In 2022, the Ukrainian city of Mariupol suffered one of the cruelest sieges in modern European history. It became a symbol of Russia’s full-scale invasion initiated on February 24th three years ago. Somewhat lesser known is the fact that Mariupol has been until now an ethnically Greek city. It served as a cultural center for the Greeks, who constituted the third largest ethnic group in South-Eastern Ukraine after Ukrainians and Russians.

Currently, the city is under Russian occupation. The exact number of Mariupol citizens who perished during the siege is unknown. The building of the Federation of Greek Societies of Ukraine has been damaged and looted. The welcome sign of the city of Mariupol in Greek letters has been destroyed. The last issue of the monthly newspaper, “The Hellenes of Ukraine,” came out in January, 2022. The unique culture of Mariupol Greeks is in danger of becoming extinct before our eyes.

Below you will read a conversation with four Mariupol Greek women, survivors of Russian aggression, who agreed to share their testimonies, knowledge, and hopes for the Mariupol Greeks.

1.

“There is no single Greek family that was not impacted by the repressions of the Soviet period”

Tetiana Liubchenko, Professor, Chair of Modern Greek and Translation at Kyiv National Linguistic University; representative of the non-profit, “Union of the Greeks of Ukraine in Greece”; leader of the digital project, “The Legacy of the Mariupol Greeks.” She moved to Thessaloniki in 2022.

NK: Who are the Mariupol Greeks? How did it happen that so many Greeks lived in that part of Donetsk oblast?

TL: “Mariupol Greeks” is a broad term. We apply it not only to the Greeks who lived in the city of Mariupol, but also to those who lived in the Greek villages founded next to the city. Sometimes they are also called, “Nadazov (North Azov) Greeks,” but I prefer the term, “Mariupol Greeks,” since Nadazovia includes some territories that are not part of Ukraine and are populated by a different group of Greeks. The Mariupol Greeks is a unique ethno-religious group that is different from the other groups of Greeks in Ukraine, for example, the Pontian Greeks.

Mariupol Greeks originate from Crimea. Historians differ on how they appeared there because Greeks have lived on the peninsula since ancient times. But most agree that the predecessors of Mariupol Greeks came to Crimea during the Byzantine period. In 1778, the Greeks were resettled from Crimea by Catherine the Great—I could even say, deported, because it was a resettlement by force. Accompanied by General Suvorov, after many months of wandering, they were resettled to a location that was, at the time, a Cossack outpost. There, the Greeks founded the city of Mariupol.

NK: Did you know about your Greek roots? Did your family follow Greek traditions?

Top: Mariupol Sea Port, photo by Anzhela Bilodid. Bottom: Federation of Greek Societies of Ukraine and Greek Medical Center, photo by Lev Sandalov, before the war. The building was damaged and looted.

TL: My Greek heritage comes from my father’s side. I was learning the history of my family throughout my childhood and my youth. I was born in the late period of the Soviet Union when the restrictions were less severe, but I knew that my father had problems because he was Greek: they would not accept you to the university if you were Greek, for example. I knew that it was a very dangerous period from my relatives.

Many moments in that history are not just about my family but a tragedy that concerns all Mariupol Greeks. In 1937, there was a period of terrible repressions, the Greek Operation of the NKVD, when almost the entire Greek population not only of Mariupol but of the whole Soviet Union was executed or exiled to Siberia. Most people, especially men, were executed within 24 hours. A commission consisting of three people would hand down sentences.

These repressions went beyond the 1930s. We know that in the 1940s, they were directed at people who had Greek citizenship. My dad was born in 1947. In 1948, the authorities came into his mother’s house. His family was purely Greek, with his mother and father being Greeks from different lines. They came after my dad’s mother but not after his father. My grandmother managed to leave the house and hide. My grandfather hid the baby among the pigs so that the NKVD would not hear the voice of the crying child and would not send him to Tashkent or Siberia. They managed to save him.

In 1995, we received a letter from a relative in Chile who told us that one line on my father’s side were the relatives of the world-renowned artist Arkhip Kuindzhi. This relative would send us letters every year for 50 years, but they never arrived because of the Iron Curtain. In 1995, this letter finally made it. From this letter, my father learned that, after the October Revolution, they tried to eliminate the family because it was well-off. The head of the family paid a lot of money to alter their documents. As a result, they did not come after my grandfather in the 1940s. But such cases of miraculous salvation are exceptions. There is no single Greek family that was not impacted by the repressions of the Soviet period.

