Among the dates Viktoria Krykunova can recall, there is August 14, 2023. The day began at dawn – a year after she had fled Russian occupation in her hometown in eastern Ukraine and found refuge in the Kyiv suburbs. It was 7 am on that Monday when her life changed. She and her husband, Ivan, were getting dressed. Their young son, Vlad, was still asleep in his room. There was a knock at the door: seven men from the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU). “Viktoria Krykunova, you are under criminal investigation for collaborating with the occupiers. We have a search warrant for your apartment.” The apartment was then ransacked, her computer searched and their cell phones confiscated.
“I didn’t feel like I was a threat to my country,” she said on May 24, nearly two years later. “I stayed calm and told the whole truth.” That truth is that when she lived in occupied Svatove – a city of about 20,000 residents before the war – Krykunova worked for a pension office that distributed retirement funds now paid for by Russia. She insisted it was solely to survive and care for her family.
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