Defenceless village where 30 pensioners cling on amid rubble – and minutes after we leave, the Russian shells rain down...
LIFE passes slowly in Shevchenkove. Thefluctuating price of graintends to dominateconversation in the village and there hasn’tbeen much excitements in ceoldVasyklo’stractor got stuck in a field during a thunderstorm some years back. That, at least, was the case until five weeks agowhenitsuddenly found itself pitched intoVladimirPutin’s war–at thefrontline of thebattle for southern Ukraine.Now itsinhabitants ’concerns are existential.They talk onlyofwhere the next Russian missile is coming from, whose house has been hit and whosemight be next.
Shevchenkoves its between the bitterlycontested cities ofMykolaivandKherson. Forten days last month it came underRussiancontrol.
Peering from behind the curtains of theirneatly tendedbungalows onemorning, residents saw tanks,not tractors, prowlin gthepoplar-lined streets.
Soon their lives were brutally upended.Twovillagers werekilled during shelling,oneofthem a youngman,the other anelderly woman who was in thestreetand‘couldn’tfindahidingplacequicklyenough’.
Then Russian soldiers begancheckinglocalmenfor‘patriotic’tattoos, ordering them to stripnaked at a checkpoint. One manfound with a design deemedoffensive was shot dead on thespot.
The village’s mayor, OlegPilipenko,vanishedonMarch10while delivering bread to settlements more remote than his own. The35-year-old father-of-three waskidnapped by Russians and has notbeen seen since, though there arerumours he is being held somewhereinCrimea.
In his absence , Shevchenkovew asrecaptured two week sago byUkrainianforces .
The fierce battledestroyed somehouse sand left few unscathed , butthe occupiers were driven out and ,we we reassured , no longer posed aseriousthreat.
Invited by the Ukrainianmilitaryto visit Shevchenkove to hear theresidents ’ stories , we discovered
to our deep unease on arrival on Thursday that the position had alteredsignificantly over the past24 hours. The Russianswere backand had taken upposition just three milesaway near the villageofLuch.
‘It’sverydangerousforyoutobehere,’whispersour militaryescort. ‘Wemustnotstayforlong.’
His warningis under scoredby villagerswho report thatPutin’smen,crouchingunseen somewhere a crossafieldoverlooked by themayor’shouse,seemhell bent on revenge,having shelledtheirhomes the previous afternoonwith renewedgusto.
On reflection,oneort wothing shad seemedt oaugurill that morning.DrivingthroughMykolaivonthe way to the village, we werehalted by apartially exploded clusterbomb, its tip buried in the middle of a quiet residential road. Halfanhourlater, crossing thelast city checkpoint into the opencountryside, when itfelt at once as if we had blundered on tothesetofawarfilm,was another sobering vision:amilitaryambulancehurtling past us from the frontline,asingle bluelightflashing.
Everything seems morevivid , intense – and unsettling . The vast plain beforeus , bisected by th eM 14 dual carriageway, has swung back and forth from Russian to Ukrainiancontrol . Evidence of fiercecombat a bounds.Fields churned byordnance , crate rafter crater , amangled , bullet-peppered road signpro claiming ‘ K her son 34 km ’.
It was from K her son that Russianforces poured at the start of thewar to try to seize strategicallypositioned Mykolaiv, the city inRussia’ s cross hairs because itblocks the route to the port ofOdessa – the cultural and economicprize still eluding Put in .
But against-the-odds resistancesaw them off . Now Ukrainiansoldiershope to liberate K her son , theonly major occupied city , with afresh assault . In the middle of all this stands reluctant Shevchenkove.
Arriving at the village just after1pm,wepassachurch,a shutteredgroceryshop,abasketballcourt,outdoor table tennis tables andwell-ordered bungalows,somewithdaffodil-decorated gardens butwith no cars.
Most people escaped at the firstopportunity. Of the 2,800-strongpopulation, only 100 remain, saysour military escort.Thisfigure,wesoon learn, needs revision.Following the previous day’sbombardment,aconvoyhadlefthoursbeforewearrived.Nowonly30 are left, mostly pensioners –those without the means or theinclinationtoseekrefuge.
In the distance comes the firstsign of life , a white-haired manwalking a dog , but our attention isdrawn by a house excised by adirect hit from above . A little of itsthresholdremains , falling steeplyto a five-metre crater .
‘ Thank fully the people had gonealready ,’ say sour guide.
As we seek the priest who isstanding in as mayor and whoferries in humanitarianaid, includingfood and medicines, we arejoinedby a villager.
‘Luchis over there,’ says Andriy,-pointing acrossa farmland to the-horizon. Hemakesastabatguess--------
It’s very dangerous for you here – we must not stay for long
ing where the Russians are – ‘See that gleaming bit on the horizon?’ – though it is anyone’s guess.
Either way, it feels as if we’re in the firing line.
A soldier confirms that we are. At this point, just as we move off, our BMW car starts making a flapping sound. ‘Maybe a flat,’ says our driver, Alexei, who cuts the engine and crouches near the bonnet. A ghastly, stomach-churning minute ensues. The soldiers beseech Alexei to drive on.
It is a broken fog lamp, not a flat, and can be patched up later.
From here we move to the far side of the village and park outside a church just as an artillery duel begins.
We meet Kyrylo, who is inured to the sounds of warfare, the explosions failing to register on his poker face. He says the previous day’s shelling was the most severe the village has endured.
Kyrylo has remained, nobly, in Shevchenkove to help repair damaged homes.
‘These are ordinary, hard-working people,’ he says. ‘One minute we are going about our lives as normal, the next we find ourselves in the middle of this crazy war. How brave of the Russians to bomb a defenceless village where there are no military. And not once or twice, but over and over again.’
He didn’t know the man killed at the checkpoint but said he ‘saw the Russians forcing groups of men to undress a few weeks ago’.
‘I don’t know the type of tattoos they were looking for but some of the men humiliated in this way were elderly. It was disgusting. They didn’t find what they were looking for and let the men go.’
We are joined by Daria, a goodhumoured woman who explains that the priest has not yet returned. To her, the events of the previous few weeks are unfathomable.
‘How can our Russian brothers treat us this way? Don’t we worship the same God, after all? They have made our lives hell. Every time we set foot outside our houses we feel as though we might not make it home.
‘Think of that. Not being able to go to the shop for bread without worrying about a bomb landing on
Every time we set foot outside we feel that we might not make it home
your head. My children are in Canada and want us to leave, but this is our home.’
She shows us a neighbour’s garage destroyed in the previous day’s shelling. ‘See what they do? The poor man was hiding behind a wall nearby. He’d been outside planting violets.’
At her home, Daria introduces us to her husband and promises to ‘make tea’ but first, leading us down a flight of concrete steps, shows us her shelter boasting two beds, a stove and a supply of food.
‘We try to make it as cosy as possible,’ she says. ‘The nights are frightening but we are safer down here.’
Suddenly our driver Alexei receives a call from the soldiers. ‘They’re saying we must leave immediately. Now!’
We wish Daria a hasty farewell and feel ungallant.
‘What about the tea?’ she laughs before waving us off.
Outside we struggle for a tense minute to find the escort’s car, then turn a corner and spot it in the distance on the edge of the village. It takes off at high speed and we follow behind, flying over the bumpy road and not letting up until we reach Mykolaiv 20 minutes later.
Lucky for us, but not so lucky for Shevchenkove, which we learn was shelled minutes after we left.
‘That is why we had to drive so fast,’ says Alexei.
We think of delightful Daria and the other hardy stoics and hope fervently that their war will end soon.