There are two groups of Mariupol Greeks, and both identify as Greeks. One group speaks a dialect related to Modern Greek, Rumeic, and the other speaks Urum, a Turkic language. They are very different linguistically. My relatives spoke Rumeic.

After my first year at Mariupol State University, where I started studying Modern Greek, all my family got together and gave me an exam. There are many similar words between Rumeic and Modern Greek, so they tested me on everyday vocabulary. And they were very proud that I was studying it.

NK: You were born and grew up in Mariupol. What kind of city was it? What did it become like when Ukraine gained independence? How was its Greek heritage revived?

TL: Mariupol is a port, a city on the sea. It is very green and bright. Of course, it is hard to speak about it now because it is a very painful theme for us. Our city is occupied, destroyed, and we do not know its new face.

Mariupol flourished when Ukraine gained its independence. I participated in the establishment of the Department of Greek Philology at Mariupol State University and the Greek movement. Some steps towards the revival of Greek heritage had been taken earlier: for example, by Eduard Khadzhinov and his literary group, which tried to revive and study history, culture, and literature in the 1970s-1980s. There were expeditions from the Taras Shevchenko National University, under the guidance of Andriy Biletsky. But of course, their scale was not as big as when Ukraine became independent.

First of all, in this period we received huge support from Greece. Delegations came all the time, they helped with funding for new schools and medical centers, internships, children’s trips to summer camps, and so on—the contacts were reestablished. There was an opportunity to hold language contests, festivals—for example, the national wrestling sport of kuresh, a competition where the winner was given a live lamb as a prize.

It was a very open city, too. Speaking of Greek festivals, they were not exclusively for Greeks. People of all nationalities were always invited. All the benefits that came with the support of Greece and Cyprus were available for all: any student could get an internship in those countries, not only a student with Greek roots. A child could go to the Greek summer camp to improve his health and get interested in studying the Greek language and culture.

Ukraine showed support to the city by improving its infrastructure and landscape design when Mariupol became a frontline city after Russia started its attack in 2014.

NK: What was happening in the city in 2014, when the invasion started?

TL: Mariupol became divided between those who supported the Ukrainian authorities and those who did not. At the same time, there has never been an opinion that this city must be part of Russia. People were worried because of the new law about the introduction of the Ukrainian language as the official state language. They thought that it would be implemented very quickly. In reality, it was planned very gradually: the roadmap for the introduction of the Ukrainian language in school education, for example, scheduled it for 2032. In all Mariupol schools, they continued to teach Russian, up until the full-scale invasion. There was also a nostalgia for the USSR among the older generation: they resisted the idea of a turn to Europe. It sounded scary to them because Russian propaganda, which was not forbidden in Ukraine, often depicted Europe in a bad light: for example, by fueling and taking advantage of homophobia.

The other part of Mariupol’s population actively supported integration with Europe. For the most part, it was young and middle-aged people who understood that with Ukraine’s independence, Mariupol really had improved. Of course, Ukraine was trying to confirm that this vision was correct, investing a lot into the development of the city after 2014.

NK: Mariupol became a frontline city in 2014. What was it like?

TL: After 2014, they kept bombing Mariupol buildings. Once, for example, a shell hit a school. Unfortunately, there had been an informant. On this day, all first-graders were supposed to gather together. The informant picked the time that was in the official school announcement, and the shell hit the school at that specific time. Luckily, a day before the school had changed the time of the meeting, yet it was known only to the parents and teachers in phone chats.

During all this time, on the outskirts of Mariupol, especially in the Greek villages, there were regular strikes. One day, a bomb fell on the Greek village Sartana during a funeral procession. Many people perished then. Bombing did not happen every day, but it was never quiet and peaceful from 2014 to 2022.

From those Mariupol inhabitants with whom I interacted (and I talked a lot not only with my relatives but also with complete strangers whom I helped during the siege), I heard that the reason the city was destroyed in the cruelest way possible was to satisfy the revenge of the Russian leadership for the fact that Mariupol had not surrendered. They expected to be greeted with bread and salt, but Mariupol offered fierce resistance.

