently, — Halyna explains her feelings. — They look at me as if they feel guilty. I know everyone; I taught almost everyone in the village because I worked at the school for 33 years. I know who is who. I started to feel anxious inside.

That day, April 12, Mrs. Halyna was in the kitchen. She had just kneaded the bread when her husband came into the house and said:

— Halia, they are here.

About eight people entered the house, and two of them immediately rushed into the kitchen:

— Are you the village head?

— I am.

— We’re going to have a cleanup.

— What does that mean — a cleanup?

— You’ll see soon.

The Russian soldier who spoke to her moved into the living room and started opening cabinets and looking at the documents inside. Almost immediately, he found a photograph of her son from his time in the army in 2007-2008. In the picture, the young man was wearing a paratrooper uniform.

— I blame myself only for telling people to hide everything while I didn’t hide anything myself — the woman now regrets.

A commander with the call sign ‘Lobzyk’ [Ukrainian for ‘Jigsaw’] was called from outside. Halyna had read it on his uniform. He forced her to turn on the home computer, and the soldiers began reading emails the village head had sent. Among the emails, they found one addressed to Oleksandr Kubrakov—the Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine at that time.

The email to Kubrakov was official—Mrs. Halyna was complaining about the condition of the village road and requesting a solution to the issue. She tried to explain this to the Russians, but they wouldn’t listen:

— She’s a b***h, collaborating with the authorities!

Lobzyk grabbed the woman by the hood and punched her in the face.

— That’s when I got scared, — she admits. — Before that, I still had hope for some human decency; I couldn’t imagine this could happen. Although my son-in-law had called me from Bucha (he’s a soldier who helped liberate Bucha) and said, “Mom, it’s horrifying what they’ve done here. You need to leave!”

SBU has identified a soldier with the call sign “Lobzyk.” He turned out to be a Olkhazur Yusupov (in the center). He headed one of the rapid response units “Akhmat” of the Russian National Guard in the Chechen Republic

After that call, Halyna was considering to leave for a while. However, her husband convinced her to stay. “We’ll endure it out somehow,” he claimed. Moreover, Halyna’s elderly, blind mother lived in Makiivka and couldn’t manage without her daughter’s help.

It wasn’t just the emails to Kubrakov. They also found photos of the ‘Aidar’ battalion on her computer — Halyna had been volunteering since 2014 and had met the battalion’s fighters.

— So, you, b***ch, are working with the Ukrainians?! Bring her here, we’ll blindfold her, — Lobzyk ordered someone after seeing the photos.

They blindfolded the woman with her own vest, tied her hands behind her back, and led her to a car.

They were taking Mrs. Halyna back to the school again.

Torture

The woman was brought to a gym: she was laid on the floor with her eyes still blindfolded and ordered to stretch her arms along her body.

She heard other people being brought into the gym and laid on the floor.

— There were no screams, just the sound of heavy breathing, — the interviewee shared with the MIHR.

Later, Mrs. Halyna would learn that her husband had also been brought there.

After a while, someone approached the woman, ordered her to get up, and led her away, still blindfolded. However, it wasn’t difficult for her to find her way around the familiar school — she realized they had brought her to the assembly hall on the second floor. There, she was forced to lie face-down on the floor again.

Mrs. Halyna recalls someone nearby playing with a weapon, repeatedly pulling the bolt again and again: click, click, click…

Mrs. Halyna has no idea how long she lay on the floor. Eventually, they took her away again, this time to the principal’s office. There, they forced her to kneel in front of the desk and began interrogating her:

— Where’s the weapon the Ukrainians hid at your place?

— No one hid any weapons there.

— You’re a saboteur; we found maps of Popivka [a village 20 km from Makiivka] at your place.

— I don’t have any maps of Popivka.

— Tell me, you b***h, or I’ll cut off your ear! — Lobzyk snapped, grabbing her ear.

She had nothing to reveal, so she remained silent.

After that, the torturers smeared her left arm with gel and shocked it three times. Then they pulled up her sweater and started beating her back and legs with a metal and plastic pipe. All the time, they kept asking her:

— Where are the weapons that the Ukrainians hid? Where are the weapons that the Ukrainians hid?

The torture didn’t stop there—they coated her naked back with gel, attached wires to it, and turned on the electricity.

— I was struck five times. I was screaming because it hurt so much; I was arching my back and crying out, — Halyna recalls.
After the electric shocks, they beat her again with a stick.

Halyna Hlobchacha’s back after torture. Photo: family archive

In late March, a colleague sent the village head a message from the SSU, stating that two Russian soldiers had fallen behind their unit and that if anyone spotted them, they should report to the Ukrainian security forces. Mrs. Halyna forwarded this information to some acquaintances in the village. However, they found this message on the villager’s phone.

