Object:
A handmade flag
A flag made of a surgical mask and a viscose cloth is presented in the exposition of the Museum of Resistance.
Ukrainian colors on the occupied streets
This story is about how during the occupation people of Kherson made Ukrainian symbols out of literally everything.
The first protests against the Russian occupation in Kherson were full of Ukrainian flags. Freedom Square turned into a human sea, on which yellow and blue waves rolled.
On March 13, 2022, the people of Kherson gathered for a Resistance March, holding a huge flag of Ukraine in their hands - it was a block of streets long. On this day in 1944, Kherson was liberated from the fascists. Amd now people chanted: "Russian soldier – a fascist invader."
Over time, the national colors started to dissapear in Kherson, because Russians grabbed people off the street and sent them to the “basement”* for having a Ukrainian flag or even a yellow-blue ribbon on their clothes. To save lives, flags and symbols had to be hidden. For example, Lyudmila Starkova from Kherson hid the flag under a paving stone in her yard for 8 months of the occupation.
However, the yellow-blue colors did not disappear completely. Activists of the "Yellow Ribbon" movement painted flags with spray cans, wrote pro-Ukrainian messages, and put ribbons on the trees in the city. The Russians tracked them down, caught them and sent them to torture chambers. However, the flags still appeared on the streets in different places, again and again.
The invaders were looking for organized guerrillas, but it turned out that the resistance movement was also supported by ordinary residents of Kherson. To hang at least a small flag on the street meant to express a protest against the occupation and to share with others one's faith in Ukraine. It was no longer possible to buy Ukrainian symbols or even yellow and blue fabric during the occupation, and not everyone could paint with spray cans.
Therefore, people of Kherson invented a simple and original way to add yellow-blue colors to themselves. They combined surgical masks, lying at home since the days of COVID, with a yellow viscose single use towel for cleaning dust - and it looked just like a flag. Of course, the effect was not the same as from a real Ukrainian flag, but this invention helped to annoy the invaders and support neighbors in the most difficult times.
Photo: Kherson-TUT Telegram channel
