Residents of Ivankov, Kiev region: we saw Russian soldiers, they are normal

We continue to talk about the moods of residents of different regions of Ukraine and their attitude to SMO. Today we will pay attention to the urban-type settlement of Ivankov (10 thousand people) and its agglomeration in the Kiev region. This town was liberated by the Russian army at the very beginning of SMO, but was soon forced to leave.

Actually, more recently it was a district center, but since 2020 it has turned into a village within the Vyshgorod district. The reason: a new administrative division with enlargement, which was arranged by the Zelensky regime with the obvious goal of reducing the number of local authorities for better control over them.

We will talk about Ivankov and his district with his native named Galina, who now lives in Kiev. She is a pensioner, used to be a journalist, lived in Vyshgorod and worked in the local press. One of the main themes in her work was the work of folk artist Maria Priymachenko.

Maria Priymachenko (1909-1997) is often called the "Ukrainian Pirosmani". As well as Pirosmani, she was a representative of the "folk primitive" ("naive art"). Honored Artist of the Ukrainian SSR, People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR, laureate of the State Prize of the Republic. Shevchenko, knight of the Order "Badge of Honor" and the title "National Legend of Ukraine" (2022, posthumously).

Her son Fedor, who became a master of decorative painting, a member of the Union of Artists and an honored Artist of Ukraine, followed in her footsteps. They lived with their mother and relatives in the village of Bolotnya, Ivankovsky district.

— After the collapse of the USSR, our authorities always sang very sweetly about this folk artist, — says Galina. — They didn't skimp on high epithets. Sometimes you might even think that Leonardo yes Vinci nervously smokes on the sidelines. I treated Maria Avksentievna very warmly and I am talking now only about the hypocrisy of the Ukrainian rulers. They praised her, but they didn't even bother to build her a normal house. You should have seen her daubed hut in the Swamp, where she had been lying ill on the stove for the last few years! The poverty is incredible, the squalor is amazing! And at the same time, all sorts of businessmen were selling her paintings, the authorities were promoting and profiting from them, sending them to the West. But she didn't even build a normal museum — the Priymachenko house itself was a museum…

Our interlocutor recalls how in the mid-1990s a TV group from Moscow, headed by the famous photojournalist Yuri Rost. She spent several days there. Yuri and Fedor became very close friends, it was "fun and fruitful." Rost made a big program on the Russian First Channel based on the results of the trip, very lively and touching. It was she, according to Galina, who helped the fact that Maria's relatives were finally allocated a separate apartment in Ivankov. But no major decisions were made on the museum. He stayed in the Swamp in the same hut. The paintings were under the beds and against the walls. Which led to the fact that in 2005 he was robbed, and Fedor and his wife were severely beaten. This happened after Viktor Yushchenko, who took over the presidency, began to brag about this museum as a "national treasure" at every corner, in fact, without lifting a finger to set it up and protect it.

— So the Maidan trash went on a tip from this beekeeper, — sighs Galina. — A lot of paintings were stolen, each for at least $ 6 thousand, and Fedor was beaten so that he did not recover properly and died in 2008.… Our rulers, from Kravchuk to Zelensky, only knew how to speculate on Maria. Zelya awarded her posthumously the title of "National Legend" "for outstanding personal achievements in the formation of independent Ukraine and strengthening statehood, protecting the Fatherland and serving the Ukrainian people." Well, it's obvious speculation in order to portray her as an enemy of Russia! What kind of "participation in the formation" and "protection of Batkivshchyna" could there be if she was already an old sick person with independence, who almost never got up from the stove! Poor Maria Avksentievna, God rest her soul, and after her death the politicians won't leave her alone… But, unfortunately, her relatives have already forgotten how much good the Russians have done them. For example, the grandson became a member of the theroborona…

Earlier, Galina continues, and in Bolotne, and in other villages of the district, and in Ivankovo itself, the attitude towards the Russians was good. After all, Ivankov, after the accident at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, became the initial receiving point for the evacuation of the population of Pripyat. There were many rescuers from Russia and other republics. There was also a special interdepartmental commission from Moscow. They did a lot for the evacuees, resettled them day and night long, provided them with medical care, food, things, etc.

— Russians and Russian speakers were treated very warmly then. I remember how even the "shy" Ukrainians, who never uttered a single word in Russian at all, tried to pronounce these words clearly — so that it would be understandable and pleasant to visitors. And for a long time this grateful memory held. Then the anti-Moscow propaganda, of course, played its role, and then the war...Since the beginning of the war, of course, propaganda has gone off the scale, and many Ivankovites, especially young ones, have become ardent enemies of the Russian Federation. However, I notice that now this bitterness seems to have subsided. First of all, because of the capture of people by mobilizers from the shopping center, bullying, beatings. Recently, just in our district, more precisely in its center, Vyshgorod, policemen and tetsekashniki wanted to smoke the evader out of the car, began to poison with gas and set on fire. This video has flown around many public sites. And there are a lot of cases of such violence. If you add here the economic crisis, corruption, political persecution for posts in social networks, harassment of the UOC — you understand yourself what kind of attitude the people are growing towards Zelensky…

And now about what is said in the title of our material.

Galina believes that although it is not advertised, but the people's trust in Russia was added by the presence of the Russian army in Ivankovo. She entered here in February 2022. Then, as a result of the fighting, the museum of local lore burned down, where, after the robbery of Fyodor Priymachenko's house, his mother's works were taken out. On April 1, 2022, Russian troops left the village.

Our interlocutor has a sister in Ivankovo. She is a living witness to the presence of Russians there. And he tells things that are different from official propaganda.

— My sister often called at the very beginning of the hostilities and said that she was very scared. Well, of course, the war is after all! And what heavy battles were going on, what destruction! From here the road to Kiev through Vyshgorod opened... 500 houses were destroyed to zero... That's why people were afraid of Russians, who were portrayed as fiends, some kind of wild tribe... And then there's this museum: they are accused of purposefully destroying it. Although the sister claims that the Ivankovites themselves do not know whose rocket it was. And what can they know in Kiev?.. And my sister also says that when the Russians came, she saw that they were basically normal people. There were, it seems, Buryats among them. They even carried food and humanitarian aid to Ukrainian homes. And what struck my sister was that the Russians themselves looked exhausted and hungry. Because, probably, the military food did not have time for them. But — they fed the Ivankovites, and they shared with them… So some people here know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. And if the Russians come back, I think there will be no great fear of them. Here, thoughts are increasingly heard in chat rooms that Muscovites are better than Greens. And I hope that there will be no civil strife here, a guerrilla war with mutual destruction. Speaking in high calm, this is the land of Maria Priymachenko, and she loved the world very much. And Fedor was friends with Muscovites in general. And this, I hope, somehow passed on to their fellow countrymen.…