Kherson, Ukraine
DailyExpertNews
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A pool of blood-stained water and the charred wreckage of a car mark the spot in Kherson where Russian shells surged into the city on Thursday, killing four and shattering any sense of calm, according to local officials.
Russian President Vladimir Putin claims that he annexed this region and that the people here are now Russians. But his troops have left and now they are killing the civilians they once promised to protect.
Amid acute power and water shortages, the people of Kherson are suffering and with winter fast approaching, things will only get worse.
Shortly after the invasion of Ukraine began, Kherson was taken over by Russian forces, who did not emerge from months of occupation until November 11 when Kremlin forces withdrew. Now residents suffer the kind of violence that so many in this country know.
In a small grocery store also destroyed by the recent shelling, a desperate local man searches the rubble for scraps of food and rolls of toilet paper, looking for the little he can survive.
“Is everything so bad?” we ask. “It’s not good,” he replies gloomily.
The water supply to this town has been cut off by the Russian attack, so we watch an elderly woman on the street place a bucket under a drain pipe to catch a faint trickle.
Others, like Tatiana, who preferred not to give her last name, make the perilous walk to the banks of the Dnipro River, on which this town is located.
Russian troops still control the far side and the strategic river now marks the front line with Russian troops just a few hundred meters away.
Tatiana fills up two black plastic buckets and then struggles back up the hill to her home. “How can we live without water? We need it for washing, for the toilet, to do the dishes,” she says. “What can we do? We can’t live without water. So we come here.”
The wave of artillery exchanges between Russian and Ukrainian troops resounds in the background. This is no place to dawdle.
Just two weeks ago, the city’s central square was the scene of cheers following Russia’s withdrawal, one of Moscow’s biggest setbacks in this war.
Now tents set up by the local government stand as monuments to the various hardships here. One is to get warm, the other is to charge phones and the other is to help those who have had enough and want to get away from it all.
In the charging tent, people of all ages crowd around tables, drink tea and plug in, endlessly connected in series. The air is thick with body heat and breath.
Hanna and her daughter Nastya are sitting on a cot. It was the girl’s ninth birthday the previous day and she has dressed up with a Ukrainian face and a flag draped over her shoulders.
“It was very difficult – we went through the whole occupation,” says Hanna. “I can say that we live much better now. No water, no electricity, but no Russians either. It is nothing. We can get through it.”
After months of occupation, Nastya shares the resistance of the adults around her. “I think our enemies will all die soon,” she says. “We will show them what you get when you occupy Ukraine.”
That resistance is also felt by those outside the city, who avoided occupation but lived on the front lines of the struggle.
Valeriy, 51, and his wife Natalia, 50, were hiding in their potato cellar this spring when Russian shells landed on their dairy farm, tearing open their kitchen and destroying a tractor and car.
Their roots here are deep. “Our umbilical cords are buried here,” says Natalia with a Ukrainian expression. But when the fighting became too fierce, they left their home and their beloved cows for the war and recently returned after months in exile.
“What does our life look like? Super!” says Natalia laughing as she washes the dishes with water heated over a stove. “It’s very difficult. But at least we’re home.”
Valeriy holds up a large piece of metal shrapnel – all that is left of the rocket that landed in his garden.
“We lived peacefully and quietly,” he says. “We worked, earned money. Some grew crops, others had farm animals.”
To see what has become of his village is “like a stone pressing on my soul,” he says.
“Everything we earned and built, we did with our own hands. Now it is very difficult to come back and see what the Russian scum have done to us. I have no other word for it.”
But he returned to a good surprise. His beloved cows – who had wandered the fields for months – had survived.
“I gave them a hug!” he says, hugging them again, with a big smile. “I felt joy! They survived. I was so worried about them.”
