The lower districts of Kherson — such as Korabelnyi — are still flooded or covered with
stinking silt. On the Ukrainian side of the city, the water is receding with each day.
On Vasyl Stus Street, which reaches the Kosheva arm of the Dnipro river, people are
checking whether any of their possessions can be saved. The only ones who are not facing a
dilemma are those whose houses — after the explosion of the dam in Nova Kakhovka —
floated into the sea. When you ask locals about the flooding, many are surprised at the
speed with which the water has begun to recede. In some places, only puddles remain. The
central parts of the city are functioning as before. On Ushakova Street, the wealthier people
are using the few restaurants. The air raid alerts do not scare them away. It’s as if they
accept them as part of reality.
Outside the city, the situation is even worse. On Tuesday, of the 20 villages left underwater,
only three were on the Ukrainian side. There, reconstruction is underway after what locals
call a flood. Since the dam burst, Ukrainians have cleared more than 795 houses. On the
Ukrainian side, the death toll climbed to 21, a quarter of them were victims of Russian
shelling during the rescue operation.
Russians are constantly firing at Korabelnyi and towards the remnants of the Antonivskyi
Bridge. The warehouses where humanitarian aid is stored are equally popular targets.
Russians are convinced that along with humanitarian aid, weapons from the West are
coming into the city to help Ukrainians lead an offensive across the Dnipro River towards
Crimea. One Russian newspaper described the aid that Warsaw City Hall shipped to Kherson
like this. The pumps, hoses and water purification tablets were supposed to be a secret
Polish-Ukrainian operation. Russian propaganda refers to Poles by the contemptuous term
“‘pszeki’.” From the “sh” and “cz” sounds they hear in Polish.
Locals say that the shelling of Kherson with low precision “Grad” rockets regularly stops
between 13:00 and 15:00. “That’s when Russians have lunch. Everyone has their priorities,“
they add. I ask why shell the flooded neighbourhoods. The deputy chairman of the Kherson
Regional Council, Yuri Sobolevsky, explains that the aggressors are afraid that under the
cover of the rescue operation, Ukrainians will land diversionary groups on the left bank and
build bridgeheads there. “They are afraid. When they occupied Kherson, they were afraid
too. Maybe even more than now,” he adds.
From the other side of the river begins the shortest route to Crimea. Ukrainian positions are
only 120 kilometres from the gateway to the peninsula — the town of Armiansk. Breaking
through to the left bank of the Dnipro and establishing bridgeheads would allow them to
build crossings and, at the next stage, to move troops. Russians had no fortifications here
like those at Zaporizhzhia. They counted on the river to protect them. Yet serious defence
lines are located only behind Armiansk. Those that were there before, near Kherson, were
flooded with water after the dam explosion. Today they are useless. So the rapidly receding
water is a big disappointment for Russians.
The aggressors occupied Kherson on 2 March 2022, just days after the invasion began. At
that time, treachery in the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) took place. The bridges over the
Dnipro were not blown up in time. This came to light during the investigation in the summer
of 2022. This is one of the reasons why the then-head of the SBU and Volodymyr Zelensky’s
friend from his neighbourhood and youth years, Ivan Bakanov, lost his post. When Ukraine
repelled an attack from near Kyiv and in the Kharkiv region, Kherson became a matter of
honour. Russians — constantly cut off from supplies from the left bank by artillery fire —
had no chance. They could not defend a town that was not their home as fiercely as the
Ukrainians had defended Bakhmut. On 11 November, they fled.
Yuri Sobolevsky was in the city throughout the occupation. “The FSB was looking for me. I
was on the proscription lists. There was a whole network of people hiding me. But as a rule, I
always stayed at flats overlooking the headquarters of the occupation authorities,” he says.
He adds that the Russians who were in Kherson did not try to settle in the city. “They said
they were just passing through and immediately packed up to go to Poland and the Baltic
States. It sounds absurd, but that’s what happened,” he reports. The soldiers had no way to
move to the West. At the neighbouring airport — in Chornobaivka — they were defeated
and resigned. But their conversations are an example of how messed up their minds are.
The map of Russia was supposed to grow, but there were problems with this, even in a city
with a predominantly Russian-speaking population. There was neither a successful
replacement of the hryvnia with the rouble here nor a referendum on the creation of what
was called the Kherson People’s Republic. Even the local orchestra didn’t want to play for
the occupiers. Instead, there were protests with yellow and blue flags. Sobolevsky recalls
that the Russians’ frustration was “coming out of their ears.” When the conductor of the
Philharmonic refused to direct an ensemble that was to perform for the occupation troops,
he was shot.