2.

“We have had enough of ‘saving’ already”

Svitlana Arabadzhy, Associate Professor of the Department of History and Archeology of Mariupol State University; Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Oslo. She moved to Norway in 2022.

NK: Could you talk about the history of your family. Did you know about your Greek roots?

SA: Yes. But I felt them more when I visited my grandmother’s sister in the village Staryi Krym (translated as “Old Crimea”). First of all, she could speak another language. It was not Greek but Turkic because Staryi Krym is populated by Urums, Greeks who speak a Turkic language. Besides the language, she always cooked something Greek, from sweets to pies. And our holidays were different. For example, there was a holiday that our family celebrated every year, and even now we celebrate it in spite of distance between us. This is St. Basil’s Day on January 13th, a purely Greek tradition that my family followed.

Ukrainian Greek Festival "Mega Giorti", Mariupol, photo by Lev Sandalov.

My great-grandfather was repressed—declared an “enemy of the people.” He made it into the 10% of those who were not shot but sent to Siberia. For eight years, my great-grandmother raised two children on her own. And the consequences they experienced every day because he had been declared an enemy of the people—and his children were, therefore, the children of an enemy of the people—influenced the way my great-grandmother raised them, as well as, later, my mother. They knew that they were Greeks, but they did not speak about the history of the family. I asked them much later why the family was in Siberia, so far from Staryi Krym. They avoided answering, changing the topic. This fear of consequences was the reason that, in my family, Greek culture could only be noticed in a few dishes we cooked, like chebureki and the traditional pie on January 13 (St. Basil’s Day). But when I came to Staryi Krym, I could feel it.

NK: Was your great-grandfather repressed because of his Greek roots?

SA: It was in 1937, right before the active start of the Greek Operation of the NKVD. The rumor is that he said, among friends, that it would better to have a leader other than Stalin, and someone reported on him. It is hard to verify. But it’s most likely the fact that he was repressed earlier than the other Greeks that saved his life because the majority were executed. They did not take him when the millstone had started turning at full capacity. He was exiled to Siberia. As my grandmother told me, they had terrible conditions there. It was a logging camp, terribly cold. They were brought to an absolutely unprepared place, people slept in tents. Their task was to build barracks for themselves. And those who slept on the edges of the tents often did not wake up because they had frozen. There, he injured his leg. He was sent for treatment, and he met a doctor from Moscow who saved him. Thanks to the fact that my great-grandfather was an accountant—educated, which was rare at this time—they did not send him back to the logging camp. He did bookkeeping. It saved his life, because he lived in better conditions than the other prisoners. He did not freeze and did not die. Ten years later, his family was allowed to join him. So, my great-grandmother took her two daughters to be with him in Siberia. Very soon, her health deteriorated. The doctor said that the climate was no good for her, and they were allowed to return to Staryi Krym. Of course, they had nothing left there—no house, nothing—and they had to rebuild it. It was already in the 1950s, after Stalin’s death.

NK: I would like to return to what you mentioned about the Urums who live in Staryi Krym and speak the Turkic language. What is their position within Mariupol Greek culture?

SA: They clearly identify as Greeks. Their response to my provocative questions that the language is nothing like Greek was always, “No, we are Greeks.” It was not debatable. But there was some competition between all Greek villages, and the other Greeks could tell my grandmother that she was some wrong type of Greek because she spoke the wrong language.

I think that, the further the village was from Mariupol, the more the language was preserved. My grandmother spoke Russian with me, of course. Unfortunately, she did not speak Urum with me. But, as soon as her friends came to visit her, I was excluded from everything that was going on. I thought that they were discussing me, and I could not understand anything. No one taught my mom, but she understands Urum because she went to Staryi Krym to visit her aunt, and she learned it from her and her friends. But they did not teach me and it did not occur to me to ask them, unfortunately.

NK: How did you experience the rapprochement towards ethnic minorities in Ukraine, Greeks in particular, that happened when Ukraine got independence?

SA: I went to school in Mariupol just after Ukraine gained independence, and we did study Greek in the fifth grade. It was a second language. Our Greek teacher was probably one of the first graduates of the Greek Department at Mariupol University. But she died while giving birth, and our Greek classes were cut off. We learned the alphabet, though. In the 1990s, international conferences started, and Greeks from Greece participated in them. It was a strong stimulus for Mariupol State University to grow as a scholarly center. The Federation of Greek Societies of Ukraine became a cultural center that organized events and festivals.

