To be the voices of others: how poet Yana Malyha talks about the occupation of Kherson region

Two notebooks that could have cost lives... This is how Yana Malyha, a resident of Novokakhovka, began her journey into documenting a full-scale war. Before that, the woman was fond of writing poetry. However, she began to document the chronology of the occupation of her hometown and her thoughts on the events on paper in another literary language, prose. The diary was miraculously taken to the government-controlled territory of Ukraine. Later, during her stay at a literary residency in the village of Wojnowice in Poland, the poet digitized the entries and translated them into a book format called My Executed Source. She chose this title for a reason. Due to the huge amount of underground crystal clear water, Nova Kakhovka is often referred to as the city of a thousand springs. However, this was only the beginning. Later on, Yana became the voice of other people to make the Kherson region heard.

Photo provided by the interviewee: Yana Malyha is a native of Nova Kakhovka, on the left bank of the Kherson River.

A diary as a foothold

Before the full-scale invasion, Yana Malyha lived and worked in the city of Nova Kakhovka, on the left bank of the Kherson region (currently temporarily occupied by the Russian army - ed.). With a degree in psychology, the woman worked for some time in the Children's Service, and after a training course at the All-Ukrainian Association of Guides, she worked in the Department of Culture and Tourism of the City Council. Also, since 2019, Yana has been engaged in creative work, namely poetry. It all started with a poem thanking teachers for her eldest daughter's graduation. Then she turned what she saw during her travels in the south of Ukraine into poetic lines.

The usual rhythm of Novokakhovka's life was interrupted on February 24, 2022. At that time, she and her team were preparing to celebrate the 70th anniversary of the founding of Nova Kakhovka, which was to take place on February 28. The woman says she never thought there would be so many uninvited guests at the anniversary of her hometown. But that's exactly what happened. That winter morning was the last time she visited her office. The next day, the executive committee was seized by the Russian military, and the streets around the building were blocked for civilian traffic.

"Some of my colleagues are panicking at work. I find out that some of them left the city yesterday. They knew something or felt something, but it doesn't matter anymore. They are no longer around, they are in the past. This is the beginning of the choice of those with whom I will be in the future and with whom I will go on... Around 10 am, a column of cars with the same "Z" markings enters the city. The rumble of the engines breaks the windy February song of the steppes and rushes in the direction of the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. At the gas stations, there are huge lines of local cars, but even those who managed to fill up with fuel have already lost their opportunity to leave. No one is allowed to leave the city, because all the roads to the exit are blocked by military vehicles with tricolors..." - the first entries in Yana Malyha's notebook.

She kept this kind of diary for two months during the occupation. She explains how the psychologist knew that this practice helps to maintain internal control over the situation. In other words, to stay in "shape" and be able to take responsibility for herself and her family.

Photo provided by the interviewee: Diary that Yana managed to take out of the occupied city

The entries allow us to trace not only the chronology of events that unfolded in the city and around the woman's family, but also Yana's reflection on them: "I started receiving notifications on my phone saying: "How are you?". The feeling of receiving these words was like a declaration of love. "We're hanging in there," is my last word in my posts. And that's what I believe in now."

Two notebooks are handwritten, both with the symbolic cover "Kakhovka HPP is 65 years old". The woman made her notes as an awareness of the day she had lived in the evening by candlelight, as she was careful to observe the light camouflage regime. However, she could also make notes during the day when something came to mind during everyday household chores.

The diary also records the evacuation of Jan Malyga and her younger daughter to the government-controlled territory of Ukraine at the end of April 2022. They managed to do so only on the fourth attempt. The woman took both notebooks with her. They were at the bottom of her backpack along with her documents and a towel. The bag with her belongings was inspected at 40 Russian checkpoints, but fortunately, they did not get to the notes.

"At the time, I didn't even think about what could happen if the notebooks were searched. I didn't realize that I should be afraid... Because it was the only thing that kept me morally strong and stayed with me through everything. I realized the danger only later, when I was re-reading the diary. If the occupiers had done this, nothing positive would have come of it..." Yana shares.

Examples of Yana Malyha's poems. Collage: Intent

Occupation is something you want to forget

While leaving the occupation, Yana Malyha began collecting stories of people who were also forced to leave their homes, fleeing and going into the unknown, saving at least their lives. This is how the collection Kherson Stories of Occupation was born, and it is currently being prepared for publication, subject to the availability of a grant. The publication presents a series of 108 stories of people from different parts of the Kherson region.

"My daughter and I spent a day waiting for an evacuation train at the train station in Kryvyi Rih. Then I talked to many people who said: "Now we are sharing what has hurt us for two months in the occupied territory. But tomorrow, we would prefer to forget what happened to us there and not to remember it in the future." After hearing this, I realized that these stories should be recorded. Because this truth cannot be hidden, it must be known to the public," says Yana.

Later, she shared her idea with her friends, and the information gradually spread among their acquaintances. People who left the occupation earlier or later than April 2022 sent the poet their stories.

Due to security concerns, most of the stories do not contain people's names, otherwise they are changed. But they all have a place reference. For example, the shelling and detonation of the Russian army ammunition depot in Nova Kakhovka in July 2022, which damaged a large part of the city, or the Polovtsian woman in the Ukrainian steppe near the village of Tyahynka in April 2022.

"When my daughter and I were leaving, we witnessed a surprisingly symbolic situation. In the Kherson region, there are many monuments of sacred art - mounds. And near one of them, the Russian military set up dugouts, and tied a tricolor to a stone statue on top of the hill. Since the mounds are burial structures, the occupiers were actually in the grave, ignorant of the meaning of our cultural heritage," Yana Malyha recalls.