Now the ambitions of Russians are to stop the advancing Ukrainians at all costs. The
problem is that nature does not favour the occupation forces — the water is rapidly
receding, and the Ukrainians are thinking of how to take advantage of the fact that the
Kremlin has moved most of its valuable airborne and marine infantry units from near Kherson to Zaporizhzhia. In fact, the thesis that Kyiv will start moving diversionary groups to the other side is quite resonable. And that is why Russians are aggressively, yet mostly blindly, attacking the city.
However, on Friday, 16 June, they hit the building that houses the local government offices
with a cruise missile. They blew a hole in a building. They struck in the morning, hoping to
kill officials and possibly the head of the Kherson military administration, as well as a
charismatic police officer who took his post after a wave of corruption-related dismissals —
Alexander Prokudin. “The missile fell a few minutes before my arrival. No one in the building
was killed. We had been expecting this for a long time. We were working in a shelter,“
Prokudin tells me. “They couldn’t hold the city, so they are trying to martyr it. There is no
chance of that,” he adds.
Russians can no longer control part of the islands on the Dnipro. Ukrainians have landed in
the neighbourhood of Oleshky and Dachi, but Putin’s troops are still close enough to keep
them on edge. Prokudin himself is not urging locals to return until the troops are pushed
back 40 kilometres from the river. Today they are 2 kilometres away in some places. This is
one of the reasons why less than 50,000 people remain in Kherson, which before the war
had a population of 270,000. Until the counter-offensive moves from this point, life here will
be temporary.
“Nothing is produced in the town. Except for bread, which is baked by volunteers from
imported flour,” says one of the residents who is organising humanitarian aid with his
Lithuanian partner. It is impossible to calculate risk in a place that is a powder keg.
The main help centre for flood victims is the city hospital. The head of the hospital is Alla
Malitska. “Before the war, I often came to see how your health service was organised.
Together with my colleagues, I used to visit the hospitals on Szaserow and Banacha streets in
Warsaw. But I stopped going there because the doctors were hitting on me,” she says.
Alla recalls the time of occupation by the Russians: “I didn’t treat them. But they were
constantly monitoring the staff. They pressured me to take a Russian passport. They sent FSB
officers. They threw one of the nurses in jail, accusing her of having links with the military.
They went through the phones. In the end, they decided I needed to be replaced,” she recalls.
Her place was taken by Olya, Alla’s deputy before the war. “She took a Russian passport. She
was loyal to them. She sided with them. Today she lives in Henichesk on the Sea of Azov,
where all Russians and their associates have moved. I don’t want to judge her. Each person
has made their own choice,” she says.
The head of the hospital takes me to the halls where the flood victims were distributed. “I was flooded up to my neck. My clothes were wet and heavy. I couldn’t save myself. Here I am free from danger. I am well fed, although I have a bad appetite,” says the 60-year-old woman, using terms typical of the USSR. “My son brought me to the hospital. I didn’t even have time to take my documents. On the first day, our flat was flooded to the ceiling. I started my life from scratch. Luckily it didn’t happen in winter,” adds another woman, a resident of the river port area. She herself is suffering from cancer. She has undergone radiotherapy and chemotherapy. No one here can effectively continue her treatment.
The road from Mykolaiv to Kherson on the side of Bilozerka is closed. Officially because of
floods. Unofficially because Ukrainians want to hit Russians from there too. Military direct
everyone to Chornobaivka. It all looks ambitious. However, for the moment, the counter-
offensive is proceeding moderately along the entire front line.
On Wednesday, Zelensky himself admitted that. “Progress is slower than we expected. (…)
Some people think this is a Hollywood film and expect immediate results. This is not so,” he
added.
Ukrainian troops are trying to break through in the Zaporizhzhya region — in the direction
of Tokmak and Melitopol, and in the west of the Donetsk region — near Orychev and Velyka
Novosalka — in the direction of Berdiansk and Mariupol. The last captured settlement is the
village of Piatykhatky, fierce fighting over which lasted for several days. The goal is to break
through to the Sea of Azov and cut the land corridor connecting Crimea with mainland
Russia. This scenario is quite realistic. However, it will not happen instantly, as, for example,
the liberation of Kharkiv or the liberation of Kherson. The territories south of the Dnipro —
flooded or not — are the road to Crimea. It is here that the fate of the war will be decided.
Either Ukraine will regain it and dictate the tone of the peace talks. Or it will be left with a
sore spot and a frozen conflict that will allow Russia to lick its wounds and attack again.
***
On Sunday, a humanitarian mission from Warsaw City Hall and the Open Dialogue
Foundation, led by Marcin Mycielski, arrived in Kherson. The city received, among other
things, the pumps and materials needed to overcome the consequences of the flooding.
This was the first aid from Poland and one of the few from abroad.
Source: gazetaprawna.pl