NK: How did you become a professor at Mariupol State University who studied the Greeks of Ukraine?

SA: At school, I liked history best. In my third year, I participated in a field trip led by Iryna Ponomaryova. I read her article about the household books that were miraculously preserved in some Greek villages. They had full information on the composition of family: last name, education, plants. I got curious and inquired with the Staryi Krym village council. It turned out that they had those books dating back to 1941. I wrote my first paper on the material of those books, analyzing age structures and marriages. I saw that, even in 1941, 89% of all marriages in the village were intra-ethnic: Greeks married Greeks, Ukrainians married Ukrainians. It was already the Soviet period, there were repressions, most spoke Russian already, but still! Then I went to graduate school. Our department worked on the Nadazov Greeks, and I worked with the context of this topic. Later, I wrote a book about Staryi Krym with a school teacher, Halyna Nametcheniuk, who had collected materials and photos of the village. I wanted my son to know where his ancestors came from, the history of the village. I am glad that I did it because now it is impossible to get any materials and photos, while the book has it all in one place.

NK: Is Staryi Krym occupied now?

SA: Yes, it is next to Mariupol—i.e., it is now considered to be part of the city, in the Kalmius neighborhood.

NK: Now you are in Norway. Could you share your story? How did it happen?

SA: We left Mariupol in 2022 on the third day of the full-scale aggression, without waiting what should happen next. In 2015, we got under the shelling of Vostochnyi, when Russia shelled the city for the first time. There were about 30 people killed in the neighborhood.

Remembering the experience of this shooting and the consequences psychologically—I had a small child then—we decided that we should not wait. My husband is in a wheelchair, so it would not be possible for us to hide in the basement. We spent a few months in Western Ukraine and then decided to go to Norway.

NK: As a historian, could you say which fact about the Greeks of Ukraine should be better known in Greece, or in the world?

SA: The events regarding the resettlement from Crimea are often taken as they are described in Russian historiography, which says that it was a liberation, a good deed, because Russia was saving those Greeks from the Tartars. But it should be discussed as a deportation. Now, we can see how many connections Greeks and Tartars had, as well as mixed marriages. Now, I am looking at the Greeks who remained in occupation in Mariupol (and there are very many of those who stayed). I see that nothing can force them to leave, even after what they experienced. How is it possible to persuade people to move who are 70-years-old?

Now, Russia also spreads the message that it saves. According to its logic, it “saved” me by depriving me of my home. Before that, it was “saving” the Soviet society from my great-grandfather, an “enemy of the people.” So, they “saved” us three times already. We have had enough “saving” already. It is time to stop.

3.

“I will return to Donetsk when it becomes Ukraine again”

Svitlana Petropoulou, the Director of the Department of Public Diplomacy for the “Union of the Greeks of Ukraine in Greece.”

NK: How did you feel about your Greek roots? Did your family observe the Greek traditions?

SP: All my life has been connected to Greece in some way. My family welcomed the mix of two cultures: Ukrainian and Greek. My mom is Ukrainian, but she always loved Greek culture, poetry, music. She moved from Cherkasy Oblast to the Eastern part of Ukraine—the city of Horlivka. My dad is from the Greek village of Bugas, founded by the Greeks back in the 18th century—70 kilometers from Mariupol.

Since childhood, we were trying to study both Ukrainian and Greek cultures. Of course, access to Ukrainian culture was more open because in Donbas, there are many Ukrainian schools, and I graduated from the Ukrainian primary school. To strengthen the Greek side, we joined the Greek Society, “Argo,” in my native city, Horlivka, when my sister was 10 and I was 8. In Horlivka, there were a lot of Greeks: some people were from Greek villages, or their parents or grandparents were Greek.

NK: Did you study the Modern Greek language?

SP: Yes, since childhood. But it was very difficult to get good education and literature in Greek. There was a shortage of teachers who knew Modern Greek. Horlivka is quite far from Mariupol, the historical center of Hellenism. In 1995, the Federation of Greek Societies of Ukraine, which united 106 Greek societies of Ukraine from 21 regions, was established. The Federation helped by distributing materials between the societies.

