“I did not just decide to take the side of that other party: that this is not a war at all, but really a ‘special military operation,'” says 52-year-old Viktoriya Khvyl from Cherkasy Oblast. She is one of three Ukrainian women who have been sentenced in person to life imprisonment for state treason. Despite the life sentence, Khvyl still does not believe she made a mistake. She is convinced that she will not do time in a penal colony until the end of her life, but will get to Russia through an exchange. Yet she cries as soon as the conversation turns to her son, who, because of Khvyl’s cooperation with Russia’s FSB Federal Security Service, refused to communicate with her.
Slidstvo.Info traveled to the colony and recorded the story of Viktoriya Khvyl, how recruitment works, and what prompted the woman to cooperate with the Russians for the film FSB Ballerinas. Ukrainian Women in Russian Service.
This video has English subtitles.
GARDENER
We are at one of the colonies in the southeastern region of Ukraine, where people serve sentences for various crimes. The facility is large—it even has a church and a store. For some of these women, this is the last place they will ever see as they are serving life sentences. It seems the convicted women follow the cameraman and me with their eyes, making sure to stay out of frame. They don’t like publicity here.
Yet we are going specifically for a conversation with the convicted Viktoriya, who agreed to openly tell her story. She is held in a separate sector for those convicted of crimes against the foundations of national security, in particular for state treason and collaborationism. That is why they are jokingly called “koloboks” (literally ‘little round buns’) here.
At first, the division into “koloboks” and the rest was felt sharply. The collaborators and state traitors were disdained by other convicts, who were reluctant to make any contact with them. Now the tension has eased.
The “koloboks” sector is a building with one room for convicts and a nearby flower bed. On it, the women planted greenery to form the word “Volia” (‘freedom’ or ‘will’). Viktoriya Khvyl notes that she wanted it to say “Myr” (‘peace’), but that word turned out to be too short. They had to come up with something that was four letters long. That is how “Volia” came out.
Viktoriya does not go to work in the colony. She complains that “normal money” cannot be earned here anyway. So in her free time, she plants and waters flowers.
Before her imprisonment, Khvyl earned a living through renovations. She hung wallpaper, plastered walls, and did painting work in Zolotonosha and Cherkasy.
A few minutes before the start of the on-camera conversation, Khvyl suddenly asks:
“Vlada, how do I look in general? What is going on with my face? Because I have not used any cream or anything else here for two years already.”
I am puzzled and ask:
“How is it that you do not have anything? Does no one send you packages?”
Viktoriya looks at me dejectedly. She really does not receive packages. Her relatives turned away from her after she agreed to cooperate with Russian special services.
“IF YOU ARE FOR PEACE — YOU CAN HELP US”
In January 2023, Viktoriya received a message via the Telegram messenger, which read “Hi, I am your friend.” The sender had a number from a Russian operator and was signed as Vladіmіr Cherchenko. The avatar was a photo of Red Square in Moscow.
At first, Viktoriya ignored him, but later she herself suggested talking on the phone. Vladіmіr refused to join a video call, saying he works in the FSB and cannot show his face.
“He said: ‘Viktoriya, if you are for peace, you can help us.’ You know, I said: ‘Of course, I want to, of course. I would even do it with pleasure.’ — ‘Any information, any work must be paid for.’ I say: ‘I do not work for money, I can earn that,'” Khvyl says.
Vladіmіr insisted: it was precisely thanks to the FSB that Khvyl had not ended up in prison by that time, even though she had already been convicted.
“He said that he is from the FSB, knows my entire story, which I had to go through in 2022. Thanks to their services, I did not end up in prison. He protects people like me. I do not have to worry about my family, about my mother, about my son,” Viktoriya Khvyl retells the words of the recruiter.
“The story which I had to go through” is the verdict of the Sosnivskyi District Court in Cherkasy. In May 2022, Viktoriya received two years of probation for a crime against national security: the court found that she left a comment on Facebook in which she called the Russo-Ukrainian war a “special military operation.” The court decided that these were “public calls to support the decisions and actions of the aggressor state.”
It was precisely this first case against Khvyl that became the hook for FSB employees. They convinced the woman that probation instead of prison was their merit. Anna Yarusevych, the prosecutor in Khvyl’s second case, says, “The FSB established that Viktoriya had already been convicted, was probably outraged by the actions of the authorities in Ukraine. And they went through exactly this recruitment process. Someone recruits with money, someone recruits on a romantic basis, and someone recruits just like this.”
