Kherson resigns itself to living despite heavy Russian fire

Photo: Bernat Armangue Archives The Canadian Press Residents of Kherson sang the national anthem during the liberation of the city in November 2022.

A dog passes by, two friends play ball on the pavement, while a man polishes his racing car. Another bends down, picks up a piece of shrapnel from the ground of this war-ravaged building courtyard. All around, damaged facades, like so many in Kherson, blackened in places, balconies torn off, windows blown out by explosions, boarded up or replaced with simple sheets. And this disconcerting flowerbed, under the heavy, windless sky. In the distance, explosions resound like a rumble of thunder.

So Kherson resigns itself to living, despite the rain of bombs that have been raining down on it every day since the city was liberated in November 2022. At the mercy of Russian artillery, under the threat that lurks everywhere, at all times. Enemy positions are only a few kilometers away, on the other side of the Dnipro, the river that has become a battlefield that borders the city. Powerless, the inhabitants have watched, for the past two years, the slow erasure of their city, strike after strike.

Unable to invade the southern Ukrainian city again, Kremlin soldiers are trying to make life there unbearable. Camped along the river, Putin’s army bombards it with gliding bombs, drones and ballistic missiles. Last September alone, no fewer than 17,500 shells were fired on Kherson and its region, according to the local military administration. On the front line of more than a thousand kilometers across the attacked country, few localities are as vulnerable.

Resistance

And yet, rather than giving in to terror, the inhabitants display a disconcerting phlegm. In this city that has been pounded many times, they try to cling to the banalities of life. They emerge here and there, like real acts of resistance. There is Halyna, 57, who continues to wear makeup and dress elegantly — “we have to go on living!” — sporting pretty gold earrings. There is the shopkeeper in her stall selling tomatoes, the passers-by walking their dogs as if nothing was happening, or the small group of neighbors chatting at the foot of a building. The cafes are still open, the electricity and heating work, the shops welcome their customers. The city is adapting. Bunkers used as refuges in case of attack are used as bus shelters.

Silence nevertheless prevails in the sparse streets of Kherson.

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The city, once thriving and the regional economic heart, is emptying. Of the 300,000 inhabitants who lived there before the war, less than a third remain. Most are retired, without the means to leave, and often without the desire to start a new life in exile. Many prefer to breathe their last on this land that saw them grow up, even if it means accepting a brutal death. Others simply stay out of obligation, to care for elderly parents, or out of fear of the unknown.

It is past eight o'clock in this central district, and the morning fog is clearing. On a boulevard, traders sell fruit and vegetables on the sidewalk, in front of a parade of marchroutkas, these little yellow buses that crisscross the roads of Ukraine. “We can’t leave,” says Svitlana, 40, behind her vegetable stall. She works here, in this market square, every day. “We have no choice, we have to live.”

Further on, a municipal employee in a fluorescent bib calmly sweeps the dead leaves from a park next to a ruined café. A stuffed animal lazes on a swing, as if frozen in time. Patriotic symbols, inscribed on the sly during the occupation, cover the facades of the surrounding area.

Photo: Roman Pilipey Archives Agence France-Presse Players of Krystal Kherson, the Kherson women's soccer team, march next to a Ukrainian flag during a soccer tournament dedicated to the year of Kherson's liberation. Drones no longer allow such events to be held, a year later.

Exodus from the city

By 4 p.m., there is no longer a soul on the street, even though the curfew is only four hours away. In Kherson, everyone locks themselves into their routine, an antidote to the madness. “You go home, close the curtains, and immediately you feel like you are in your fortress,” says one resident.

When night falls, Kherson plunges into darkness. Deserted sections of buildings bear witness to the exodus of the city's inhabitants. And when the night becomes restless, when a detonation disturbs sleep, people grit their teeth and wait for it to pass. The inhabitants, overcome by a certain fatalism, no longer blink during air raid alerts, except when an explosion sounds nearby. Everyone knows that this day could be their last.

This text is part of our Perspectives section.

