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What is it like to live in the Russian-occupied parts of Ukraine? That is the subject of the newly published book by journalist Ardy Beld, who spoke to former prisoners of war, refugees, collaborators, resistance fighters and abducted children. Currently, Russia controls some 20% of Ukrainian territory, mainly in the region known as the Donbas. His book paints a fierce and shocking picture of life behind the front lines, where almost no journalists go, and gives a face and a voice to those who have to live on under harsh conditions under Russian occupation. The FMS spoke to Beld about his book Living in occupied Ukraine.
Could you share how this book came about?
Beld: “Besides being a journalist, I am an interpreter and translator for Russian and German. Especially during the corona period, I worked as a journalist for Belgian and Dutch media, and increasingly came across stories of people living in occupied territory, such as Ukrainian refugees or children who had been deported. It proved difficult to get those stories published with media; shortly after the war broke out, in 2022 and 2023, there was still interest, but now it seems to have faded away completely. Then I thought to myself: in order to bring this perspective to good attention and paint a good picture of the situation, it should become a book.”
However, finding funding for the project proved difficult: media editors and funds did not dare to support staying in Ukraine, let alone occupied territory. As a result, Beld had to rely on his network from his journalistic work: military personnel, activists and people who could refer him, such as at the Ukrainian ombudsman and the organisation Save Ukraine. This is how he managed to speak to people who wanted to tell their stories - including minors, who had experienced traumatic situations.
What kind of picture emerges from such conversations about life in occupied Ukraine and the daily conditions people endure there?
Beld: “Those circumstances are definitely tough. You have to imagine your hometown being occupied overnight. In the beginning, people just didn't go out - sometimes for two or three weeks - but at some point the food runs out and you have to. Gradually you become so dependent on the occupier. Russia imports people from within the country to run a local administration, who then slowly step up the repression. Such a local government adopts a harsh, lawless approach: they crush any unrest, and lock up in a basement anyone who dares to protest, until they want to record a video message saying they are actually quite happy.”
There is to some extent a ‘normal’ society, Beld says, but it also often consists of imported Russians who are given money to work in occupied Ukrainian territory. Thus, step by step, Russia is ‘Russifying’ Ukrainian villages and towns.
Beld's book is arranged in five sections - deportation, flight, captivity, collaboration and resistance - that characterise life under occupation, with three personal interviews in each section. One of the most poignant stories is that of Ukrainian boy Nikita, suffering from a metabolic disease, who was abducted from a children's clinic by the Russian occupying forces at the age of 9. The story is told in the book by Nikita's grandmother, Polina, who underwent a hellish journey through occupied territory to repatriate him.
Russia's abduction of Ukrainian children is probably something incomprehensible to many people. What scale are we talking about here, and what effectiveness?
“The Russians emphasise children who are disadvantaged, disabled or from orphanages. ‘Trains of hope’, they call it. So the example of Nikita with his illness is certainly not an exception, but in practice any child can be deported - the Russians themselves are already talking about 700,000 Ukrainian children. Once in Russia or Belarus, the children receive a complete Russified upbringing. Russian citizens can get money to ‘look after’ those children - with the end goal that they can be deployed to the front to fight against the Ukrainian army.”
And the odyssey of Nikita's grandmother Polina is unfortunately nothing more than a poignant bright spot in a very dark sky, says Beld: “A very small fraction can only be retrieved. That really amounts to a few hundred. The rest will be renamed and disappear.”
How do you explain the unfamiliarity of such stories - including in Ukrainian media?
“By far the greatest attention is paid to current developments at the front, or stories about heroic soldiers. That makes sense, but also has consequences,” Beld says. For instance, he cites the story of a young woman from occupied territory who was able to study online from a university in the free part of Ukraine, but was then branded a traitor there - because she had stayed in the occupied territory.
People in occupied territories more than once feel they are being abandoned, according to Beld. That constitutes one of the main reasons for him to write the book: to give a warning that a future ‘peace’ in which occupied territories are given up to Russia should not be taken too lightly. The annexation of Crimea in 2014 has shown what the future then looks like for Ukrainians in the Donbas, he says - and it is not pretty.
With his book, Beld wants to show what kind of inhumane practices and dehumanising crimes Russia is actually engaged in in Ukraine. Not least because relations with Russia seem to have been normalised little by little lately, such as at the last Paralympic Winter Games, but also on the international political stage. While nothing at all has changed, Beld says: Instead, Europe should introduce even tougher and stricter sanctions. “Only then will the situation get so bad that they can no longer pay for the war and they can no longer finance the colonisation of occupied territory.”
“If we don't do that, we are really letting down the victims of the occupation.”
“Life in occupied Ukraine” by Ardy Beld was published by North Book Publishers on 29 January 2026 and is available here.
