‘If I don’t go, they’ll start shooting’

A Ukrainian rescue worker took over his department after his boss fled Russian occupation. Now he’s facing collaboration charges.

An Odesa court has begun hearing a case against Oleksiy Levchenko, a rescue worker from Kherson who’s charged with collaboration. According to investigators, Levchenko voluntarily defected to the Russian side during Kherson’s occupation, becoming one of the leaders of the city’s rescue service after his supervisor fled to Kyiv. The prosecution’s main evidence is a document from the Russian administration that says Levchenko willingly applied for a position in the occupation government. Journalists from the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda spoke to Levchenko’s wife and his lawyer about his work during the occupation and the ongoing case against him.

Oleksiy Levchenko was born and raised in Kherson. He started working at the Ukrainian State Emergency Service in 2008, and from 2009 until his arrest, he served in the agency’s emergency-response division.

“On an average day, my husband and the guys from his division would travel to various districts and help the firefighters with documents. And whenever an emergency occurred, that’s where my husband went. His position would have allowed him to sit back at the office, but — as I learned later on from his coworkers — my husband didn’t do that,” said Olha Levchenko, Oleksiy’s wife.

She says Oleksiy joined the war back in 2018, leading a de-mining team in the Donbas. A year later, he was promoted to lieutenant colonel and became the head of his division in Kherson. This was his position at the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

Olha says she hardly ever saw her husband during the occupation because he “lived at work.” A month into the invasion, Andriy Pavlenko, the head of the Ukrainian State Emergency Service in Kherson, left for Kyiv. “Everyone was certain he would take care of his business in Kyiv and then come home. But he didn’t come home,” said Olha. This ultimately led to her husband’s promotion to the second-highest position in Kherson’s rescue service.

Olha told Ukrainska Pravda that Oleksiy continued responding to emergency calls, helping to put out fires and clear debris after artillery attacks. Throughout this period, she said, her husband and his coworkers tried to get instructions from their superiors:

The guys wrote letters to Kyiv asking what to do, how they should proceed, what they should do about personnel, equipment, and their families. In response, they were sent formal replies that said it depends on the situation: If there’s pressure on you, leave [the city], and if there’s not, keep working but don’t collaborate with the Russians.

Ukrainska Pravda noted that Kherson’s rescue workers published a statement in late May 2022 emphasizing that they would continue doing their jobs despite the lack of guidance from their official leadership in Kyiv.

Meanwhile, after the invasion, Russian forces began creating their own “government agencies” in Kherson. According to Olha, they exerted pressure on Ukrainian emergency workers and urged them to defect. As one of the department’s senior employees, her husband had no choice but to interact with the occupation authorities directly, she said.

“[This was] because there were no superiors. When we asked him why he was doing it and told him not to go, he would say, ‘If I don’t go, they’ll just go and start shooting,’” Olha said.

In early September, by Olha’s account, Ukrainian State Emergency Service employees received orders to leave Kherson because the Ukrainian military was intensifying its offensive there. Despite this, she said, there was no safe way out of the city; everyone who decided to leave lined up their vehicles in convoys and traveled at their own risk along routes they discovered by word of mouth.

The Levchenko family decided not to leave. According to Ukrainska Pravda, they didn’t want to risk the lives of their twins, who at the time weren’t yet two years old. Additionally, Oleksiy had served in the war in the Donbas, and it was unclear how Russian officers might react if he tried to cross a checkpoint.

Olha told journalists that she and her husband realized they would face “questions” after Kherson’s liberation, but she says Oleksiy was nevertheless eager for Ukrainian forces to return: “’I hope our guys come soon,’ [he would say]. ‘With our guys, you can defend yourself and lodge complaints. Ukrainian Security Service workers aren’t scary. You can feel like a human, with rights and responsibilities; you’re protected by the state.’”

Olha said that Oleksiy underwent “filtration” with the Ukrainian Security Service (SBU) in late November and was allowed to go back to work afterward. When Russian forces began shelling the city, Oleksiy evacuated his family to Khmelnytskyi before returning, alone, to Kherson. On February 1, 2023, he was arrested while driving to see his family.

According to Ukrainska Pravda, the investigation against Oleksiy Levchenko was launched in January after an intelligence report alleged that he was working for Russia. According to investigators, he was hired by the occupation rescue service in July 2022 after voluntarily applying for a job. His motive, according to the SBU, was the salary: about 59,000 rubles (roughly $1,000) per month. He faces up to 10 years in prison.

Ukrainska Pravda noted that the charges are based primarily on a document recovered from Kherson’s Russian “administration” that identifies several people, including Oleksiy Levchenko, who were hired after voluntarily submitting job applications. The document reportedly contains no stamps or signatures, and the newspaper also says investigators have only a copy of the document, not the original.

Levchenko’s defense maintains that investigators have no evidence that he submitted documents to apply for the job or received any payment from the occupation authorities. In addition, his lawyer Tatyana Babkova has cast doubt on the accuracy of the information in the document at the heart of the prosecution’s case: “All of the Ukrainian documentation remained in place; nobody evacuated it. The Russians, having these lists, translate them to Russian, stick their two-headed chicken on it, and write in ’Emergency Services Ministry.’”

Ukrainska Pravda’s report also notes that the SBU cites several witnesses, but their testimonies provide only circumstantial evidence and assumptions. At the same time, defense attorneys have enlisted support from nine rescue workers who say they’re prepared to testify in court that Oleksiy Levchenko did not collaborate with Russia.