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Kherson: Russians shell Ukraine city just two weeks after pulling out

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Kherson, Ukraine
CNN
 — 

A pool of blood-stained water and the charred wreckage of a car mark the spot in Kherson where Russian shells tore into this city Thursday, killing four, according to local officials, and shattering any sense of calm.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claims he’s annexed this region, and that the people here are now Russians. But his troops have left, and now they’re killing the civilians they once vowed to protect.

Amid acute power and water shortages, the people of Kherson are suffering and, with winter fast approaching, it’s only set to get worse.

Soon after the invasion of Ukraine began, Kherson was taken over by Russian forces, only emerging from months of occupation on November 11 when the Kremlin’s troops withdrew. Now residents are suffering the kind of violence familiar to so many across this country.

In a small grocery store also destroyed by the recent shelling, a desperate local man searches in the rubble for scraps of food and rolls of toilet paper, scavenging for what little he can to survive.

“Is everything so bad?” we ask. “It’s not good,” he responds, bleakly.

The water supply to this city has been cut off by the Russian attack, so we watch an elderly woman on the street placing a bucket under a drain pipe to collect a feeble drip.

Others, like Tatiana, who preferred not to give her last name, take the hazardous walk to the bank of the Dnipro River on which this city lies.

Russian forces still control the opposite bank and the strategic river now marks the frontline with Russian forces just a few hundred meters away.

Tatiana fills two black plastic pails, then struggles back up the hill towards her home. “How we can live without water? We need (it) to wash, for the toilet, to wash dishes,” she says. “What can we do? We can’t live without water. So we come here.”

The boom of artillery exchanges between Russian and Ukrainian forces echoes in the background. This is not a place to dawdle.

Just two weeks ago the city’s central square was the scene of jubilation after Russia’s retreat, one of the biggest setbacks for Moscow in this war.

Now, tents set up by the local administration stand as monuments to the various hardships here. One is for getting warm, one is for charging phones, and one is to help those who have had enough, and want to leave altogether.

In the charging tent, people of all ages crowd around tables, sip tea, and plug into the power strips endlessly daisy-chained together. The air is thick with body heat and breath.

Hanna and her daughter Nastya sit on a cot. It was the girl’s ninth birthday the previous day, and she’s decked herself out with Ukrainian faceprint and a flag draped over her shoulders.

“It was very hard – we lived through the whole occupation,” says Hanna. “I can say we live much better now. No water, no power, but also no Russians. It’s nothing. We can get through it.”

After months of occupation, Nastya shares the defiance of the adults around her. “I think that our enemies will all die soon,” she says. “We will show them what you get if you occupy Ukraine.”

That defiance is also felt by those outside the city, who avoided occupation but lived at the frontline of the battle.

Valeriy, 51, and his wife Natalia, 50, hid in their potato cellar this spring when Russia shells landed on their dairy farm, ripping through their kitchen and destroying a tractor and car.

Their roots here are deep. “Our umbilical cords are buried here,” Natalia says, using a Ukrainian expression. But when the fighting grew too fierce, they abandoned their home and beloved cows to the war, returning recently after months in exile.

“What’s our life like? Super!” Natalia says with a laugh as she washes dishes with water warmed over a stove. “It’s very hard. But at least we’re at home.”

Valeriy holds up a large piece of metal shrapnel – all that’s left of the missile that landed in his yard.

“We lived peacefully and quietly,” he says. “We were working, earning money. Some growing crops, others had farm animals.”

To see what’s become of his village is “like a stone weighing on my soul,” he says.

“Everything we earned and built we did with our own hands. Now it’s very hard to come back and see what the Russian scum did to us. I don’t have another word for them.”

But he did return to one good surprise. His beloved cows – left wandering the fields for months – had survived.

“I gave them a hug!” he says, hugging them anew, with a broad smile. “I felt joy! They survived. I was so worried about them.”

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Civilians escape Kherson after Russian strikes on freed city

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KHERSON, Ukraine (AP) — Fleeing shelling, hundreds of civilians on Saturday streamed out of the southern Ukrainian city whose recapture they had celebrated just weeks earlier.

