Fear, hardship remain after Ukrainian forces free village
KALYNIVSKE, Ukraine — When night falls in Tatiana Trofimenko’s village in southern Ukraine, she pours sunflower oil that aid groups gave her into a jar and seals it with a wick-fitted lid. A flick of a match, and the make-do candle is lit.
“This is our electricity,” Trofimenko, 68, said.
It has been over 11 weeks since Ukrainian forces wrested back her village in Kherson province from Russian occupation. But liberation has not diminished the hardship for residents of Kalynivske, both those returning home and the ones who never left. In the peak of winter, the remote area not far from an active front line has no power or water.
And the sounds of war are never far.
Russian forces withdrew from the western side of the Dnieper River, which bisects the province, but remain in control of the eastern side. A near constant barrage of fire from only a few miles away and the danger of leftover mines leaving many Ukrainians too scared to venture out has rendered normalcy an elusive dream and cast a pall over their military’s strategic victory.
Still, residents have slowly trickled back to Kalynivske, preferring to live without basic services, dependent on humanitarian aid and under the constant threat of bombardment than as displaced people elsewhere in their country. Staying is an act of defiance against the relentless Russian attacks intended to make the area unlivable, they said.
“This territory is liberated. I feel it,” Trofimenko said. “Before, there were no people on the streets. They were empty. Some people evacuated, some people hid in their houses.”
“When you go out on the street now, you see happy people walking around,” she said.
The Associated Press followed a U.N. humanitarian aid convoy into the village Saturday when blankets, solar lamps, jerrycans, bed linens and warm clothes were delivered to the local warehouse of a distribution center.
Russian forces captured Kherson province in the early days of the war. The majority of the nearly 1,000 residents in Kalynivske remained in their homes throughout the occupation. Most were too fragile or ill to leave. Others did not have the means to escape.
Oleksandra Hryhoryna, 75, moved in with a neighbor when the missiles devastated her small house near the village center. Her frail figure stepped over the spent shells and shrapnel that cover her front yard. She struggled up the pile of bricks, what remains of the stairs, leading to her front door.
She came to the aid distribution center pulling her bicycle and left with a bag full of tinned food, her main source of sustenance these days.
But it’s the lack of electricity that is the major problem, Hryhoryna said.
“We are using handmade candles with oil and survive that way,” she said.