South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
People flee Kherson after shelling
Russia withdrew its forces from the city earlier in November
KHERSON, Ukraine — Fleeing shelling, civilians on Saturday streamed out of the southern Ukrainian city whose recapture they had celebrated just weeks earlier.
The exodus from Kherson came as Ukraine solemnly remembered a Stalin-era famine and sought to ensure that Russia’s war in Ukraine doesn’t deprive others worldwide of its vital food exports.
A line of vehicles stretched out for at least a half a mile on the outskirts of the city of Kherson.
Days of intensive shelling by Russian forces prompted a bittersweet exodus: Many civilians were happy that their city had been won back, but lamented that they couldn’t stay.
“It is sad that we are leaving our home,” said Yevhen Yankov, as a van he was in inched forward. “Now we are free, but we have to leave, because there is shelling, and there are dead among the population.”
Poking her head out from the back, Svitlana Romanivna added: “Our neighborhood was burning, it was a nightmare.”
Emilie Fourrey, emergency project coordinator in Ukraine for the aid group Doctors Without Borders, said an evacuation of 400 patients of Kherson’s psychiatric hospital, which is situated near both an electrical plant and the front line, had begun Thursday and was to continue in the coming days.
Ukraine in recent days has faced an onslaught of Russian artillery fire and drone attacks, with the shelling especially intense in
Kherson. Often the barrage has targeted infrastructure, though civilian casualties have been reported. Repair crews across the country were scrambling to restore heat, electricity and water services.
Russia has ratcheted up its attacks on critical infrastructure following battlefield setbacks. A prominent Russian nationalist said Saturday the Russian military doesn’t have enough doctors, in what was a rare public admission of problems within the military.
In Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy welcomed several European Union leaders for meetings and hosted a summit to discuss food security and agricultural exports from the country.
A deal brokered by the U.N. and Turkey has allowed for safe exports of Ukrainian grain in the Black Sea.
“The total amount we have raised for ‘Grain from Ukraine’ is already about $150 million. The work continues,” Zelenskyy said in his nightly TV address. “We are preparing up to 60 ships. All of us together do not just send Ukrainian agricultural products to those countries that suffer the most from the food crisis. We reaffirm that hunger should never again be used as a weapon.”
The prime ministers of Belgium, Poland and Lithuania and the president of Hungary were on hand, and others participated by video.
Ukrainian Prime Minister
Denys Shmyhal said Ukraine — despite its own financial straits — has allocated $24 million to purchase corn for countries including Yemen, Sudan, Kenya and Nigeria.
The reminder about food supplies was timely: Ukrainians were marking the 90th anniversary of the start of the Holodomor, or Great Famine, which killed more than 3 million people over two years as the Soviet government under dictator Josef Stalin confiscated food and grain supplies and deported many Ukrainians.
As people across the country lit candles at 4 p.m. Saturday in remembrance, Zelenskyy vowed that Ukrainians would not allow history to repeat itself.
“Once they wanted to destroy us with hunger, now — with darkness and cold,” he said. “We cannot be broken. Our fire will not go out. We will conquer death again.”
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz marked the commemoration by drawing parallels with the impact of the war on Ukraine on world markets. Though exports from Ukraine have resumed under the U.N.-brokered deal, they have still been far short of pre-war levels, driving up global prices.
“Today, we stand united in stating that hunger must never again be used as a weapon,” Scholz said in a video message. “That is why we cannot tolerate what we are witnessing: the worst global food crisis in years with abhorrent consequences for millions of people.”
Last year, Ukraine and Russia provided around 30% of the world’s exported wheat and barley, 20% of its corn and over 50% of its sunflower oil, the U.N. has said.
In a Saturday post on Telegram, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said more than
3,000 specialists for a local utility continued to work “around the clock” and had succeeded in restoring heat to more than more than
90% of residential buildings. While about 25% of Kyiv residents remained without electricity, he said water service had been restored to all in the city.