Mariupol Drama Theater after Russian airstrikes on March 16, 2022, photo by Lev Sandalov.

Since childhood, we have been participating in different events and festivals. I had a musical education: I sang. We tried to learn the Greek songs from the materials that were available. There was no wide use of the internet back then, so we had some tapes from Greece, and we wrote down the lyrics of those songs by ear. In 2010, I won the Grand-Prix of the International Greek Festival in honor of Tamara Katsy, which took place in Mariupol every two years. Then, it was an all-Ukraine competition, but later it became international. The festival represented Greek songs, including the songs of the Mariupol Greeks. In Ukraine, many still know me as a Greek singer. I used to give solo concerts in Donetsk, in Horlivka.

NK: You were the witness of the first invasion in Donetsk in 2014. Could you talk about this period?

SP: Later, I changed my career path, and I started working at the Donbas Arena stadium in Donetsk. Then, I lived in Donetsk. The first news that Crimea had been occupied, which happened very fast, in February 2014, was very alarming for all the citizens of Donbas and the Eastern part of Ukraine. They captured the main prosecutor’s office, the building of the oblast administration. The so-called “little green men” came, whom they presented as separatists, some kind of internal fighters for the freedom of Donbas, whom we had never had. Neither did we have a problem with language. I could freely speak both Ukrainian and Russian. The information politics led by Russia lied that there was some kind of civil war. I knew that it was a lie and that it was an occupation. The soldiers, wearing the uniform of the Russian Federation, came with weapons. You see them, and you know that these are not local groups, as they were resented, but trained fighters who came to seize power in Donetsk Oblast in an organized way.

My sister and I did not want to live on frozen territory or in Russia because we were always proud of our origin: Ukraine. We left for Kyiv for summer. In August, when the Battle of Ilovaisk happened, we realized that there was no way back. I chose a blank page, taking only one piece of luggage to Kyiv. I do not regret it.

My mom was in Horlivka. And Horlivka was then like Mariupol in 2022: blockaded, shelled everywhere. My mom was hiding in the basement. Then, in August, with incredibly difficulties and the help of all possible people, we managed to bring my mom and grandma to Kyiv, where we lived. I would never go back. That is, I will go back when it is part of Ukraine. For me, Donetsk was the center of the universe. It was a very well-developed city, with industry and infrastructure, one of the best airports in Ukraine. And they completely destroyed it.

NK: Did many people whom you knew leave Donetsk after 2014?

SP: Most people from my circle left. I know very few who stayed. For some, it was for financial reasons, and some had to take care of their families. Some were afraid to start everything from scratch—leaving all property, going nowhere.

NK: Did Russia appropriate the property of those who left the occupied territories?

SP: Yes, in fact. If you did not return to the territory, did not transfer the paperwork under the Russian jurisdiction, you lost your property. It was nationalized. This is what is happening in Mariupol now. They just put their people into the apartments of the people who left, changing the ethnicity of the population of the region.

NK: How was the Greek movement reshaped after the invasion of 2022?

Mariupol after February 24, 2022, photo by Serhiy Makarov.

SP: In 2022, we realized that we are losing our people, our roots. They destroyed Mariupol through bombardment (95% of the city was destroyed), and the majority of the Greek villages, 47 out of 48, were captured or erased. Only one Greek village is in the grey zone now. Our native village was 70% destroyed. The graves of my ancestors were destroyed.

I met the news about the full-scale invasion in Chicago, where I went in 2019 with my husband. He is a diplomat, and he worked at the Consulate General of Greece in Chicago. Of course, our first thoughts were about the safety of my family because my sister and my mom were in Kyiv. Thank God, we managed to bring them to Greece. We also had close relatives in Mariupol with whom we did not have connection for ten days. Thank God, they are alive and relatively safe, but they lost all their property and have to start life from scratch at a very advanced age.

After we made sure that our family was safe, we realized, on the one hand, that we needed to help the Ukrainian Greeks who came to Greece, and, on the other, that we should tell the world about what happens in Eastern Ukraine. In May 2022, we founded the Union of the Greeks of Ukraine in Thessaloniki. It so happened that the leaders from Kharkiv, Dnipro, Mariupol got together in this city. The Federation was completely destroyed then.

NK: Could you talk about some of the projects that you have organized since 2022?