The escape of hundreds from Kherson came as the country paid homage to the millions of Ukrainians who died in a Stalin-era famine — and sought to ensure that Russia’s war in Ukraine doesn’t deprive others worldwide of its vital food exports.

A line of trucks, vans and cars, some towing trailers or ferrying out pets and other belongings, stretched a kilometer or more on the outskirts of the city of Kherson.

Days of intensive shelling by Russian forces prompted a bittersweet exodus: Many civilians were happy that their city had been won back, but lamented that they couldn’t stay.

“It is sad that we are leaving our home,” said Yevhen Yankov, as a van he was in inched forward. “Now we are free, but we have to leave, because there is shelling, and there are dead among the population.”

Poking her head out from the back, Svitlana Romanivna added: “We went through real hell. Our neighborhood was burning, it was a nightmare. Everything was in flames.”

Emilie Fourrey, emergency project coordinator for aid group Doctors Without Borders in Ukraine, said an evacuation of 400 patients of Kherson’s psychiatric hospital, which is situated near both an electrical plant and the frontline, had begun on Thursday and was set to continue in coming days.

Kherson was one of many cities in recent days to face a blistering onslaught of Russian artillery fire and drone attacks, with the shelling especially intense there. Elsewhere, the barrage largely targeted infrastructure, though civilian casualties were reported. Repair crews across the country were scrambling Saturday to restore heat, electricity and water services that were blasted into disrepair.

In the capital Kyiv, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy oversaw a busy day of diplomacy, welcoming several European Union leaders for meetings and hosting an “International Summit on Food Security” to discuss food security and agricultural exports from the country.

The prime ministers of Belgium, Poland and Lithuania and the president of Hungary were on hand, and many others participated by video.

Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said Ukraine — despite its own financial straits — has allocated 900 million hryvna ($24 million) to purchase corn for Yemen, Sudan, Kenya and Nigeria.

“Ukraine knows what hunger is, and we do not want people to die again in the 21st century because of Russia and its inhuman methods,” he was quoted as saying by the news agency Interfax.

The reminder about food supplies was timely: Ukrainians were marking the 90th anniversary of the start of the “Holodomor,” or Great Famine, which killed more than 3 million people over two years as the Soviet government under dictator Josef Stalin confiscated food and grain supplies and deported many Ukrainians.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz marked the commemoration by drawing parallels with the impact of the war on Ukraine on world markets. Exports from Ukraine have resumed under a U.N.-brokered deal but have still been far short of pre-war levels, driving up global prices.

“Today, we stand united in stating that hunger must never again be used as a weapon,” Scholz said in a video message. “That is why we cannot tolerate what we are witnessing: The worst global food crisis in years with abhorrent consequences for millions of people – from Afghanistan to Madagascar, from the Sahel to the Horn of Africa.”

He said Germany, with the U.N.’s World Food Program, will provide an additional 15 million euros for further grain shipments from Ukraine.

Scholz spokes as a cross-party group of lawmakers in Germany are seeking to pass a parliamentary resolution next week that would recognize the 1930s famine as “genocide.”

Last year Ukraine and Russia provided around 30% of the world’s exported wheat and barley, 20% of its corn, and over 50% of its sunflower oil, the U.N. has said.

In a post on the Telegram social network on Saturday, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said more than 3,000 specialists for a local utility continued to work “around the clock” and had succeeded in restoring heat to more than more than 90% of residential buildings. While about one-quarter of Kyiv residents remained without electricity, he said water serviced had been returned to all in the city.

The scramble to restore power came as Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo met Saturday with Zelenskyy in Kyiv.

“This might be a difficult winter,” he said, alluding to Belgium’s contributions of generators, and support for schools and hospitals in Ukraine, as well as military aid such as “fuel, machine guns, propelled artillery and so on.”

“And by standing here, we hope that we provide you hope and resilience in fighting through this difficult period.”

___

Keaten reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.

