Russian propagandists quite often use Kherson marginals who fled with them to the left bank of the Dnipro to create their fakes. If these outcasts are also locally well-known figures – for the occupiers this is a real gift. For example, fugitive actors Yevhen Hamayunov and Andriy Voloskovets, who in their recent interview with enemy media openly slandered Kherson and its residents.
Let’s start with Andriy Voloskovets. The man was not a particularly well-known actor in the city, but now he is a “leading” performer in the Kherson “theater” on the left bank and performs in half-empty village clubs. Voloskovets says that he always hated “Ukrainian nationalists” and compares them to Hitler’s followers. According to him, after 2014 all actors of the Drama Theater were forced to shout “Glory to Ukraine!” from the stage.
“They forbade me to hold a New Year’s performance in a kindergarten because I refused to shout this slogan in front of preschoolers. I read the script of this play, and it said “Glory to Ukraine!” at least three times. After that I refused to take part in it,” he notes.
Let’s recall that the slogan “Glory to Ukraine” returned to mass use during the Revolution of Dignity in 2014. On his page in a Russian social network, however, there are photos of Voloskovets in a Ded Moroz costume dated 2017. So the actor who supposedly refused to participate in New Year’s performances still performed in them at least three years earlier. A very principled person, isn’t he?
In reality, it is perfectly clear that no one forced the actors, especially children, to shout political slogans. His words echo widespread Russian narratives about alleged persecution of Russia supporters in Ukraine. Moreover, part of the Kherson Drama Theater troupe in 2014 actually gave concerts daily at the so-called “Antimaidan”, and none of them were eventually repressed by the “evil Banderites”.
According to another fugitive actor, locally known in Kherson, Yevhen Hamayunov, he never hid his pro-Russian stance. “I always told everyone that I am Russian,” the man, who was born in the German-founded Ukrainian settlement Askania-Nova, frankly overacts.
According to Hamayunov, after he began cooperating with the occupiers, the same “evil Banderites” began threatening him, promising to “flay his skin alive” and put it on Freedom Square in Kherson. An attempt on the actor’s life was allegedly even being prepared, since he allegedly found a bottle with a “Molotov cocktail” under his window.
Interestingly, Hamayunov, who calls himself “truly Russian”, likely only began to feel that way after the start of the full-scale invasion. In this photo, dated 2021, for example, he, in a Ukrainian Cossack costume, helps another actor playing Pylyp Orlyk sign the first Constitution — one of the symbols of Ukrainian statehood.
We also managed to find a video of a production in Kherson of the play by Belarusian oppositionist Andrei Kureychyk “Обиженные.Россия”. In it Hamayunov plays an average citizen of the Russian Federation, marginalizing the Russian language. The play itself is a social satire on life in totalitarian Russia. On the stage, for example, hang portraits of Putin, Patriarch Kirill, Kadyrov, framed by toilet seats. Any truly “russkaya” person, as Hamayunov positions himself, would perceive this performance as blasphemy against the Russian authorities.
Thus the stories of Andriy Voloskovets and Yevhen Hamayunov are a typical example of how Russian propaganda uses defectors to spread myths about Ukraine. Their claims of “oppression” and “persecution” do not withstand fact-checking and often contradict their own biographies.
Attempting to justify their cooperation with the occupiers, the former Kherson actors repeat the well-known Russian propagandist narratives. However, the facts show that their stories have much more in common with fiction than with the real life of Kherson before the occupation.