The atmosphere in the city is tense, people are emotionally exhausted. Some try not to leave the house, so as not to face the occupiers.
Kherson has been under Russian occupation almost since the first days full-scale war. Now Russia has decided to deport Khersonians under the guise of “evacuation”. The situation in the occupied city is tense, people are emotionally exhausted, but they do not want to “evacuate” and plan to wait for the Armed Forces.
A local resident told CNN about how Kherson lives. According to her, now the regional center looks like a ghost town, the streets of which are empty after noon, and in the evenings one or two windows are lit in high-rise buildings. In eight months, almost ten thousand residents left the city.
“Unfortunately, many residents of Kherson had to think about leaving the city. Everyone had their own reasons, anxieties and fears. But I am 100% sure that no one wanted to go,” she says.
The journalist's interlocutor informed that she was not going to go.
“This is my land, Kherson is my home . We took part in rallies against the occupiers from the first days of the war, fought as hard as we could. This struggle continues to this day,” explains the woman from Kherson.
According to her, most of those who remained understand that the Ukrainian military “will never harm people and will not fire on civilians.”
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Some townspeople do not leave their homes to avoid encountering the Russian military.
“It is impossible to relax here. In the evening, when I hear a car passing by the house, I start to get nervous, because the car is late – a bad sign,” says the interlocutor of the journalists.
Utility services of the city are working, but the citizens are afraid that with the onset during the cold weather in the city, interruptions in electricity supply and heating will begin.
So far, there are no problems with food products: “Kherson has generally turned into one spontaneous market, people sell what they can. Someone bakes homemade bread, someone – pies, someone sells their things just in the middle of the street, laying them out on a sheet.”
There are problems with medicines and baby food – there is not enough formula and they are very expensive. There is also a shortage of antibiotics. Medicines are imported only from the Russian Federation and are sold from cars or by private individuals right on the street.
The woman from Kherson does not know for sure whether the number of Russian soldiers in the city has changed – some have changed into civilian clothes, but continue to carry weapons. Kadyriv residents have also increased in Kherson.
According to her, local residents rejoice at the sounds of Ukrainian military shelling of the occupiers' positions.
“Kherson residents are afraid of silence. I remember that it was quiet for several days in the summer, and it seemed to everyone that Ukraine had forgotten about us. You can constantly hear how the Armed Forces are shelling the positions of the occupiers. You can't even imagine how happy the local residents are,” she said.
Read also: “Pray that one of us remains alive”: Le Monde published the story of a partisan from the de-occupied Kherson Oblast all international conventions? What plans and actions are the Russians trying to cover with a human shield from the flow of those who are “evacuating”? In what case can they go to blow up the “dam” of the Kakhovskaya HPP? The answers are in Valentina Samar's article “Kherson. What are the Russians up to?“.
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