Viktoriya was worried about her safety, so she asked Vladіmіr to send her another phone. After that, she was sent 10,000 hryvnias ($223) for the purchase.
“It simply said ‘money transfer.’ It did not say from whom,” Viktoriya Khvyl recalls.
The prosecutor notes that in such cases, the money is transferred by other recruited Ukrainians. They are not asked to adjust fire, burn something, or kill someone. It is enough to simply carry out a financial operation, buy a SIM card, call “102” at the right moment, or do anything “small” at the request.
Then Vladіmіr Cherchenko asked Viktoriya Khvyl to send him the locations of checkpoints in Cherkasy Oblast.
“And I marked them at the exit and entrance to Zolotonosha. I also showed a military unit in Cherkasy on the map. On the Google map, I marked all this with an arrow. I was simply confident in the information coming from that side that no one would strike the checkpoints. That is, all this was simply for my safety, nothing more,” Viktoriya explains her actions.
“What safety are we talking about?” I clarify, not understanding her reasoning.
“Well, we also travel on buses…” she answers confusedly about sending the checkpoint locations. But she cannot argue for the military unit’s marking.
Khvyl corresponded with Vladіmіr Cherchenko only on “work issues”: he wrote tasks, and she carried them out. And only on February 23 did she send him a video greeting with Putin for the Russian Defender of the Fatherland Day.
However, after a few months, Khvyl decided to block Vladіmіr. He asked her to take a selfie near the railway and a military unit. She did not like the idea:
“This somehow caught my attention. Or rather, it alarmed me. Why a photo in front of a railway, in front of a military unit? My photo? Later, I realized there was no Russian person there at all. They simply needed to put me away.”
“Do you think you were communicating with an SBU employee?”
“Of course, with some ‘Vasya Pupkin’ (‘Joe Bloggs’) from the next-door office at the SBU.“
Although Khvyl is convinced it was a setup by Ukrainian special services, law enforcement established that she was corresponding directly with an FSB employee.
Based on data leaks from closed databases, Slidstvo.Info journalists, together with the OSINT department of Toronto Television, identified the likely recruiter of Viktoriya Khvyl. There were dozens of Russians with the surname Cherchenko, but only one of them has a connection to the FSB — the 67-year-old Vladіmіr Cherchenko.
His workplaces include the Center for Information Security, which is part of the First Service of the FSB. His task is to combat local and foreign cyber threats.
“MY BIGGEST GOAL IS AN EXCHANGE”
On July 1, 2024, the Sosnivskyi District Court in Cherkasy announced the verdict for Viktoriya Khvyl: life imprisonment. She was charged under two articles: state treason and justification of armed aggression against Ukraine on social networks. In particular, on her personal page on the VKontakte network, banned in Ukraine.
When the judge read out the life sentence, Viktoriya, as she herself says, did not react at all. In her final statement, she called the court process a “mockery of justice.”
Viktoriya hopes that she will not serve a life sentence in Ukraine. She wrote a letter requesting to be transferred to Russia as a prisoner of war, although under international humanitarian law, she is a civilian and does not have that status. According to the “I Want to Go Home” project, so far, seven imprisoned women have been transferred to Russia. Another 62 want to get there and are waiting for their turn. The head of the Office of the Prosecutor General’s department, Ivan Kisilevych, says, “By taking these women, Russia partially acknowledges its involvement with them. Even if it is difficult to use this in the legal field, the international community will see whom they are taking and why.”
Viktoriya Khvyl is not yet sure where she will go if she is exchanged. Her own brother lives in Voronezh, but she is not in a hurry to join him:
“Honestly, I don’t really want to go to Voronezh. Something draws me more to Crimea. So right now, my biggest goal is an exchange. As long as I still have the strength and the will, I need to work for my own little place—some small house…”
In Ukraine, Viktoriya lost her family—after her life sentence, her 31-year-old son cut off all contact. So did her mother, whom she lived with before prison. Viktoriya says her mother “loves watching TV,” but she keeps trying to “get through” to her son.
“I last spoke with him in mid-summer, and that’s it. I see he doesn’t pick up. Even if he does, he hangs up immediately,” the convict says, crying.