SP: After coming to Greece, we realized that there is a lot of Russian propaganda here. The information about what is happening in Ukraine does not come through. There is no data about the atrocities and large-scale killings of the civilians, including the Greeks of Ukraine, with whom Greece historically sustained connections. We held rallies, together with other Ukrainians. We had an exhibition dedicated to Mariupol in Athens and Thessaloniki.

Because I was in the US and I had an access to the American Greek diaspora, we held an exhibition about Mariupol in Chicago in 2023. It presented the photos by well-known Mariupol photographers who were in Mariupol at the time of the full-scale invasion. Thanks to the individual heroism of these people, we have these photos. Two of these photographers perished. One is Victor Dedov, who was a cameraman of the Mariupol TV channel “Sigma.” He was killed on March 11, 2022: a shell entered his apartment, where he was with his family. He died, covering them to save from the explosion. He was just 53-years-old then. His wife gave us his works. There is also a photo by Maksym Sahaidak. This was a young photographer, a member of the Mariupol Union of photographers. He was just 29. At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, he joined the territorial defense and helped people with food so that they could survive. Unfortunately, he perished in May 2022, at the Azovstal Steel Plant, the last place where the National Guard of Ukraine was holding its defense in Mariupol. His works were given to us by his relatives. Our exhibitions are not only about the city—they also tell the stories of the people.

In February 2024, we held a photo exhibition dedicated to Mariupol and Odesa at the Consulate General of Greece in New York. We collaborated with Oleksander Sinelnikov, a well-known photographer who stays in the city and continues to document the war crimes committed to the civilian population of Odesa. We thought that we should show not only that Eastern Ukraine is basically destroyed but also display the center from which the Greek movement for the independence of Greece originated. Odesa is very important for the Greeks—it has a big symbolic value. We wanted to show how the cities of Ukraine, with their unique heritage, are being erased now.

4.

“What is happening now is terrorism and genocide against all citizens of Ukraine, including the Greeks”

Nina Plechak-Paskal, sister of Svitlana Petropoulou, whom Svitlana mentions in her interview. Nina is President of the Kyiv Greek Society “Enotita.” She left for Greece in 2022, but recently returned to Kyiv.

NK: Could you talk about your path to leading the Greek Society in Kyiv?

NP: My long path of popularizing the Greeks of Ukraine has covered more than 26 years, from Horlivka’s Greek Society, “Argo,” where my mom brought me when I was ten. In 2014, I moved to Kyiv from Donetsk because of the war. I have an active pro-Ukrainian position: we went to rallies in Donetsk and stood in the chain of unity near the Drama Theater, declaring our support for Ukraine. It was very scary because next to us there were thugs with bats. We saw that it was getting more and more unsafe and left for Kyiv.

At first, Kyiv did not accept me, and I could not accept Kyiv. I came with one piece of luggage and my child. At the time, people in Kyiv did not understand that the war had begun: they thought that it was somewhere far away in the east—lived their lives, partied, relaxed. There were moments of discrimination, too. For some time, no one wanted to rent me an apartment because I had the Donbas registration: they assumed that I could steal something. With all of this came psychological trauma—with Kyiv being a completely new place and somehow inhumane. I was depressed for half a year. It was the Greek Society that helped me cope with it.

Mariupol after February 24, 2022, photo by Serhiy Makarov.

I came to the Kyiv Greek Society “Enotita” on the National Day of Ohi. I liked it: people asked how they could support me—it felt like family. They had traditional Greek dances that pulled me out. I remembered that I used to be an activist and a leader of the youth Greek movement, and that I was successful at it. My sister and I became active in the society, and, in 2017, I was elected the president of “Enotita.” I am its head now.

NK: We know that in Donetsk Oblast there are a lot of Greeks. Were the citizens of Kyiv interested in the presence of the Greeks in Ukraine?

NP: Ukraine is a multicultural and multiethnic country. Many Ukrainians are interested in Greek culture. Our events have always been attended by Hellenophiles—by those who were interested in the culture and history of Greece. They like it a lot when they see the descendants of the Greeks, when you can socialize and immerse yourself into the atmosphere, the Greek language and dances. Plus, we are a little crazy when we party. For us, freedom of expression is very important, and people like that. You can be a second- or third-generation, but you identify as a Greek. You are a citizen of Ukraine, but you have this wonderful ethnic origin.

