A Lada dashes over the battered asphalt to Kherson. Behind the wheel is a father who has not seen his daughter for eight months. She was in occupied territory, he on the other side of the front. “I fought in the trenches for five months to free her,” says Oleksandr Sleshnush.
Now it’s finally here. Kherson, the only provincial capital that Russia managed to occupy, has been liberated. On Friday, the Ukrainian army reached the center of the city after one of the heaviest blows in the war.
Sleshnush has seen the images he dreamed of on his phone. From liberated citizens who stand by the side cheering with Ukrainian flags. Of his comrades hoisting the yellow-blue above government buildings. From people ripping to shreds large posters that read ‘Russia is here for good’ – the Russian ‘for good’ lasted just over eight months.
But at the last checkpoint for liberated territory, Slesjnush suddenly has to brake. A soldier, notably from the Ukrainian army, blocks his way. “No civilians from here.”
“Let me damn it, I want to pick up my daughter,” says Sleshnush. “Tomorrow those bastards might bomb her.”
But Roman, the 29-year-old soldier at the checkpoint, only lets soldiers through. He waves to the men on top of armored cars and looks after them dreamily. He can’t wait to drive into Kherson himself. The city where he used to stop with his parents on the way to a holiday address in Crimea. A plea to his commander didn’t help: someone has to stay at the checkpoint to stop civilians. For Kherson is liberated, but not safe.
Cautious Exploration
Cautiously, the Ukrainian army explores the city that could be riddled with deadly traps. On Thursday, two soldiers were injured when they walked into a house just outside Kherson and set off a hidden Russian explosive. Already blown up by Russia: the television tower, the power plant, several boiler houses. After crossing the east bank of the Dnipro, Russia also blew up the bridges.
But the “controlled withdrawal” announced by Moscow ended in chaos. Military bloggers in the Russian army say panic broke out among the soldiers who were the last to try to flee across the water while being shelled by the Ukrainian army. “Crossing the river safely is no longer possible,” Russian hardliner (and MH17 prime suspect) Igor Girkin wrote on Friday. He spoke of ‘a military catastrophe’.
“It’s not that the enemy is leaving,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday. “It is the Ukrainians who expel the occupiers at a high cost.”
For Ukraine, the liberation of Kherson is a great but hard-fought victory. The road to Kherson leads past blackened houses, exploded gas stations and melon fields full of craters and trenches.
Ukraine is silent about the death toll among its own ranks. The top US general said this week that about 100 thousand Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured since the start of the war. The Russians would have lost just as many soldiers.
Printed mood
It’s too early for euphoria, Ukrainians say. Just behind the front, in the city of Mykolaiv, the mood is depressed. The residents of Peace Boulevard 70 went to bed on Thursday with the news that Russia had finally been expelled from their province. But Friday morning, they’re out on the street in pajamas, watching firefighters clamber over the debris of their apartment building. “We hoped the attacks would stop now that the enemy has been pushed back,” says a woman in slippers in the mud.
But Russia also continues to fire missiles from the east bank that turn residential homes to dust. Dmytro Pletentchuk, a captain in the Ukrainian navy and spokesman for the troops in Mykolaiv, fears that Mykolaiv’s fate awaits Kherson. ‘Now Kherson becomes the front. They’re going to try to destroy the city.’
“Everyone over here,” a firefighter yells on top of the rubble in Mykolaiv. “Stretcher and body bag!”
And then what has happened almost daily in Mikolayiv this year happens. In a Red Cross tent, someone draws a line on a piece of paper. Dead number five. A man with ‘research’ on his uniform takes a picture of the corpse. A police officer stops a screaming woman who wants to pass under the police tape. “Let me through,” the old woman screams. ‘That’s my child lying there! My child, my dear child!’
She is escorted to an ambulance by a fellow townsman. Sandra Nikolina, 21, says she’s actually much too young to work as a trauma psychologist, “but someone has to do it.” Today she hugged a 16-year-old boy who suddenly has no parents anymore. And an old man and his grandson – the man has no more son, the grandson no father.
At the beginning of the afternoon, when Russia announces ‘the completion of the withdrawal’, the death toll on the Peace Boulevard rises to seven. “Assholes,” says Nikolina. “But we’re going to win. I hope not, I’m sure.’
