A city of love and death. How Kherson lives a few kilometers from the enemy

The sun is rising over Kherson. The rays fall on the building of the regional state administration on Freedom Square, destroyed by the KABs.

In June 2025, the Russians dumped it was hit by several air bombs. A Ukrainian flag flies in front of the ruins and roses bloom.

The flowers are cut by Olha Chupikova, who works for the local municipal enterprise Parks of Kherson. For her, these roses are a symbol that life is stronger than death: "They have survived, even though there were two hits from the KABs... Houses cannot withstand, iron cannot withstand, but plants can withstand," says Olha.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, the Russian army captured Kherson in a matter of days. But the occupiers failed to win the favor of the locals. It is here, on Freedom Square, that Kherson residents come out to rallies against the occupation, and then nine months later they met the Ukrainian military who came to liberate the city.

In the same square, now almost deserted, Olha and her colleagues continue to take care of the red roses. They are blooming profusely alongside the explosions, destruction and death that have become commonplace for the people of this city.

People safari

Olga is wearing a bulletproof vest with the call sign Witch. She carries a small black box with her – a drone detector. This device is familiar to those who live near the contact line. It gives a signal as soon as a drone approaches.

The Russian army is based less than two kilometers from Kherson. To be more precise, at a distance of 1366 meters – that was the length of the now destroyed Antonivsky Bridge, which connected the left and right banks of the Kherson region.

The only obstacle for the Russians now is the Dnipro. They cannot overcome it, so they have chosen a different strategy. Artillery, including tank shells, air bombs, drones and mines are flying at the city. The only way to hide from them is underground. The closer to the river, the more dangerous and scary it is.

Before the full-scale invasion, the employees of Parks Kherson mostly cleaned streets, squares and green areas. Now, only one team, the one led by Olha, is doing this. All the others work at the arrival sites. When there are not enough hands, Olha and her colleagues also join in to clean up the aftermath of the attacks.

"We are raking dry grass to stop fires. If people think it's not the right time, it's very important, because drones fly around, make drops, and everything catches fire instantly," explains Olha.

Before the invasion, she had her own business – a plant nursery on the left bank of the Kherson region. It burned down. Olha's house is in Antonivka, a village that begins just beyond the destroyed bridge. The house was damaged by shelling, and it is impossible to take away the remains of her belongings.

"I try not to remember, because I have enough problems without it. The only thing that keeps coming back to me is the cherry tree that my son planted for me... It's the only thing alive that's left of him."

Olga's son, Dmytro, was a soldier. This year he was killed in the Donetsk region.

In recent weeks, Olha has continued to manage the brigade and work in the city, but she is constantly thinking about one of the most prominent topics in the news: negotiations with Russia, the country that took away her business, her home, and her son:

"If they surrender and sign a peace agreement with a demarcation line along the Dnipro, it would be like crossing Kherson off the map of Ukraine," Olha says. "The Russians have been shooting and will continue to shoot. As they are learning from us, organizing safaris on people, they will continue to do so."

What it's like to live in the red zone

Antonivka and the neighborhoods nearby are the so-called red zone. This is the area most heavily shelled by the Russian army. Despite the complete absence of electricity and almost complete absence of water and gas, some locals remain in their homes.

There are no shops here, and buses do not run because they immediately become targets for Russian drones. Neither ambulances nor the State Emergency Service come here. Whenever possible, the police take out the wounded and the bodies of the dead. It is impossible to bring construction materials to repair houses after shelling.

The locals are trying to somehow fill gas cylinders, get gasoline for generators, firewood for heating, and take water from local wells. Some are cooking on stoves provided by volunteers and living in the basements of their homes.

Hanna Korshun-Samchuk lives in the Yantarny neighborhood, not far from Antonivka. It is difficult to count how many people are left here, but Hanna says it is definitely more than a thousand, and they rarely leave their homes.

Because Hanna and her husband Andriy have a car, they have become a kind of bridge to civilization for their neighbors. They bring them humanitarian aid from the city, bread and all the necessary things that the car can carry. Every week they take their neighbor's cancer patient to radiation therapy. The couple takes care of the locals, because their kvartal (the head of the neighborhood committee, an analog of condominiums in the private sector – LIGA.net) is being treated after being wounded.

"He was seriously injured when he was helping neighbors put out the roof, and there was another drop (of ammunition from a drone – LIGA.net). Now his arm is being saved in Mykolaiv in the surgical department," says Hanna.

She continues: "A man in a Volga also used to help us. He also took care of these areas and lived here himself. But he was also hit by a drone, and he died."

Andriy shows the photos he took on his phone on the way home. They show burnt cars, petal mines scattered on the roadway, and damaged buildings. The man himself has several contusions. His car came under drone attacks, and his house was shelled.