“Life here? It's very joyful!” says Viktoriia, a pharmacist, behind her counter. People die almost every day. But you get used to the danger, you have to keep working. ” Opposite, a florist chats with a passer-by, a cheesemaker waits patiently behind her stall, the noise of a drill resounds nearby. Two days later, a strike will smash the apartment building right next door: two dead, three injured, including a 13-year-old child.

Being 10 in Kherson

Adjoining an Orthodox church with a golden bell tower, the Caritas juvenile detention center in the village of Zelenivka, on the outskirts of Kherson, is surprisingly quiet. “There’s just been an explosion, the children are in the basement,” says Tetyana Choub, the site’s coordinator since March 2024. Every time there’s artillery fire, they head for the shelter. “The important thing is to protect the children,” emphasizes the 35-year-old manager, who stays upstairs no matter the danger.

In the basement, the twenty or so kids are enthusiastic. The center’s psychosocial support helps break the isolation of these children of war, often in a state of post-traumatic shock. It also helps them try to glimpse the future. “It’s hard for them to plan for the future, so we offer the children career guidance workshops to show them that there are jobs other than doctors, astronauts or police officers.”

Here, between making pizzas, coloring or playing chess, the children also learn to give first aid and, with the help of the police, take self-defense classes. Being 9, 10 or 11 years old in Kherson means having to learn the brutal world of adults too early.

Photo: Patrice Senécal Le Devoir Destruction in the city of Kherson, October 2024

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Mutilated flesh

Death can strike anyone on a street corner. Serhiy, a local resident who does not wish to reveal his real name, remembers the time he was nearly killed; his hands and face still bear whitish scars. It was in June 2023, at an animal shelter with other volunteers from Kherson. First, a strike hit a nearby humanitarian aid point. Then came a second one. The hut he was in burst into flames. Serhiy managed to escape, but Katia and Viktoriia did not. “They died in the explosion.” Both women were barely out of their teens. “They loved taking care of animals,” Serhiy says quietly. “The next day, some soldier friends fired a shell with their names written on it, to avenge them.” »

At the city hospital, Dr. Oleksandr Chebotarev also sees the blood and mutilated flesh of civilians. He is one of the few doctors who has not left the region since the very beginning, who has experienced everything. When the Russians fled in November 2022, they looted a good part of the equipment.

Today, Oleksandr insists that he “lacks nothing” at the hospital. He smokes a cigarette in a park not far from his facility. “The hospital site has already been attacked three times by Grad [multiple rocket launchers], sometimes at night,” Oleksandr explains placidly, his eyes tired. “It’s terror, pure terror. The worst wounded were those who tried to flee across the occupied river in boats during the floods of 2023. The Russians shot them in the back. I had to remove the bullets myself.” »

Libération

On the morning of November 11, 2022, a rumor was circulating throughout Kherson: the Russian army had just defected. But in the fog of war, everyone was wary. The inhabitants, wary, feared a trick. What if the Kremlin troops were in fact setting a trap for them, to better surround the resistance fighters ? After eight months of repression, exactions, shortages and torture, few dared to believe that the hour of deliverance had truly come. “People were shouting at the Ukrainian soldiers: “But no, you're lying!” ” recalls Andriy Tsivilskyi, a 47-year-old aid worker with close-cropped hair who works for the NGO Union of Help to Kherson.

Except that when the tanks of the kyiv army arrived on Freedom Square, reality imposed itself. That was it, Kherson was free and Ukrainian again, it could breathe. In the center, the crowd swelled, people gathered there in their thousands. The first Ukrainian flags were raised, bonfires burst forth. “It was euphoria,” Mr. Tsivilskyi recalls. “We were bickering among ourselves to try to kiss the soldiers and give them gifts!” For days he celebrated from morning to night, singing with joy, until his voice was lost. In Kherson, his Ukrainian flag hidden in his garden was dug up, hidden from the occupier. We wept with relief, hoping that this major battle would mark the “beginning of the end” of this total war.