NK: I know that, in 2022, you left for Greece, but now you are in Kyiv again. Could you tell how it happened?

NP: When, on February 24, 2022, in the early hours, the booms started, I understood right away that the war had begun because I heard the same booms in 2014, when they started the occupation of Donetsk. It was shocking. I remember that my daughter was sleeping.

I know some people related to the army, and they told me, “Nina, there might be a collapse. Get as many provisions as you can, get cash, because the bank system could collapse.” People in Kyiv did not yet understand what was going on yet. I got cash, as soon as the stores opened, at 8 am. I got cereals and water, came home, and turned on the TV. I spent more than a week in Kyiv in this period.

We had a TV on twenty-four hours a day because it was necessary to follow the news. In the neighborhood where I lived, you could not hear the sirens. It was very scary. I lived on the left bank of the Dnieper, where the dam was. The dam was a strategically important goal. They tried to blow it up several times in order to flood the left bank. Five hundred thousand Kyiv citizens live there. If they had succeeded, the area would have been left without energy, and it would have been impossible to leave. To get to the city center, you needed to get to the right bank of the Dnieper. So, you had to cross the bridge. But similarly, they were trying very hard to destroy the bridge. I could not understand at all how to get out. The public transport did not go over the bridge, I did not have a car, and it was impossible to find a taxi.

We lived on the fifth floor. You could not use the elevator because, if it were blocked, it could fall down. There was a recommendation to pack a bug-out bag with important documents, some medications, and food. We got to the basement with all of it. Now we have shelters, but, back then, it was a common basement, not adapted for spending time there: it was dusty, and very, very cold. We went there 10-12 times a day. I barely slept. Every time my sister called, I said goodbye to her.

When they were trying to get through via Bucha, the tanks were shelling residential buildings, and they did not care whether there were people inside or not. The ground was literally jumping under us, and it was very loud. One day, on Thursday, I think, it was sunny and seemed a little quieter, so I decided to cook some dumplings. You need to eat to have energy. I was cooking the dumplings, and, at this moment, a rocket fragment hit the neighboring building. The whole wall of the building fell and got burned completely, so big was the explosion. It is hard to describe. It was very scary—unimaginably scary.

Mariupol after February 24, 2022, photo by Olena Sugak.

Then, they announced a day of silence—on Monday, I think. My daughter and I decided that we needed to get out somehow, and, miraculously, we were able to call for a cab on the phone. They told us the car would be there in 3 minutes. We had only 3 minutes to pack, and what do you think I packed? My daughter’s textbooks for her to continue to study. I did not think that they existed as e-books. The taxi was very expensive, but, still, the driver was our guardian angel.

I wanted to get to my friends in Western Ukraine. We went to the railway station. At the time, they had saboteurs—terrorists who organized shootings in the streets, and it was very dangerous to move because you could get a bullet. I saw very many people on the bus stop, waiting to be picked up, but no one stopped, even though the cars in front had space. I told the driver to stop, and we picked up a girl who wanted a ride. We passed the bridge, which was very dangerous because the bridges were their goal. Somehow, we got past it and entered the zone where the street shooting began.

Thank God, the driver knew how to go. The most important thing is not to go straight, but obliquely, doing sharp turns, so that the bullets don’t hit you. We came to the railway station, and I understood that I would lose either my child or the suitcase with documents in this crowd. If you saw on TV how many people were fleeing—in reality, it was much scarier. I asked the driver to take me to Western Ukraine. He agreed for a lot of money. He had done it before, and he knew the route: which territory was occupied and which was not. We took another friend with us and left via the safe village. As soon as we entered the village, I saw a Russian helicopter, from which the landing force was getting out and started shooting. In the village that was considered safe, they started a battle, with civilians there, too, of course. We were driving under the bullets, and we were lucky that our driver was a racer. I do not wish this experience on anyone. We went through Bila Tserkva. Five minutes later, I read that a missile hit the place we had just passed.

We came to my friend Anton in the evening. He did not recognize me because I had lost 10 kilos. The stress was insane. But after I felt that my child was relatively safe, we decided that we could not just sit and do nothing. There was no connection with the Federation of Greek Societies based in Mariupol. But there was us. We got our team together, we translated all the declarations of President Zelenskyy into Greek, and we sent it to the Greek media so that they could transmit them. I wrote a letter to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities, saying that we do not know what is happening in our territory and that we need protection under International Humanitarian Law.

