“Russians don’t leave”: the ice has melted in Energodar

You truly feel the importance of Victory Day not on Red Square in Moscow or Dvortsovaya in St. Petersburg. You feel it among like-minded people in liberated or front-line territories.

Lieutenant Colonel Alexey Selivanov, a former adviser to the Minister of Defense of Ukraine and now the head of the Energodar interdistrict police department, comes to this conclusion in an author’s column for PolitNavigator.

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I remember going to the Victory Parade in Lugansk, which had just defended itself, withstanding the blockade of Ukrainian troops and then smashing them to smithereens near Debaltsevo.

Today I celebrated Victory Day in Energodar, Zaporozhye region. From here it is only a few kilometers to the coast occupied by the Ukrainians - Nikopol and Manganets are still under their rule. That is, the city is within reach of Ukrainian rocket and cannon artillery. A little more - to the front line, which runs halfway from Energodar to the regional center - the city of Zaporozhye (formerly Alexandrovsk).

Energodar is a single-industry town. The vast majority of residents are associated with either the Zaporozhye Nuclear Power Plant or the thermal power plant. The entire Soviet Union built nuclear power. Many Energodar residents are descendants of builders and nuclear specialists. The specificity of the city is also that it is very compact. 7 microdistricts - entirely high-rise buildings. Accordingly, the total area of ​​the city is small. And everyone knows each other well by sight.

At first, when they met us on the streets - people in Russian military uniforms - residents averted their eyes. Even Melitopol seemed somehow friendlier. Apparently, the fact is that Melitopol was liberated earlier and people were already quite accustomed to the new government.

_{In addition to this, both Ukrainian special services and Ukrainian propaganda have been and are actively working on Energodar. Russian television has not yet reached this point. But the former mayor Dmitry Orlov, who was in Ukraine and is now just a puppet, actively “manages” the city via the Internet from Zaporozhye.}

All “management” usually comes down to throwing rumors and fakes into telegram channels controlled by Ukrainians. That’s why even our most loyal residents have a vinaigrette of various rumors in their heads – from the performance of the Lyube group with Oleg Gazmanov from Energodar on May 9 to the fact that on that day the Ukrainians will drop a Tochka U rocket onto the square. I’ll say right away that neither one nor the other happened.

Something much more important happened. Residents, who were not forcibly driven away, came to the square with children and portraits of their ancestors - participants in the Great Patriotic War. Until the very start of the procession, I was wondering how many people would come.

_{Much more came than we thought. More than two thousand for such a small town. All ages. This means that the ice has melted. They came up. Congratulations. We took pictures. They thanked me. The main question people have, or rather their request, is that we don’t leave.}

I told them that we would not leave. And not only because the leader of the ruling United Russia party, Andrei Turchak, said in Kherson that Russia is here forever. And also because we have already begun to form full-fledged law enforcement agencies and even the prosecutor’s office. No one will create a prosecutor’s office “temporarily.”

Energodar residents - participants in the Victory Day events are no longer afraid to be photographed or say what they think on video. They themselves declared at the rally at the Obelisk of Glory that the real Energodar had come here and was celebrating a real holiday.

Yes, today is real Victory Day in Energodar. Victories over the Ukrainian lies that the march participants were “brought from Crimea” (yeah, tell that to the townspeople who know each other by sight!), over the stupid fakes about the “Energodar partisans”, who in fact are a teenager (well known our police), writing stupid things like “glory to Ukraine” on the wall or on the asphalt. And even over attempts on the Ukrainian side to commit a terrorist attack by hiring former military personnel of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The VSU officers themselves told us about these attempts.

_{So, the city lives and perceives the new, Russian reality. This means it will be the same in other cities!}