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I never worked for the Russians’ - punished by Kyiv for being a collaborator


“I don’t deserve to be here at all” is a protestation you would expect to hear from someone in prison. But, as she sits in her maroon overalls, Tetyana Potapenko is adamant that she is not who the Ukrainian state says she is.

One year into a five-year sentence, she is one of 62 convicted collaborators in this prison, held in isolation from other inmates.

The prison is near Dnipro, about 300km (186 miles) from Tetyana’s home town of Lyman. Close to the front lines of the Donbas, Lyman was occupied for six months by Russia and liberated in 2022.

As we sit in the pink-walled room where inmates can phone home, Tetyana explains that she had been a neighbourhood volunteer for 15 years, liaising with local officials - but that carrying on those duties once the Russians arrived had cost her dearly.

Ukrainian prosecutors claimed she had illegally taken an official role with the occupiers, which included handing out relief supplies.

“Winter was over, people were out of food, someone had to advocate,” she says. “I could not leave those old people. I grew up among them.”


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