Eventually, I left for Thessaloniki, where my brother-in-law is from. Other Greeks of Ukraine started appearing there. Alexandra Protsenko, the head of the Federation, was alive and had managed to get out of Mariupol. It was a big joy. We created the Union of the Greeks of Ukraine in Greece. We did a lot of projects dedicated to the popularization not only of Greeks but of Ukraine as such because, first of all, we are citizens of Ukraine.

NK: Could you talk about some of your projects in Greece?

NP: In Greece, unfortunately, there is a big Russian lobby. A lot of money is spent on it, and there are many of those who support the Russian side, including immigrants from the Soviet space who gained citizenship as repatriates. Many of them live in a Russian-speaking neighborhood, do not speak Modern Greek, and watch Russian TV.

One of the last projects that I did in Greece was the screening of the film “20 Days in Mariupol” (dir. Mstyslav Chernov), which won the Oscar for best documentary film in 2024. In Greece, this film did not receive publicity. In Thessaloniki it was not shown on the big screen at all. It was very important for us to make people see it, and the Consulate of Ukraine in Thessaloniki collaborated with us. The management of the theater “Olympion” agreed to show it in the very center of Thessaloniki, with Greek subtitles. We invited diplomats and many local people. It was a resonant event. It was a full house. People cried. But even after watching the documentary, some Greeks said: “We cannot believe it. It can’t be true.” Believe me, people, what I went through was terrifying. But what people experienced in Mariupol is incomparable. And Mariupol is the center of Ukrainian Hellenism—our home.

I hope that we will document more human rights violations according to International Humanitarian Law and that it will go to the International Court. What is happening now is terrorism and genocide against all citizens of Ukraine, including the Greeks.

NK: Now you returned to Kyiv? Why?

NP: I am reviving my Greek Society. Now, there are many Greeks who have come to Kyiv, especially those who could escape occupied territories. There is a demand—they miss a Greek family. And I want to meet some young people who could continue our cause.

5.

“People should know that Hellenism in Ukraine has been there a long time and is now in danger”

I asked each of my interviewees about what Greece and the West could do better to help the Mariupol Greeks. This is what they said:

TL: When I was in Cyprus in 2000, I first got acquainted with the experience of occupation: when people had to leave their houses at night without packing. I saw people who approached the Green Line with photos of their lost relatives. Although decades had passed, they still did not have any information about them. This picture comes to mind in connection with Mariupol. There is still no list of those who perished there. I think that this should be discussed at the international level. I understand that the occupiers will resist it because it will lead to the understanding of the real number of victims. But it is very important for those who survived and for the memory of those who were left in Mariupol forever.

SA: I have an impression that few people know about the Mariupol Greeks. There was a period when the Federation of Greek Societies of Ukraine was trying to recognize them as an indigenous people: that is, a people that was formed on the territory of Ukraine. It is what the Mariupol Greeks are. I think that we should speak more about them as a people whose future is not known now.

SP: It would be good if the American Greek diaspora were more involved. We hope to collaborate in the future with regard to reconstruction projects in Ukraine. We will also be very grateful if programs such as those for the rehabilitation of Ukrainian children in Greece, which is supported by the Greek state, continue.

NP: The global Greek diaspora could do more promotion on behalf of the Greeks of Ukraine and our tragedy. We are also the descendants of Ancient Hellas: many centuries passed, we settled in Crimea; but, still, we are Greek. To introduce the topic of the Greeks of Ukraine into the system of education in Greece would be a big step. If the Greek political leaders and the Church speak about us, it will translate into the Greek community. I remember that when I came to Greece in 2022, I went to church; and I was very touched that the priest said that our brothers, the Greeks of Ukraine, are now going through a tragic situation. Unfortunately, after 2022, people forgot about us. I would like for the Greek diaspora to be more responsive: support us as you can, write about us in mass media, invite us for conferences. People should know that Hellenism in Ukraine has been there a long time and is now in danger.

Mariupol after February 24, 2022, the colour photos by Olena Sugak, the black and white photos by Serhiy Makarov.