Ukrainian sheriff

"Medusa" tells the story of Viktor Marunak - the elders of the village near Kherson, who was abducted by the Russian military

Since the beginning of the war, the Russian military has already abducted 11 chapters of Ukrainian settlements. At least one of them - the headman of the village of Motyzhin Olga Sukhenko - died. On March 21, the elder of the Ukrainian village of Staraya Zburyevka Viktor Marunak, who became known after the documentary with his participation was nominated for Oscar. Nothing is known about where Marunyak is now. "Medusa" tells its story.

Ukrainian sheriffs

In the old Zburyevka in the Kherson region, there were never serfs, nor a monument to Lenin, nor a collective farm - the most freedom -loving village in the region was proudly told by the head of Viktor Marunyak.

Marunyak was born in old Zburyevka. He graduated from the Kherson Pedagogical Institute, worked as a teacher at school. In the 90s he was retrained to the entrepreneur-he grew vegetables and fruits in greenhouses for sale in greenhouses. But he did not abandon teaching - he compiled a course of lectures “The History of the Old Zburyevka”, which the youth reads. Marunyak is a real fan of his native land, says Sergey Nikitenko, editor of the Kherson website of the bridge, which has already been familiar with the headman for 20 years.

For the first time this tall, thin man in glasses, the villagers were elected his leader in 2006 and since then re -elected in every election. Marunyak quickly won the sympathy of the inhabitants of the old Zburyevka. He was a supporter of the local government system, and all the decisions important for the village were made at the general meeting. “Lower the levers of influence“ down ”, and everyone who cares, who lives in a particular area,” the Marunik of the authorities called in a particular area for you.

Residents of the old Zburyevka did not immediately adopt the principles of self -government. Marunyak recalled that two people went to the first Subbotnik in the village: he himself and another man. A week later, 15 people had already entered such a subbotnik, then - 150. And after a few years, local residents already set fences, built a football field, collected money for new windows in a local school and spent a high -speed Internet in the village.

Immediately after the election, the head of Viktor Marunyak ran into a problem: there was no one to follow the law and order in the village. Formally, the district inspector was engaged in this, but there were several villages in the region at once, the distance between which was tens of kilometers, everywhere cannot be in time. In addition, the district police officers changed every six months, Marunak said :

It was necessary to look for a way out of this situation. And in our apparatus of the village council, as, indeed, in all village councils, there is such a position - the “inspector”. This is a person who can be responsible for anything. For work with children, with low -income families, with fire safety, labor protection. We decided that the main direction of our inspector is the protection of law and order.

So in Old Zburyevka, for the first time in Ukraine, “Sheriffs” appeared in Ukraine - public assistants to the local inspector. Basically, they resolve domestic conflicts, work with problematic families, and engage in small offenses. The “sheriffs” of the old Zburyevka compiled a map of moonshine in the village and handed it over to the district police officer, handed it to him the address of the hemp field. Once in the village, geese began to disappear every night - alternately in every yard. The Zburyevsky sheriffs arranged a raid on the kidnappers - they turned out to be two inhabitants of the neighboring village of New Zburyevka.

The sheriffs seized men and carried out preventive work with them: they drove them to those courtyards where the geese disappeared. Residents of the old Zburyevka were able to express everything they think about their neighbors. And the sheriffs made sure that the educational conversation would do without assault.

Over the years of the existence of sheriffs, local residents learned their phones and already called first to them, and not to the police, Marunyak said.

Such self -organization interested the director Roman Bondarchuk, who shot the documentary of the same name about Ukrainian “sheriffs”. In 2015, his premiere was held at the Amsterdam International Documentary Film Festival, where Ukrainian Sheriffs received a special jury prize. In 2016, the film was nominated on an Oscar from Ukraine, and a small village for 2600 inhabitants became famous.

The fight against corruption

“I learned about Marunyak in 2007, when he fought against the sale of land around the village. During the [premiership of Viktor] Yanukovych, it was a popular enrichment scheme: district officials first cut the land to their relatives [for nothing], and then sold for a lot of money, ”recalls director Bondarchuk.

Marunyak interfered with the officials: he wrote letters to the Prosecutor General’s Office, to the SBU, to the administration of the President of Ukraine, filed lawsuits in courts, and publicly exposed fraudulent schemes. The district administration then ordered that every resident of the old Zburyevka can receive up to two hectares of land for the conduct of a personal peasant farm. According to Marunyak, these hectares, located on the territory of the future national natural park, are leased with dummies, who then are engaged in their resale for residential buildings - 200 thousand dollars per hectare, then wrote the Voice of Ukraine.