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Stories of Ukrainian resistance revealed after Kherson pullout

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Kherson, Ukraine
CNN
 — 

Two Russian soldiers walked down a street in Kherson on a spring evening in early March, just days after Moscow captured the city. The temperature that night was still below freezing and the power was out, leaving the city in complete darkness as the soldiers made their way back to camp after a few drinks.

As one stumbled on, the other stopped to relieve himself on the side of the pavement. Suddenly, a knife was thrust deep into the right side of his neck.

He fell to the grass. Moments later, the second Russian soldier, inebriated and unaware, met the same fate.

“I finished the first one immediately and then I caught up with the other and killed him on the spot,” says Archie, a Ukrainian resistance fighter who described the scene above to CNN.

He says he moved on pure instinct.

“I saw the orcs in uniform and I thought, why not?,” Archie adds, using a derogative term for Russians, as he walks through that same street. “There were no people or light and I seized the moment.”

The 20-year-old is a trained mixed martial arts fighter, with nimble feet and sharp reflexes, who had previously always carried a knife for self-defense, but never killed anyone. CNN is referring to him by his call sign to protect his identity.

“Adrenaline played its role. I didn’t have any fear or time to think,” he says. “For the first few days I felt very bad, but then I realized that they were my enemies. They came to my home to take it from me.”

Archie’s account was backed up by Ukrainian military and intelligence sources who handled communications with him and other partisans. He was one of many resistance fighters in Kherson, a city of 290,000 people before the invasion, which Russia tried to bend but could not break.

People in Kherson made their views clear soon after Russia took over the city on March 2 coming out onto the main square for daily protests, donning the blue and yellow Ukrainian flag.

But Kherson, the first large city and only regional capital Russian troops were able to occupy since the start of the invasion, was an important symbol for Moscow. Dissent could not be tolerated.

Protesters were met with tear gas and gunshots, organisers and the more outspoken residents were arrested and tortured. When peaceful demonstrations didn’t work, the people of Kherson turned to resistance and ordinary citizens like Archie started to take action on their own.

“I wasn’t the only one in Kherson,” Archie says. “There were a lot of clever partisans. At least 10 Russians were killed every night.”

Initially solo operations, like-minded residents began organising themselves in groups, coordinating their actions with the Ukrainian military and intelligence outside the city.

“I have a friend with whom we would drive around the city, looking for gatherings of Russian soldiers,” he says. “We checked their patrol routes and then gave all the information to guys on the frontline and they knew who to pass onto next.”

Russian soldiers weren’t the only ones targeted for assassination. Several Moscow-installed government officials were targeted during the eight months of the Russian occupation. Their faces were printed in posters placed all over the city, promising retribution for their collaboration with the Kremlin, in a psychological war that lasted throughout the occupation.

Many of those promises were kept, with some of those officials gunned down and others blown up in their cars in incidents that pro-Russian local authorities described as “terrorist attacks.”

Archie was arrested by the occupying authorities on May 9, after attending a victory day parade, celebrating the Soviet Union’s win in World War II, wearing a yellow and blue stripe on his t-shirt.

He was taken to a local pre-trial detention facility which had been taken over by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and used to torture Ukrainian soldiers, intelligence officers and partisans, according to Archie.

“They beat me, electrocuted me, kicked me and beat me with batons,” Archie recalls. “I can’t say they starved me, but they didn’t give much to eat.”

“Nothing good happened there,” he said.

Archie was lucky enough to be let go after nine days and after being forced to record a video saying he’d agreed to work with the Russian occupiers. His account of what transpired in the facility has been confirmed by Ukrainian military sources and other detainees.

But many others never left, according to Archie and other resistance fighters, as well as Ukrainian military and intelligence sources.

Ihor, who asked CNN not to reveal his last name for his protection, was also held at the facility.

“I was kept here for 11 days and throughout that time I heard screaming from the basement,” the 29-year-old says. “People were tortured, they were beaten with sticks in the arms and legs, cattle prods, even hooked up to batteries and electrocuted or waterboarded with water.”

Ihor was caught transporting weapons and says “luckily” he was only beaten.

“I arrived after the time when people were beaten up to death here,” he recalls. “I was stabbed in the legs with a taser, they use it as a welcome. One of them asked what I’d been brought in for and another two of them started hitting me in the ribs.”