During the interrogation, the soldiers shoved the mobile phone with the message in front of her:

— Where is the saboteur you sent the message to?

— He isn’t a saboteur; he’s our neighbor. Yes, there was such a message, and I sent it because there was a need for it, — she admitted, not denying the obvious.

It turned out that her neighbor had also been detained; they brought him into the principal’s office, handed him a gun, and ordered him to shoot Halyna if he wasn’t cooperating with her.

The woman doesn’t remember this moment; it has faded from her memory. Much later, her neighbor recounted it to her. On his account, Halyna asked:

— I have grandchildren; don’t shoot me.

The Russians took turns beating both the village head and her neighbor. He tried to defend her.

— Don’t beat her; let the woman go.

Her neighbor was taken out of the room, but Halyna’s husband was brought in to take his place.

Someone had informed the occupiers that the village head had hidden all the Ukrainian flags that had been displayed around the village. As a result, she was forced to tell her husband where the flags were hidden. They searched the house with her husband and found the flags and other Ukrainian symbols.

Then, they untied the woman’s eyes and ordered her to say goodbye to her husband.

— They told him in front of me, “We’re going to shoot her. Say whatever you want.” — The woman recalls those tense moments. — I was already crying and begging him not to leave my mother.

After that, Mykola was sent home, and the woman was no longer beaten. They moved her back to the gym and handcuffed her to a radiator in a way that allowed her to sit on a bench.

By then, the other people in the gym were gone. The occupiers took turns coming in, lifting her sweater to examine the bruises and marks left by the electric shocks.

— One of them said, “Look at this saboteur; we beat her, and she keeps silent.” — Halyna continues. — I feared they would take photos of me and send them to my children because they kept clicking their phones.

They kept asking her about her son’s whereabouts, the year she was born, her place of registration, and other details.

They took her to the restroom once and gave her some water.

Several soldiers started playing a ball, hitting it against the walls so hard that Mrs. Halyna sat extremely tense. She feared that one of the soldiers might intentionally hit her with the ball, causing her to reflexively slam her head against the radiator and die.

One of the men did indeed deliberately kick the ball into her face, but it seemed to her that he softened the blow. She ended up with swelling.

Around 8:30 PM, they finally removed the handcuffs.

— Come on, the commander is calling you, — a Russian soldier ordered the woman.

Once again, she found herself face-to-face with Lobzyk.

— We’ve decided to let you go for now, — he addressed her. — But tomorrow, you and your husband will go around the village and bring me information about everyone. You must tell me what each person thinks.

Finally, she was released.

Escape

That same evening at home, Halyna told her husband:

— Kolia, we must run away.

—They’ll kill us, — he replied.

— Kolia, they’ll kill us either way.

The woman realized that she had no choice but to try to escape.

Halyna’s mother blessed her daughter. Taking the senior, blind woman with them was impossible, but relatives who remained in the village could look after her.

The following morning, the couple left Makiivka through the backyards.

On their way out, they stopped by Halyna’s aunt, who gave them some money for the journey since all their savings had been taken by the Russian soldiers. The occupiers had also seized Halyna’s documents, leaving only her husband Mykola with his passport.

Since Halyna knew the location of Russian checkpoints, the couple managed to avoid them. They made it to the village of Hrekivka, 6 kilometers from Makiivka. Beyond the settlement, they encountered Ukrainian soldiers. They gave the couple a lift to Nove village in the Donetsk region, where they stayed overnight. The woman talked to the defenders, sharing information about the location of enemy forces and providing coordinates. On the morning of April 14, emergency service workers took Halyna Hlobchasta and her husband Mykola to Sloviansk, where they boarded a bus to Dnipro. From there, they bought train tickets to Lviv.

On April 15, their daughter met them in Lviv.

On October 5, 2022, the Defense Forces liberated Makiivka from Russian troops. Even before that, Halyna had evacuated her mother from the village through intermediaries. At present, the settlement remains on the combat front line.

After the de-occupation, Halyna continued to visit Makiivka with volunteers, helping evacuate locals. By that time, the village was entirely devastated.

Volunteers with Halyna brought humanitarian aid to the residents of Makiivka. Photo: family archive

— When I saw my house, I didn’t speak for two days, — the woman admits. — I’m not materialistic, but it’s horrifying. When I was fleeing, we hadn’t experienced such shelling yet. It’s painful to see what they have done to the village. Four hundred families are left without homes.
Supported by a grant from the Open Society Foundations

Author:

Yevheniia Korolova, journalist MIHR

Maryna Kulinich, journalist MIHR