‘Death is everywhere’ in once-jubilant Kherson
Russia hammers city as Ukraine prepares counter
KHERSON, Ukraine — The road to Kherson is long, straight, and empty. Vacant fields rise from either side.
Entering town from the west, you pass the ATB supermarket, one of the mainstays of the city’s shopping. A rocket ripped into it a few days ago, shrapnel slicing into shoppers, killing four.
After that lie more crushed buildings, disassembled by Russian artillery shells.
“Death is everywhere,” said Halyna Luhova, Kherson’s deputy mayor.
It comes in many forms and at any time. People have been killed waiting for the bus, waiting for the train, walking to work, and in their sleep.
No city in Ukraine has experienced such a reversal of fortune as Kherson, a port on the Dnieper River near the Black Sea. It was seized by Russian forces in early March 2022, then jubilantly recaptured by Ukrainian forces in November. But instead of enjoying the fruits of liberation, Kherson is now a kill zone.
As Ukraine prepares for a critical counteroffensive and builds up troops and supplies along the river, the Russians are hammering it.
“Last week was a terrible week, a black week,” Luhova said Tuesday. Twenty-seven people were killed, 40 injured.
She was dressed in black and standing outside a funeral home, an all-too-familiar scene. “The enemy is an animal,” she said.
In front of her stood two open caskets, a mother and daughter, crushed when the walls of their house were blown apart. The mother, in her 80s, had been a nurse during Soviet times. Her daughter, in her 50s, was a teacher.
“We can’t understand it,” said Tamara Smoliarchuk, whose sister and mother were lying in the coffins. “Every day, they kill us.”
Many people here believe the relentless shelling is Russia’s revenge for losing the city. Last year, Russia’s leader, Vladimir Putin, invested heavily in Kherson, sending in Russian administrators, crates of Russian rubles, and even Russian families to turn Kherson into a mini-Russia.
But in November, facing a steady advance of Ukrainian troops, the Russians suddenly pulled out. It was a searing humiliation for Putin, who, according to American officials, had denied Russian commanders’ requests to retreat even sooner.
As soon as Kherson was liberated, crowds of beleaguered residents flooded into the town square, honking, hugging, kissing, singing patriotic songs, and crying deeply repressed tears of relief.
Images of the celebrations were beamed around the world, and some Ukrainians allowed themselves to believe that Kherson might be a symbol of something bigger, maybe even the beginning of the end of their horror.
But the Russians didn’t go far. They pulled back just to the other side of the river and now blast across the water, sometimes less than 1 mile away, with tanks, artillery, mortars, and rockets. Ukrainians say that Russians are also using warplanes to bomb villages around Kherson. When the Ukrainians shoot back from their artillery positions within the city, that just draws even heavier Russian fire.
More civilians are getting killed here than anywhere else, except perhaps along the front line in the eastern Donbas region, according to daily reports from the Ukrainian military. Officials in the Kherson region said that since liberation, at least 236 civilians have lost their lives. The city itself has been shelled more than 2,000 times.
Last week, a team of de-miners, guys who had stuck together through some very dangerous situations, was working in a wind-swept field on the outskirts of town. A Russian drone spotted them. It dropped a grenade. The grenade ignited a pile of mines. Local officials said six men were killed, in an instant. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said the total number of dead was nine.
Military analysts say the Russians may be bombarding Kherson to frustrate any plans the Ukrainians have to cross the Dnieper, now a watery front line. In the past few weeks, as the counteroffensive looms, Ukrainian commanders have bolstered their forces across the south, readying new brigades and new European- and US-supplied weaponry. Ukraine is under immense pressure to show progress on the battlefield, fearing that if it doesn’t, it will begin to lose Western support.