Through his detention, Ihor was able to hide that he was a member of the Kherson resistance and that transporting weapons was not the only thing he did. Ihor says he also supplied intelligence to the Ukrainian military – an activity that would have incurred far more brutal punishment.

“If we found something, saw it, (we) took a picture or a video (and) sent it to Ukrainian forces and then they would decide whether to hit it or not,” he explains.

Among the coordinates he communicated to the Ukrainian military is a warehouse within Kherson city. “The Russian military kept between 20 to 30 vehicles here, there were armored trucks, armored personnel carriers and some Russians lived here,” Ihor says.

Departing Russian forces were quick to hollow out what was left of the prized interior, but the wrecked building bears the marks of the violent strike. Most of the roof has collapsed, its walls lay shattered and broken glass still covers most of the floor. The structure remains in place but in parts its metal has been mangled by the blast.

Ihor used the Telegram messaging app to communicate the building’s coordinates to his military handler, who he referred to as “the smoke.” Along with the information, he sent a video he secretly recorded.

“I turned on the camera, pointed it at the building and then I just walked and talked on the phone while the camera was filming,” he explains. “Afterward I deleted video, of course, because if they were to stop me somewhere and check my videos and pictures there would be questions…”

He sent the information in mid-September and, just a day later, the facility was targeted by Ukrainian artillery.

The United States and NATO have assessed that when Russia began its invasion of Ukraine, the Kremlin expected its forces to be greeted as saviors, welcomed with open arms. Reality failed to live up to expectation, not just in the territories where Moscow’s armies were pushed back, but also in the areas it was able to seize.

The strike on the warehouse which Ihor helped with, is one of many facilitated by Ukrainian partisans inside Kherson working tirelessly and under threat to disrupt Russian activities within the city.

Eight months after it was occupied by Russia, the city of Kherson is now back in Ukrainian hands and Moscow’s armies are on the back foot, forced to withdraw from the western bank of the Dnipro river.

But despite achieving victory here, Ukraine continues to faces almost daily crippling missile strikes almost everywhere else, all while Russian forces continue to press on in the East.

Looking back, Ihor, father to a three-month-old daughter, says he was lucky he wasn’t caught.

“It wasn’t hard, but it was dangerous,” he explains. “If they were to catch me filming such a thing, they would take me in and probably wouldn’t let me come out alive.”

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World

Ukraine war: Kyiv monastery raid; Kherson ‘treason’ arrest; and prank call to Poland’s Duda

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1. Ukraine searches Kyiv monastery over suspected Russia links

Ukraine’s security service (SBU) has raided the main Orthodox Christian monastery in Kyiv over suspected links to Russia.

The SBU said on Telegram that it had carried out “counter-espionage measures” at the 1,000-year-old Pechersk Lavra complex on Tuesday morning.

The operation aimed to “counter the subversive activities of the Russian special services in Ukraine”, it added.

The searches were carried out alongside Ukrainian police and the national guard, the SBU said. Worshippers were allowed to continue praying at the monastery but were subjected to SBU security checks.

“These measures are carried out to prevent the use [of the monastery] as a centre of the ‘Russian world’,” the SBU said.

The Pechersk Lavra is the oldest monastery in Ukraine and has been on the Unesco World Heritage List since 1990. It is also the headquarters of the Russian-backed wing of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church.

The Moscow branch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church had maintained close ties to Russia until May, following the invasion of Ukraine.

Two similar raids were also conducted on monasteries and Orthodox Church properties in the northwestern Ukrainian region of Rivne.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has condemned the raids as “military action against the Russian Orthodox Church”.

The Russian Orthodox Church has also described the searches as an “act of intimidation”.

Patriarch Kirill, the head of Russia’s church, has vocally supported Russia’s “special military operation” in Ukraine.

2. Ukrainians may have to live with blackouts until March

The head of a major Ukrainian energy provider has warned that citizens will likely have to live with blackouts at least until the end of March.

Sergey Kovalenko, head of the YASNO, said on Facebook that workers were rushing to complete repairs before winter arrives.

