As Russia Advances in Ukraine, a Cop Has to Flee City After City

[kagy]

As Russia Advances in Ukraine, a Cop Has to Flee City After City

For Volodymyr Nikulin, being a wartime police officer means aiding evacuees, surviving a shrapnel wound and tackling looters. It also means quickly switching cities when one falls to the invaders.

Volodymyr Nikulin, a Ukrainian police officer, sitting in what he calls his “lucky” if battered car, in Sloviansk, Ukraine, this monthCredit...Tyler Hicks/The New York Times

By Constant Méheut

Constant Méheut followed Volodymyr Nikulin for two days in the cities of Sloviansk and Kramatorsk in eastern Ukraine.

Nov. 26, 2024, 12:01 a.m. ET

The belongings of Volodymyr Nikulin, a Ukrainian police officer stationed near the country’s eastern front line, boil down to this: a shrapnel-riddled car, a small sack stuffed with sweaters and pants, and two plastic bags filled with basic food and medicine.

Keeping it simple is essential for Mr. Nikulin, who has had to leave three cities to escape the advance of Russian forces in the country’s eastern Donbas region, losing his home each time. So he has learned to live with little, and to be ready to pack up on short notice.

He has barely bothered to settle into the friend’s apartment he currently occupies in Sloviansk, a city 15 miles from the combat zone, leaving the bedroom untouched and sleeping instead in a small office. The distant rumble of Russian bombing regularly echoes through the walls, a reminder he may soon have to leave everything behind, again.

“Who knows where I’ll be in a few months?” Mr. Nikulin said on a recent morning last month in Sloviansk, acknowledging that Russian forces in the area were creeping closer. He joked that he could at least count on his damaged car, recalling how it had helped him escape several Russian attacks.

“It’s my lucky car,” Mr. Nikulin, a 53-year-old police lieutenant colonel, said with a thin smile.

Mr. Nikulin’s story of fleeing city after city under assault — Donetsk in 2014, when Russian-backed separatists took control of the city; and then, after Russia’s full-scale invasion began, Mariupol in 2022 and Myrnohrad this summer — is emblematic of the plight of millions of Ukrainians displaced by the war. Like many, he has left beloved towns, watched his homes be destroyed or occupied, and mourned neighbors killed in the fighting.

As a police officer evacuating besieged cities, he has also braved ordeals, including helping journalists escape Mariupol so they could reveal harrowing images of the Russian onslaught there.

Image

A sign reading “I Love Myrnohrad.” Mr. Nikulin had to flee the city this summer amid Russian advances.Credit...Nicole Tung for The New York Times

Working for the national police near the front lines means living with constant uncertainty amid Russia’s near-daily attacks. Mr. Nikulin often rushes to sites hit by missiles to help pull the wounded from the rubble. A police station where he used to work has been struck several times, and colleagues have been killed while guarding stations bombed by Russian forces.

“We’re targets for the Russians,” Mr. Nikulin said as he drove through Kramatorsk, another frontline city near Sloviansk. He was wearing a khaki jacket without insignia, to avoid being identified by disloyal locals who might tip off the Russians.

With Russian troops now advancing steadily in the Donbas, Mr. Nikulin’s cycle of evacuations may be far from over. Still, he believes he will one day return to his hometown, Donetsk, confident that the Ukrainian army will turn the tide on the battlefield.