She Said No to Putin — He Smashed Her Apartment

For more than 40 years, her life had been connected with Yavornytskyi Dnipro National Historical Museum. During 20 of them, she was its director. Ms. Kapustina’s apartment is one of 236 that were damaged during the massive missile attack on Dnipro city on December 29, 2023.

On that day, the shopping center and the maternity hospital bore the brunt of the attack. As a result, seven people died, including, a 45-year-old man, who passed away in the hospital. More than 30 were injured. 14 high-rise buildings were damaged, along with seven private houses, 35 cars, 12 administrative buildings, three hospitals, seven shops and a warehouse.

“My daughter went to the shelter – to the basement of the Suputnyk cinema. I lingered a little,” Nadia recalls. “But I read news in social media: the missiles were already in the airspace of Ukraine... I prepared my bug-out bag with papers and medicine and was just about ready to go see my daughter. It was then that I heard the first explosion. I ran to the corridor. Pieces of glass and the balcony were already blowing out behind my back.”

There were several explosions. Some time after the shock wave broke all the windows in the apartment, Nadia was still sitting in the corridor. Once things calmed down, she looked into the large hole that remained in the place of the balcony. Opposite the house, a maternity ward was burning.

Nadia packed her things and went to her daughter, who was in the shelter the Suputnyk cinema.

Having recovered a little, they returned home and started a real springclean. Friends arrived, started raking glass and garbage, vacuuming carpets. Broken glass was everywhere. Nadia found tiny slivers even on the fourth day after the blast.

In the kitchen, the table was broken, the kitchen furniture was damaged, the Christmas tree flopped down, and collectible Christmas decorations fell to bits. In the daughter's room, the wall had sunk. Interestingly, the small blue and yellow flag remained just where it was.

On the day of the attack, the city administration helped the residents of the shattered neighborhood to board up the windows with chipboard panels.

“I was very worried about my books and paintings. These are my jewels,” says Nadia.

For two days after the attack, under stress, while emotions seemed to be blocked, Ms. Kapustina did not think about the situation. On the third day, she began to run through possible scenarios of events in her mind.

“If I hadn't hid in the corridor, I could have been killed by the balcony section that fell down or got seriously injured by the glass... The realization of these options made me dizzy,” the woman says.

Nadia remembers that on the day of the shelling, she walked around the apartment for a long time, stepping over the glass, trying to understand the condition of her belongings... She checked picture frames, looked through stacks of books... Sorted through broken, unique collectible Christmas tree ornaments. For her, things have a history that she knows how to preserve. After all, for more than 40 years, her fate was connected with the world-famous museum.

Nadia went from a tour guide to a director. During her tenure as head, Dnipro Historical Museum was granted national status, and its complex was expanded and replenished with departments that became separate museums. Among them there are Literary Dnipro, Center of Helena Blavatsky and her family, Museum of History of Local Self-Government (housed in the building of the Dnipropetrovsk regional council), museum “Civic Feat of Dnipropetrovsk Region Residents in the Anti-Terrorist Operation” (created together with ATO participants, NGOs and volunteers).

Nadia and the research staff of the History Museum created the only Museum of History of Dnipropetrovsk Regional Television and Radio Broadcasting Center in Ukraine, as well as the Museum of History of Financial Affairs of Dnipropetrovsk Region. The Ministry of Finance of Ukraine dreamt of such a thing, but was never able to implement this idea. For a long time, Nadia also nurtured the idea of and then created the concept of Dnipro History Museum from scratch. The mayor of Dnipro, Borys Filatov, was interested in Ms. Kapustina’s vision and finally made a decision to established the museum.

Now Nadia is retired. She likes to turn over the pages of photo albums. Her entire professional and creative path is imprinted in these pictures. She recalls the tours that she personally conducted for the leaders of the state and honored guests of the country. However, there is one story from her directorship that she recollects with particular anger.

At the beginning of 2001, the city was getting ready for a visit of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. According to the diplomatic protocol, certain gifts were prepared. There was information that the “guest” wanted something historically valuable. The regional leadership at that time summoned Ms. Kapustina and tasked her with presenting the painting Cossack Mamai from the collection of the National Historical Museum... to Putin.

“To say I was shocked would be an understatement,” recalls the former director of the museum. “I categorically refused to do it. My proposal was to present the work of a modern Dnipro author because everything stored in the museum is the state part of the museum fund of Ukraine.”

There are 13 works depicting Cossack Mamai in Dnipro Historical Museum. Each one is unique and distinctive, not a copy! The city authorities demanded that one of them be presented to Putin.

Nadia started receiving threats of dismissal. She was told that she would not find a job in any institution in the region. Her reply was “Go on, I dare you! I will kick up a stink throughout the country. I come from Zaporizhzhia city. If you create impediments for me in Dnipro, I will work in my native region.”

Cross words passed between the people during the conversation, and Nadia Kapustina asked the authorities inconvenient questions: “Is the Hermitage being given away piece by piece? Do they disperse collections in Moscow or St. Petersburg? Why should the Ukrainian museum give away unique exhibits?”

Back then, the picture never got to Putin. Nadia stood her ground. “This is a normal thing to do for any museum worker who understands that the collection is not created for gifts, but for our understanding of the path that Ukraine is going through,” the former director notes.

Once, on a business trip to a Russian museum, Nadia Kapustina had to conduct a history lesson with a local tour guide, who described two artists – Mariupol-born Arkhip Kuindzhi and Ilya Repin, who was born in Hhuhyiv, Kharkiv region – as belonging to the circle of Russian artists. “For the Russians, the falsification of our culture and history is not in the blood, but in the bone marrow,” says the former museum director with a sigh. She also remembers how Putin visited Dnipro in February 2001. He arrived in the city at night, President Kuchma invited him to dine at the Zhovtnevyi hotel.

“Life is a strange thing,” says Nadia Kapustina. In March 2022, the Zhovtnevyi hotel was filled to the brim with migrants fleeing Putin's missiles from the east…

On the morning of the next day of the 2001 visit, Putin visited the Pivdenmash aerospace factory...

...During 2022 and 2023, he targeted the enterprise with missiles several times, and on December 29, 2023, rockets of the Russian army destroyed the Dnipro maternity hospital, a shopping mall and mutilated an entire residential block near Pivdenmash... Nadia Kapustina herself also received Putin's “gifts” under the Christmas tree.

“He took revenge on me for the painting I didn't give him,” says Nadia with a sad smile, adding: “We hold up thanks to our life experience. We are live! Not injured. We will overcome the rest and win.”

 

The text was prepared in cooperation with DATTALION NGO.

 

Read this article in Ukrainian and russian.