“Stock up on warm clothes and blankets and think about options that will help you wait a long outage,” he said.

Half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been damaged by Russian attacks, according to President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

In his nightly address on Monday, Zelenskyy also appealed to Ukrainians to conserve energy.

Amid frequent blackouts, millions of people have been left without electricity and water as winter sets in and temperatures drop below freezing. Grid operator Ukrenergo said more planned shutdowns are scheduled for Tuesday.

“The scale of destruction is colossal,” said Ukrenergo CEO Volodymyr Kudrytskyi.

“In Ukraine, there is a power generation deficit. We cannot generate as much energy as consumers can use.”

Kudrytskyi added that rising temperatures after Wednesday should provide an opportunity for Ukrenergo to stabilise the power-generating system.

The Ukrainian government has begun evacuating citizens from the liberated city of Kherson, which remains mostly without electricity and running water. Residents in Kherson may apply to be relocated to areas where heating and security problems are less acute.

“Given the difficult security situation in the city and infrastructure problems, you can evacuate for the winter to safer regions of the country,” Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said on Telegram.

Moscow says its strikes on Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are the consequences of Kyiv not willing to negotiate.

Russia has been targeting Ukrainian power facilities after a series of battlefield setbacks, including its withdrawal from Kherson to the east bank of the Dnipro river.

3. Ukraine health system facing ‘darkest days in the war so far’, says WHO

The World Health Organization’s regional director to Europe has issued a stark warning after visiting Ukraine.

Up to three million more people could leave their Ukrainian homes this winter in search of warmth and safety, according to Hans Kluge.

“Ukraine’s health system is facing its darkest days in the war so far,” Kluge said in a statement.

“Having endured more than 700 attacks, it is now also a victim of the energy crisis. Access to healthcare cannot be held hostage,” he added.

The WHO says hundreds of Ukrainian hospitals and healthcare facilities lacked fuel, water, and electricity to meet people’s basic needs.

“We expect 2-3 million more people to leave their homes in search of warmth and safety,” Kluge said.

“They will face unique health challenges, including respiratory infections such as COVID-19, pneumonia, influenza, and the serious risk of diphtheria and measles in the under-vaccinated population.”

The UN health agency has called for a “humanitarian health corridor” to be created for all areas of Ukraine that have been recaptured by Kyiv, as well as those occupied by Russian forces.

4. Kherson official arrested on suspicion of ‘treason’

Ukrainian investigators said they have arrested a Russian pre-trial detention centre official in Kherson for “treason”.

The suspect is accused of allowing Russian prisoners of war to escape before the city was recaptured by Kyiv.

“From the very first days of the occupation, this employee of a detention centre worked for the invaders,” the SBU said in a statement.

“[They were] in charge of pre-trial detention centres and places of execution of sentences,” it added.

According to the SBU, the suspect “did not have time to escape” when Kyiv’s forces liberated the southern city on November 11. If convicted of treason, the suspect faces a life sentence in prison.

The arrest comes after Ukrainian prosecutors say they have found four “torture sites” used by the Russian forces in Kherson.

Earlier this month, the SBU also arrested a suspected Russian soldier who was allegedly “disguised as a civilian” in Kherson.

Fighting continues to rage on the ground in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has mobilised its forces from Kherson.

The General Staff of the Ukrainian Armed Forces said on Tuesday that it had repelled numerous Russian attacks in several areas in the Donetsk region.

“The enemy does not stop shelling the positions of our troops and settlements near the contact line,” it claimed. “Attacks continue to damage critical infrastructure and civilian homes.”

Four people were killed and four others wounded in Ukraine-controlled areas of the Donetsk region over the past 24 hours, regional governor Pavlo Kyryleno said on Telegram.

Russian missiles also reportedly hit a humanitarian aid distribution centre in the Zaporizhzhia town of Orihiv, killing one person and injuring two others.

The strike allegedly occurred near Zaporizhzhia nuclear power station, according to regional governor Oleksandr Starukh. Russia and Ukraine have both accused each other of firing shells near the plant.

