A Ukrainian director described how the Ukrainian national anthem was performed in the center of occupied Luhansk
Gio Pachkoria, a Ukrainian director, actor, and founder of the “Malanka” Theater, recounted how, after the occupation of Luhansk, he and his colleagues openly sang the Ukrainian national anthem in the city center, risking their own safety.
According to Pachkoria, after Luhansk was seized by Russian occupation forces, he worked for nearly four years at the Luhansk Academic Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater. Despite the occupation, the theater continued to stage performances in Ukrainian, and the Ukrainian inscription remained on its building.
The director recounted that on one occasion, he and several colleagues spontaneously decided to perform the Ukrainian national anthem right in front of the theater building.
“We were sitting in the theater. We’d had a few drinks—just a few, we weren’t drunk. We were playing ‘Crocodile’ or ‘Elias’ for fun; I don’t even remember which one. And my team was given the task: to go out in front of the theater and sing the Ukrainian national anthem. We went out. There were four or five of us. It was broad daylight. We stood right in front of the theater and sang: ‘Ukraine has not yet perished…’ Someone was even filming us on video. We were just lucky back then—we didn’t get caught,” Pachkoria recalled.
He noted that inside the theater, they managed to maintain a special atmosphere that helped the staff escape, at least for a short while, from the realities of the occupation. According to him, the troupe didn’t set out to fulfill a political mission but simply continued to work in Ukrainian, regardless of the circumstances.
Pachkoria called that period one of the best in his life, although outside the theater, he said, the city had changed dramatically after the occupation.
He shared this in an interview with OBOZ.UA.
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