Among others, there are stories from fellow villagers who spent a month and a half in the basement. The Russian military forbade women and children to leave, while men were exploited. One day, they all packed their belongings together without hesitation and cycled 20 kilometers along the forest plantations to the Ukrainian checkpoints. Another story belongs to a grandmother from the village of Lyubymivka, Kakhovka district. The woman has worked as an accountant all her life, and when her children went abroad to work, she took care of her granddaughters. She made this long and difficult journey to bring the girls to their parents.

"During the conversation, the grandmother took out sunflower seeds with the words: "This is something that will always remind me of the south... This is what calms me on this road...". She was traveling in three pairs of socks and rubber slippers. Because after a long stay in the cellar, which became a shelter, she was unable to put on any shoes other than these. Such small, sensitive elements..." adds Yana Malyha.

Photo provided by the interviewee.

The left bank must be heard

The resident of Novokakhovka has transformed and scaled up her documentary work to make as many people around the world as possible aware of the war in Ukraine and the occupation of Kherson region. She emphasizes that her city, like 2/3 of the region, is still under temporary Russian occupation. And in contrast to the great attention paid to the de-occupied right bank, the left bank remains unnoticed and unheard. Therefore, the poet's goal is to remind us once again: the left bank is waiting for liberation, and its inhabitants hope to return home.

Among such collaborations is Yana Malyha's work with the artist Masha Vyshedska, who is from the city of Bakhmut in Donetsk region. The artist visualized 55 stories collected by the poet in a series of comics. The works were presented in two languages: Ukrainian and English.

In this format, the project "Kherson Stories of Occupation" was first distributed on social media, then as an exhibition, which was presented in more than 20 European countries in 2023-2024, including Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, and Berlin. And in May 2025, the exhibition became part of the exhibition of Ukrainian artists "Under Occupation" in Vukovar, Croatia.

"The first thing that caught my eye was how the visitors began to change as they got acquainted with the exhibition. For example, one of the situations described in the project. A person gets sick in public transportation while the occupiers are checking their documents. No one can get up to help because of threats with machine guns or call an ambulance due to the lack of mobile communication. Then Russian soldiers get out of the bus, and the driver and passengers are forced to continue with a dead person... When foreigners learned about such things as how the occupation psychologically pressures and breaks them, they began to treat Ukrainian refugees differently and support Ukraine in its fight for independence," Yana shares.

Also, some stories from the collection Kherson Stories of Occupation were published in various almanacs during 2022. And 13 stories formed the basis of the documentary play Kherson Stories of Salvation, which was shown on the stages of several higher education institutions and art institutions in Kyiv in 2023-2024.

The Kherson Stories of Occupation project was implemented by Yana Malyha and Masha Vyshedska. Collage: Intent

Yana Malyha received an offer to create a verbatim after submitting her work to one of the creative competitions. The play was directed and produced by Yaroslav Karpets, the founder and editor-in-chief of the YAR publishing workshop, and directed by Iryna Klymovskikh-Borovska, an actress and the head of the Kvitucha Ukraina folk-theater studio.

The photo was provided by the interviewee: The documentary play Kherson Rescue Stories was based on the stories Yana collected.

"These are exclusively women's stories. They were told by IDPs from the east and south. Ordinary people volunteered to become actors, and it was important. Because they lived through the same or similar events. This art form also worked as a treatment. Through acting on stage, they were freed from their personal accumulated negative experience of the war," says the poet.

Speaking in the voices of others

At the same time, Yana Malyha did not give up her art. In January 2025, her poetry collection Draw Your Dreams was presented in Kyiv and other regions of Ukraine. It includes poems that were written at home in Nova Kakhovka until February 24, 2022, and several works from the war period, but those that are more autobiographical. Thus, in the seven chapters of the book, there is room for both harsh truthful lines about the occupation and the war and lyrical poetry that aims to make you fall in love with the waves of the Dnipro, the steppe wind, and other natural beauty of the south.

Photo provided by the interviewee: Presentation of the poetry collection "Draw Yourself Dreams"

The poet does not hide the fact that in the first year of the full-scale war she did not stop writing, but changed the subject matter and presentation of her poetic lines. Therefore, she plans to publish this work in a separate edition. Currently, she has more philosophical thoughts in her works, such as what is to come.

"I am still working on the realization of one big work about the events of the Russian-Ukrainian war. It will be a work of fiction, a novel with elements of documentary. The main character will be impersonal, but what happens to him will be real. These are the situations that I collected during my stay at home during the occupation. I also want to raise the issue of internal conflicts of acquaintances, friends, and relatives. How the circumstances caused by the full-scale invasion changed the relationships between many people, sometimes completely destroying them," Yana shares.

She adds that memory preserves everything, but not as long as paper. That is why it is so important today to collect and record this period of the country's existence. Not only to introduce it to our generation, which has not faced the realities of life under occupation, but also to the next generation. In addition, it is an opportunity to become the voices of those who continue to be under temporary Russian occupation and are forced to remain silent. Because it can cost them their lives.

"A lot of voices were silenced by people who had something to say. Instead, I want to share it, and I have the opportunity and experience to do so. This is important. Each of these works will continue to contribute to the construction of our history and its correct interpretation in the future," emphasizes Yana Malyha.

The work on this material was made possible by the Fight for Facts project, which is being implemented with the financial support of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Яніна Надточа, Майя Птущук