“I don’t think he’s honest or selfless and I’ll tell him straight up,” Mr. Samoylenko said.
But in Kherson’s small Jewish community, a remnant of what was once the main thread of the city’s fabric, Mr. Karamalikov is widely respected. Before the Holocaust, Rabbi Wolff said, Kherson had 26 temples. Now only one remains, Kherson’s Chabad Synagogue, and Mr. Karamalikov regularly gives it free use of his nightclub space.
Rabbi Wolff said: “He never said no.
Meeting point with “Alpha”
Karamalikov was busy during the tumultuous first weeks of the war, his lawyer said – rushing around Kherson in his white Audi, checking on neighborhood patrols, stopping at the Do synagogue Thai and turned his business into a de facto aid depot, where he distributed boxes of military supplies.
This puts him face to face with Russian officers, especially a colonel dressed in black and codenamed Alpha. Mr. Karamalikov had little choice, his lawyer said. Russian troops are swarming the city and Mr Karamalikov needs to talk to Russian commanders like Alpha “to make sure they don’t shoot any volunteers”.
Around 10 pm on March 15, a plumber, a carpenter and the carpenter’s son were standing at the checkpoint when they saw a shadow of a person passing in the dark. Then a voice shouted, “I am one of you!” and the Russian soldier stepped out, who mistook the neighborhood watchmen for his Russian friends.
Andriy Skvortsov, the carpenter’s son, said the soldier was very confused and could barely speak. When he realized the men in front of him were Ukrainian, he looked terrified, Skvortsov said. “He was like a child and helpless,” Mr. Skvortsov said. And he is armed with powerful weapons.