In the spring, a Russian shell hit the roof of Hanna and Andrii's house. The five of them lived there with three older relatives. Hanna decided to look for another place to live and called potential landlords. However, these searches were not successful:

"The first number I called, and the owner said, 'Oh, my God, it's so cool, you have dogs. I said, 'We also have grandmothers and cats. She says, 'Cats? No, I have furniture. I called the others back. They asked: How many adults are there? I said: five of us. My husband and I are more or less young, and there are also grandmothers of 90+ years. I hear in response: "No, it's the smell. It will smell like old age. I said: I understand, goodbye. And she hung up the phone."

For the past three and a half years, Hanna and Andriy's lives have been filled with caring for those around them. The horrors of war could not take away their sense of humor and love of life.

A truly happy event happened to their family this year on Independence Day: Hanna's uncle, the former mayor of Kherson, Volodymyr Mykolaienko, who was kidnapped by the Russians in April 2022, was finally released from captivity.

The next day, his mother and Hanna's grandmother, who lives with her, had a birthday – she turned 91. "All these three years she said she would wait for a son," says Hanna, "and she did.

The couple is not going to leave. The neighbors helped repair the roof, temporarily covering it with plastic. The repair was done in the following way: two people were fixing it, and two people were watching the sky for drones.

"As it will be, so it will be. I know that God protects us so that we can continue to help people. He cannot leave us," the woman says.

Evacuees from the Island

In early August this year, the Russian army began attacking the only road to the Korabel neighborhood. Locals call it the Island because it is surrounded by water on all sides. If the bridge is completely destroyed, the residents will be isolated. To prevent this, the local authorities decided to evacuate them.

In 2023, the island will be the largest suffered after the Russians blew up the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station. Then the water rose so high that the first floors of the apartments were flooded. We had to use boats to get around the streets. However, both then and now, most people are reluctant to leave.

Before the evacuation began in August of this year, about two thousand Kherson residents lived here. Today, about two hundred people remain. According to local authorities, all children have been taken away. Some of the evacuees went to their relatives, while others stayed in equipped shelters.

In one of them, the commandant Lyudmila gives a short tour. She says that there are not many residents on site right now – some have gone to work, others have gone to process IDP documents. Men, women and families live in separate rooms. Their pets – cats and dogs – are with them.

The evacuees will be able to live here for the next six months. If the situation does not change during this time, they are likely to stay in the shelter for the rest of the year.

Despite the fact that people live free of charge, are fed, and do not have to pay for utilities, most of them want to go home. The women who live here talk among themselves, saying that the electricity will not be turned on because the local authorities do not want people to return to the Island.

Yaroslav Shanko, head of the Kherson City Military Administration, says that they are constantly working to restore communications, but it is difficult to do so in a place that is constantly under fire:

"I also get comments on social media that we don't want something. I try to answer everyone, but you need to understand that we are at war right now. We need large equipment for repair work. The bridge is damaged and cannot perform its function at 100%... As soon as it is possible to do something, we will do it," says Shanko.

The power supply is periodically restored on the Island, but it disappears again after Russian shelling. Water is supplied for two hours a day.

Business in a frontline city

According to Shank, 323,000 people lived in the Kherson community before the full-scale invasion. Now 77,000 people remain in the community, and about 65,000 people live in Kherson.

Whenever possible, people try to move to areas away from the Dnipro. There are fewer "hits," but, as Kherson residents say, there is no safe place anywhere.

In the afternoon, there are fewer people on the streets. Some establishments and shops are open until 15:00 or 16:00. However, the COFFEE 11/11 coffee shop closes only an hour before the curfew, which starts at 21:00 in summer and 20:00 in winter. The owner of the coffee shop, Oleksiy Haiduk, says that he opened it after the de-occupation of Kherson. He named it symbolically because the Ukrainian Armed Forces liberated the city on November 11, 2022.

Oleksiy returned to the city six months before the invasion – his parents live here. Before that, he lived in Kyiv for 13 years.

Despite the late hour for Kherson, most of the tables on the cafe's summer terrace are occupied. People are drinking lemonades, ordering coffee, and enjoying desserts. A foreign language can be heard.

The owner says that even on the day when the blast wave hit the café across the street and damaged the place, the work continued because people came to get coffee.

"As long as we are alive, the whole business, we have to work here," says Oleksiy.

The curfew is about to start. Freedom Square and the city center are not as crowded as Oleksiy's coffee shop. You can stand on the roadway and be sure that no car will hit you.

Ukrainian flags are flying on the square. It has been decorated for national holidays. Behind them is the same vandalized administration building. It's hard to find a single surviving window here, but if you don't look too closely and concentrate on the blooming roses, you'll remember peaceful Kherson for a second. There were almost no people or cars in it either, because everyone went to the sea and summer cottages on the left bank for the holidays.

Now across the river are the Russian occupiers, who kill Kherson residents every day. When they go to bed, the locals do not know whether they will wake up tomorrow, whether their house will stand. But the sun is rising over Freedom Square again. People go to work in buses with windows boarded up with plywood, drink coffee and call their families to find out how the night went. Life goes on.