About whether or not to fight for the earth, Marunyak decided out of habit - at the popular gathering.

“A full house of culture was filled. I say: “Now you will vote for some of the two options. The first: we live like everyone else-what, we need more? Option of the second: we are fighting with them,” Marunyak recalled. - Everyone voted for the second decision. Then it began - we wrote, picketed, filed in the courts ... "

In March 2008, in the midst of this struggle, Marunyak was arrested on charges of receiving a bribe. As the deputy of the local village council, Anatoly Ryaboshapka, said , "people cried when he was brought in handcuffs." The rural chapter was placed in jail. The inhabitants of the old Zburyevka after that arrived in Kherson and blocked the main street. “The Self -Defense Committee of the village of Staraya Zburyevka” - it included 15 residents of the village - he picketed both the Kherson prosecutor’s office and the city administration. “They hired a bus for their money, drove to Kyiv. The Prosecutor General’s Office, the Presidential Administration, picked. They made a press conference. They even began to publish the newspaper, ”said Marunyak later the circumstances of his arrest.

“Investigators said to him: take your people from under our windows. They did not understand that people act autonomously, without any teams. So the situation became noticeable, the media began to actively write about this case, Marunyak was released, ”Roman Bondarchuk recalls in a conversation with Medusa.

“Marunyak would perfectly lead the region or even the country. But he always said that he feels great in his village among his people, ”says Bondarchuk, who spent three years with Viktor Marunyak while filming the film.

Bondarchuk says: when he was just starting to shoot, he thought that an absurd tragicomedy about life in the province would come out. But just during the filming, Russian troops entered the Crimea - it is from the village about 100 kilometers in a straight line. Then the war in the Donbass began, and the inhabitants of Zburyevka began to come the summons from the military registration and enlistment office.

Strategic village

On February 24, Russia invaded Ukraine. Kherson came under the control of the Russian military at the very beginning - March 2. The governor left the region on the first day of the war, followed by the police leadership, the SBU employees. But the mayor of the city, the heads of other cities and villages, remained, and the inhabitants began to go out with Ukrainian flags for peaceful protests.

The old Zburyevka was also captured. Marunyak also did not go anywhere. The 60-year-old head of the village was captured twice. On March 19, the military occupied his house, said the Golopostan mayor Alexander Babich - Marunyak himself "was kept hostage for insurance." Then the military nevertheless moved to live in school and released the headman. But on March 23, Marunyaks were arrested again. The local activist Natalya Bimbran, referring to eyewitnesses, said that the rural chapter threw ammunition and threatened that he, under Russian legislation, would “receive 20 years for“ terrorism ”. To the remark that the village of Ukrainian, Marunyak received the answer that “Russia will be here from April 1,” wrote Bimmile on Facebook. According to her, the elder was defeated, stole things and food.

“I saw how he loves the village, how he tried to develop the community all these years ... I’m afraid that it was respect among fellow villagers and his influence on the community is the main reason for his abduction,” says the editor of the Kherson site, the bridge Sergey Nikitenko.

“Strategic village, look at the map,” explains the official from Kherson, who did not want to call his name for security reasons. According to him, the Russian military abduct the leaders of local self -government where the movement of troops takes place along the main routes.

Marunyak is not the first head of local self -government stolen in Ukraine. On March 11, the mayor of the city of Melitopol in the Zaporizhzhya region Ivan Fedorov was stolen - then he was exchanged for several Russian prisoners of war. On March 23, the head of the Motyzhinsky village council in the Kyiv region Olga Sukhenko was stolen, her husband and son - after the retreat of the Russian troops, their bodies were found in a mass grave on the outskirts of Motyzhin. The leaders of territorial communities from the Kharkov, Nikolaev and Donetsk regions also disappeared. According to the Ukrainian authorities on April 3, 11 Ukrainian heads of local self -government bodies, including Viktor Marunyak, were stolen. Nothing is known about his fate.

“Perhaps it seems to them [Russians] that if you intimidate the head of the community, the remaining people will also obey. But in Ukraine everything is arranged differently, people are not afraid of their leaders. They interact with them on equal terms, ”says director Bondarchuk. - People cannot be ordered to obey, even if an authoritative person asks for this. Therefore, the actions of Russians are devoid of meaning. ”

Andrey Yanitsky