In vain. Less than a week after the recapture of Kherson, the first Russian bombs fell on the city. Today, the vast Freedom Square, flanked by a Ukrainian flag, is deserted. “Two years later, even the most optimistic are losing their morale,” says Halyna, a resident. Before the war, in Kherson, everything was going well, we took vacations, we went to the sea. It’s hard to imagine that one day everything will go back to the way it was before. »

Photo: Patrice Senécal Le Devoir By 4 p.m., there is no longer a soul in the street, even though the curfew is only four hours away.

« Like a second day of birth »

On Independence Boulevard in the city centre, you have to close your eyes to imagine this busy pre-war thoroughfare, where people used to complain about traffic jams. “People don’t venture here anymore,” says Vitalii, Halyna’s husband, a friendly man with an imposing build. The market in the central district, which is regularly bombed, was bombed again this morning in late October, injuring two elderly people.

In his cabin, Vitalii warns: it’s best not to hang around. So he drives without stopping, making a brief tour of the city centre.

Caution is required because he himself, in January 2023, almost died there. Seven pieces of shrapnel have seriously injured him, two of which are still embedded in his body. Vitalii feels lucky to be alive. “It’s like a second day of being born,” he says with a smile.

Ultimate Torment

It is 2 p.m. Andriy Tsivilskyi's car parks in front of a building. Last mission of the day. He picks up boxes filled with spare batteries and LED bulbs to distribute to residents. Another harsh winter is approaching, as Russia continues to destroy energy infrastructure.

The twenty or so inhabitants, mostly elderly, wait there, wisely, on benches, in this basement lit by neon lights. A blue and yellow flag hangs on the wall, in the middle of the pipes. Mr. Tsivilskyi complies. Tongues loosen. A woman comes forward, wrapped up, her gaze tender. Her name is Viktoriia, she is retired and is preparing to pour out her heart. “We hope that no one in your country knows what we have experienced here,” she says with emotion. “We will hold out and win this war, but we no longer have enough tears to cry.”

A hubbub rises in the damp room. The occupation, worse than the deluge of fire that has lasted for two years ? “We are ready to be hungry, but we want to remain free,” a man sums up for the group. Outside, there is an uneasy calm. The last strike in this area was four days ago. When will the next one be? ? Such is the fate of Kherson, ready to endure anything, except the torture of reliving life at the point of the invader's rifle.

With Katerina Sviderska

This report was funded with support from the Transat International Journalism Fund-Le Devoir.

From humanitarian volunteer to shadowy resistance fighter

Driving his sedan on the bumpy roads of Kherson on his way to his next humanitarian aid delivery, Andriy Tsivilskyi recounts the ordeal of the occupation. In the summer of 2022, a leaden pall falls on volunteers like him: they are now forbidden from distributing aid in Kherson. Only the invader reserves this “right.” With an obvious goal, according to Mr. Tsivilskyi, namely to “show that only they could save us.” On the street, loudspeakers hammer out propaganda: “Your president has abandoned you.”

Helping your fellow citizens in Russian-occupied territory is a crime. In Kherson, humanitarians are quickly hunted down. So Mr. Tsivilskyi has to be extra discreet. He continues, in secret, to help civilians in need, as he has done since the beginning of the invasion. “Many people refused Russian help, so we had to certify that our help was Ukrainian,” explains this farmer. “A 90-year-old grandmother initially refused mine, until I showed her the little Ukrainian flag on the bag.”

One day, Russian soldiers noticed bags in his car bearing the colours of the country under attack. The 47-year-old Ukrainian was arrested on the spot. Then, he was taken to a small basement, one of the countless dungeons and torture chambers set up by the Russian army. About twenty of his compatriots were already there: all shadowy resistance fighters, like him. The man was interrogated, then forced to “bring glory to Russia”. “One person was severely beaten because he refused to do so,” he recounts.

A few days later, it was the chaos of war that saved him. An explosion echoed through the neighbourhood, causing panic among his torturers. Andriy Tsivilskyi took advantage of the situation to flee. Months passed and in November of that year, the kyiv army liberated Kherson. Since then, he has never stopped crisscrossing his city, rescuing destitute citizens, with his own vitality.