Rabbi Yosef Yitzchak Wolff, rabbi of Kherson and Chabad emissary, is currently in Germany and it is not certain that he will return to Ukraine. Rabbi Wolff spoke by phone with the New York Times from Berlin and said that he is not sure when or even if he will ever return to Ukraine. The rabbi claimed in the conversation that Some people in the city suspect him of collaborating with the Russians because he allowed a number of Jewish Russian officers from the occupying force to join prayers in his synagogue.
The rabbi said that the Russian officers, whom he described as “men who ran the city”, showed up at the synagogue with armed guards and that there was no way to refuse them. He said that he and his family could have left Kherson at the beginning of the war and avoided all of this, as so many policemen and politicians did, but they stayed and the walls of their house shook from shelling.
“All these people who fled are judging us,” he said. “These are cruel times.” The Russians stormed Kherson on February 24, the first day of the war, coming from the Crimea with ease. Their arrival raised suspicions of local complicity. The Ukrainian government is currently investigating several intelligence officers suspected of leaking critical information about Kherson’s defenses to the Russians.
The New York Times reports that the situation in Kherson continues to be tense even after the withdrawal of the destroyers from the city. Ilya Karmlikov, a local gangster, entertainment business owner and member of Kherson’s city council ran a volunteer neighborhood watch in the city, while thousands of Russian soldiers invaded it, the soldiers captured Kherson easily, but showed no interest in running the city.
Looting and chaos followed until Karmlikov and others organized neighborhood patrols of local men as a sort of Kherson “guardian organization”. They didn’t work with the Russians but got their permission.
In the middle of March, one of Karmlikov’s guards reported that a team of ‘guards’ encountered someone from Madda in a strange green uniform, covered in mud and looking shocked. He was a lost Russian pilot, and they disarmed him and kept him in a classroom at school.
It was an unusual situation, civilians capturing an enemy officer in a city the enemy controls. “Nobody knew what to do,” Kremlinkov’s lawyer, Mykhailo Valichko, told The New York Times. “They couldn’t hand him over to Ukrainian forces – there were no Ukrainian forces in the city at the time. And there was no Red Cross. And the Russians were everywhere.” Karmlikov took the captured pilot home and locked him in a warehouse, later that night he returned the soldier to the Russians, he saw no other option.
The Ukrainian authorities saw things differently. They later arrested Kremlinkov as a collaborator and charged him with treason. He is awaiting trial and faces life in prison. A 12-page indictment accuses Kremlinkov of helping an enemy soldier escape and renewing aggression against Ukraine. But in interviews with people from Mashron, including those who expressed reservations about Kremlinkov’s reputation as a domineering businessman and gangster, they all said he did the right thing.
If he had told his men to keep the soldier captive, in a city controlled by Russian soldiers, it could have put everyone involved in danger. Regarding a third possibility, Makramlikov did not consider it, said Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef Wolff who was in contact with Karmlikov. “I can’t imagine Ilya ever killing anyone,” Wolff said. “What he did is the most humane decision he can make.”
In the small Jewish community of Kherson, the remnant of what was once a central pillar in the fabric of this city, Karmlikov was greatly respected. Before the Holocaust, Rabbi Wolff said, Kherson had 26 synagogues. Now only one remains, the Chabad Synagogue of Kherson, and Mr. Karmlikov regularly allowed him to use a vacant space in one of his buildings for free. “He never said no,” Rabbi Wolff said. .
Karmlikov was busy during the first weeks of the war, he drove around in his white Audi, checking patrols in the neighborhood, stopping by the synagogue and turning his businesses into de facto aid warehouses where he distributed supplies to those in need.
This brought him face to face with Russian officers, especially a colonel who dressed in all black and was given the code name Alpha. Karmlikov had no choice, his lawyer said. Russian troops were scattered throughout the city and Kremlinkov had to talk to Russian commanders like Alpha “to make sure they didn’t shoot any of the volunteers.”
Back to the story of the captured pilot, Karmlikov called the Russian officer, Alpha, and they arranged to meet in the morning. Until then the soldier stayed at home. At dawn, Karmlikov met Alpha and handed over the Russian soldier. What Karmlikov didn’t know, his lawyer said, was that Ukrainian intelligence agents had tapped into Alpha’s phone and heard the entire discussion.
Last April, Karmlikov took his wife, mother-in-law and three of his five children in two cars, and drove 220 kilometers to the city of Odessa, a city controlled by Ukraine. As soon as they crossed into the territory of Ukraine, they were arrested. Ukrainian intelligence agents pulled Mr. Karmlikov from his car and took him away. His family and his lawyer said that he was brought to an interrogation center, he was beaten all over his body, his legs were cut with sharp objects.
Kherson officials declined to comment on the allegations of torture, but acknowledged that at least two of the agents involved in Mr. Karmlikov’s treatment had been questioned. “It’s hard to believe that our country, which is committed to democracy and has its own laws, would do this,” said his 19-year-old son Artem in a telephone interview with The New York Times.