Ukraine: US teacher narrowly escapes Russian intelligence in Kherson Italian police arrest nearly 50 suspected ‘Ndrangheta mafiosi

Timothy Morales had been hiding in Kherson for six months when a search party from the Russian secret service FSB suddenly appeared at his door. His Russian wasn’t good enough to pass for a local, so the Oklahoma English teacher told the FSB officer that his name was Irish, Timothy Joseph, and that he had lost his passport. A neighbor confirmed to officers that Morales was not a suspect, and the 56-year-old got away with it.

“But this experience changed my attitude again,” Morales told a New York Times reporter in liberated Kherson. “I was cautious before that, but just paranoid after that.” The interrogation by the infamous FSB, which also spawned Kremlin chief Putin, was the nadir of his eight-month “ordeal,” Morales says. He only escaped because the Russian agents were “not the brightest of people”.

Relatives brought groceries

Born in England, Morales had lived in the US for several years before moving to Kherson for love and establishing a language school there. His ex-wife and 10-year-old daughter managed to get out of town after the Russians took them over in early March.

But Morales himself didn’t want to risk being caught with his US passport at a Russian roadside checkpoint. Too great was his fear of becoming a “trophy” of the Kremlin, which likes to parade captured Americans in public and use them as leverage for diplomatic wrangling, as the fate of basketball player Brittney Griner demonstrates.

Only once in the eight months of the occupation did Morales try to escape, taking the highway north. But from a distance he saw Russian tanks firing into the road and turned around. His life during these months was confined to his apartment, his ex-wife’s and the short walk in between. Relatives of his ex-wife supplied him with groceries, and Morales could also confide in a saleswoman at the grocery store around the corner – she was on the side of the Ukrainians and would not betray him.

Even his neighbors kept quiet, and yet Morales was always afraid to meet them in the street – an effusive greeting or an ill-considered remark could have put him in danger. So Morales mostly dug in his house, at most in the yard with the cherry and walnut trees, while Russian soldiers continued to patrol the street. He passed the time with hundreds of movies he still had on his laptop and was even able to continue teaching English through his neighbor’s Internet connection: “It kept me sane,” says Morales.

In the last weeks of the occupation, Morales then noticed increasing signs of disintegration of the Russian military, with confused soldiers driving stolen luxury cars instead of military vehicles. “Over time, they started to look shabby and thrown together,” says Morales.

When the stolen BMWs and Mercedes disappeared from the streets, transported by the Russians on ferries across the Dnipro, Morales regained hope. On November 11, the day of liberation, Morales saw a car with a Ukrainian flag pass by on the street: “That’s when I knew the Russians were gone.”

Like many survivors of the occupation, Morales went to the city’s main square to greet the liberators and buy food. The supply situation in the city, which had a population of almost 300,000 before the war, is still precarious; the supply of electricity, water and heat has failed. But that’s not why Morales wants to leave town. “I just need to get some space for what happened here.” (cpf)