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As Ukraine prepares a counteroffensive to reclaim more territory from Russian occupation, it’s still struggling with a thorny question: how to deal with collaborators? There are those who willingly served the Russians in their occupational administrations and took part in repressions against Ukrainians. Others helped the Russian armed forces. But there are also those whose guilt is much harder to assess: teachers, lower-level public servants and police officers.
Most either deny any wrongdoing, or say that they only helped the Russian occupiers under duress – a credible claim in many cases, considering the violence of the invaders. Yet thousands are under suspicion and hundreds on trial in the relatively small parts of Ukraine that have already been retaken. FRANCE 24’s Gulliver Cragg reports from one of those areas, the Kharkiv region.
This story originally appeared on France24
