Gimme Five

Darya D. has had no mobile connection since late May, just like all residents of Kherson, a city in South Ukraine occupied by Russia. She went to buy a SIM card from the invaders on 31 May, and then shared her thoughts and feelings with Novaya Gazeta Europe.

— There was no connection for three days, no connection at all. It feels horrible when you can't call your relatives and comfort them, let alone calm down yourself. The rest of my family lives on the other bank of the Dnieper River, but both banks are now occupied by the Russian army.

We had cars with loudspeakers driving around the city on 30 May. They told us Ukraine had cut our connection completely, but Russia would help us and provide us with SIM cards.

The next day, crowds of people rushed to the city centre where the SIM cards were sold. Me and my neighbour went there, too. A huge crowd gathered there at seven in the morning. It is obvious that people wished to be in touch with their close ones. The orcs [this is how Ukrainians refer to the Russian military] told us we could buy five SIM cards using one ID. So, my neighbour bought ten SIM cards, using her husband's ID and her own one. Only one out of ten had some crippled Internet connection, the other nine had no Internet at all. Obviously, everybody hoped to get some Internet connection. I don't know if those SIM cards are defective or was this intended to be this way.

I presume that the company that actually provides the service is trying to stay below the radar, so to say, to avoid facing sanctions. The card itself is piece of blank white plastic with no logo, the phone number and a barcode is all that is written on it.

The cards were sold in the former office of Vodafone in the heart of the city. The office had been destroyed earlier, so it now looks like a ruined broom closet. There were "orcs" with AKs all over the place. They set up several tables and chairs outside by 10 o'clock, dividing the queue into three or four parts, I guess.

So, this is what the procedure was like. They take a picture of your ID and sell the cards for cash with no contract or receipt whatsoever. One SIM card is sold for 60 UAH (€1.9). Most of the people who came there bought five SIM cards, making it 300 UAH total (€9.48). There is 400 rubles (€6) of credit on each card. When you activate the card, they charge you 300 rubles and leave you with a hundred to your balance. It looks like 300 rubles is the monthly fee. The leaflet says this includes calls, SMS, and Internet. But the Internet simply does not work. So, we are only able to use a plain, unencrypted calling service.

When I bought the card, I asked the cashier if I can purchase additional Internet traffic — since I had unlimited traffic on my Vodafone account before. She told me there's no way to do it. "You can only have 10 GB, no more than that," she said. She couldn't explain to me how to top up my phone when the month is over either. She said maybe there's going to be some sort of info in the future, but she was unsure. I believe this is how they scam people. There were over a thousand people up there, most of them paid 300 UAH each. There were news reporters with cameras all over the place, they would say the locals were eager to join the Russian network as soon as possible. The soldiers would film us using their phones, too. They would also allow some men with Ukrainian IDs skip the queue. Meanwhile, an 82-year-old lady was in the queue with us for four hours.

I sent some of the SIM cards I bought to my siblings who live on the other bank of the Dnieper with some friends of mine who went that way. But it turned out that the cards are only functional within the city limits; they provide no connection in other localities. My brother lives in Hola Prystan; he has to walk to the local stadium every day where one of the Ukrainian operators still runs a mobile hotspot. There is also some connection near the local bakery in the evening there. Lots of people come there to make their calls every day. I can hear a crowd of people speaking when he calls me from up there.

Those aren't scraps, we spend our money to be in touch, that's what I think. They say we are sponsoring the invaders, providing them with bullets to kill our soldiers… I can't stand it. Those people fled the danger, they are comfortable now somewhere in Lviv or abroad with their bellies full, yet they are telling us what to do. So, it hurts me to hear that. I tried leaving Kherson with my family several times, but I failed, and I had to stay. There has not been a single escape corridor from the city since the war started.

I can't stand the Russian soldiers here with their cocky faces and weapons; it makes me dizzy how I hate them. They drive their trucks at full speed around the city, they never brake slightly when someone's trying to cross the road. We went to a local deli with my neighbour one day and bumped into a group of Russian soldiers there. "Bastards," everybody whispered in their backs when they left. I for one thought they were looking for someone there, but they simply came to grab some döners. Words can't describe how we hate them.

It feels horrible when you're forced to do something. They put us in a position where we have no choice but to obey. They told us that Ukraine had shelled its own communications equipment, but Russia takes pity on us and provides us with a way to keep in touch with our close ones. They pretend they are do-gooders, what a nonsense! I paid for a SIM card, and it doesn't work, how do I complain? The invaders have no answer to this. We don't know what we bought really. It barely works and we've no idea how to top it up in the end of the month.

Operator X

It is unknown what Russian telephone company is providing its service in Ukraine. The leaflets handed out to the Kherson residents upon purchasing SIM cards provide no information. An image of a happy lady holding a cell phone printed on the leaflets is a stock photo by a user named Sepy67 from dreamstime.com; it had been slightly cropped and mirrored before it appeared on the leaflets.

Forbes Russia says Crimean phone companies are operating in Ukraine's regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia at the moment. Those companies are Volna Mobile, Win Mobile и Miranda Media; they were established in Crimea shortly after the region had been occupied by Russia in 2014. "The Internet traffic in the occupied regions of Ukraine is routed via Miranda Media and other Crimean companies," says Mikhail Klimarev of Russia's Internet Protection Society, an independent anti-censorship foundation. Klimarev says Rostelecom, Russia's leading communications company, is also involved in establishing mobile networks in the region.

They will not, however, be able to re-establish the destroyed equipment on their own, so they will need assistance from some of Russia's phone companies. The latter are not interested in doing this publicly, although they might be involved unofficially.

Apart from destroying the Ukrainian equipment, Russia is using its propaganda claiming that Ukraine is going to cut the occupied territories from the Ukrainian networks completely. This is not true, says Ukraine's Centre for Countering Disinformation; Ukraine is doing its best to re-establish the communication.

"We are trying to stay in touch with the occupied territory," says Olha Ustynova, CEO of Vodafone Ukraine. "The orcs shell our fibre optic lines as we try to repair them. So, now we're trying to stay low and keep doing our job."

Many base stations in the regions of Kherson and Zaporizhzhia are not operating right now, says Ustynova. The reasons behind this vary from lack of electricity to physical damage to the fibre optic lines. It is barely possible to repair the communications at the front line... yet.

Translated by Alexander Pracht