Life hack in case of a search

A political scientist from Kherson, local historian, head of the Kherson regional branch of the Committee of Voters of Ukraine, Dementii Bielyi lived in Kherson throughout the occupation. He wrote articles about the situation in the occupied Kherson for various publications, including foreign ones, and made monthly analytical surveys. When the invaders decided to hold the so-called "referendum" among the people of Kherson for "joining" Russia, he took notes and told the outside World about these pitiful attempts.

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"They could not organize it. Ballots can be printed and distributed on APCs or tanks under the protection of machine gunners. But members of comissions are needed to organize the voting process. A handful of traitors that the invaders managed to recruit during the two months of occupation was clearly not enough for this complex task. And, most importantly, there won’t be such many willing voters in the Kherson region for the "referendum" to take place. The absolute majority of residents of the region are hostile to the idea of ​​the People's Republic of Kherson".

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Dementii went to look at the ballot boxes – they were empty. The invaders walked the streets and searching for voters, went to utility companies that were still working, but all this was an imitation, all this was happening under the muzzles of machine guns.

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Even when people were standing on the street with these ballot boxes, there were machine gunners sitting nearby somewhere in a car, I saw it. If there was a hint of a discussion, they immediately came up and checked the documents, to see who was behaving so brave."

Like all activists, Dementii had to resort to secrecy. He lived in different apartments, avoided roadblocks, and did not use public transport.

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"This punitive terror machine of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs of Russia, worked in the same way as it did during the times of Dzerzhinsky and the Gulag. In my home, next to my desk, there was always a basin of water. I was on the arrest list, and if someone would break in, I could throw the cell phone that I used to communicate with the free world and that contained a lot of incriminating information in the water. The logical explanation for the basin was as follows: we don't have water, we need to store it somewhere. And for the invaders, a "clean" phone with neutral information was always ready".

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When Dementii realized that they were about to come after him, because it was the turn of the "social category" to which he belonged, the Ukrainian offensive began, and the Russians were too busy for arrests.

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