Authorities in the Russian border region of Belgorod have also claimed that three people were killed in strikes on Tuesday.

5. Poland’s President spoke to Russian pranksters after missile explosion

The office of Polish President Andrzej Duda has confirmed that he spoke to Russian pranksters after last week’s deadly rocket strike.

Duda’s office confirmed on Tuesday that last week he was put through to a person claiming to be French President Emmanuel Macron and that he gave the caller sensitive information.

Two people were killed by a rocket blast in the Polish border village of Przewodow on November 15. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has said that the missile appeared to have been fired accidentally by Ukraine’s air defences.

A seven-minute video on YouTube shows two Russian pranksters — known as Vovan and Lexus — speaking to Duda in an apparent French accent.

The Polish President can be heard explaining details about the missile incident and his care not to exacerbate the situation with Russia.

Duda’s office says the prank call was one of many conversations that he had received just after the rocket strike.

“During the call, President Duda realised from the unusual manner in which the caller was conducting the call that there may have been an attempt to deceive and ended the call,” the office wrote on Twitter.

The same Russian pranksters had previously spoken to Duda in 2020 while posing as UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres. Two officials from Poland’s mission to the UN were dismissed over the incident.

An investigation into the latest prank call is underway, Duda’s office said.

Vovan and Lexus have previously targeted other European politicians and celebrities with prank calls, including UK defence minister Ben Wallace.

Poland’s defence minister says the country will now deploy additional Patriot missile launchers from Germany near the Ukrainian border.

Berlin had offered the air defence system to help Warsaw intercept missiles after last week’s deadly strike in Przewodow, which had raised fears that the Ukraine war could spill into NATO territory.

“The German defence minister confirmed her willingness to deploy the Patriot launcher at the border with Ukraine,” Polish minister Mariusz Blaszczak wrote on Twitter.

“The version of the system remains to be determined, as does how quickly they will reach us and how long they will be stationed.”

The NATO allies had already said that German Eurofighters would offer to help police Polish airspace.

6. Ukraine receives new EU aid worth €2.5 billion

Ukraine’s government says it has received a new €2.5 billion financial aid package from the European Union.

Finance Minister Serhiy Marchenko said the bloc had now provided €6.7 billion of assistance to Kyiv since Russia invaded.

“The EU Commission is disbursing a further €2.5 billion for Ukraine,” Commission President Ursula von der Leyen wrote on Twitter.

“We are planning €18 billion for 2023, with funding disbursed regularly for urgent repairs and fast recovery leading to a successful reconstruction,” she added.

“We will keep on supporting Ukraine for as long as it takes.”

Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy said on Twitter that he was “grateful” for the new tranche of aid ahead of the winter.

Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal added that the assistance was “another step of solidarity”.

The international community has also stepped up its aid to Moldova amid an energy crisis.

On Tuesday, the Russian gas giant Gazprom threatened to cut gas supplies to Moldova, accusing Ukraine of siphoning off the pipeline that runs through its territory.

According to Gazprom, Ukraine illegally accumulated 52.5 million cubic metres of gas in November by “violating” part of the deliveries to use it for its own purposes.

The Russian giant threatened to “reduce gas supplies” from November 28, as temperatures plummet and the demand for gas increases.

Russia was the EU’s biggest supplier of gas before the invasion of Ukraine, but the EU has since cut its imports significantly to less than 10% of all imported gas.



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Russians accused of burning bodies at Kherson landfill | Ukraine

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The landfill site on the edge of Kherson offers some visible hints here and there, among the piles of rubbish, to what locals and workers say happened in its recent past. Russian flags, uniforms and helmets emerge from the putrid mud, while hundreds of seagulls and dozens of stray dogs scavenge around.

As the Russian occupation of the region was on its last legs over the summer, the site, once a mundane place where residents disposed of their rubbish, became a no-go area, according to Kherson’s inhabitants, fiercely sealed off by the invading forces from presumed prying eyes.

The reason for the jittery secrecy, several residents and workers at the site told the Guardian, was that the occupying forces had a gruesome new purpose there: dumping the bodies of their fallen brethren, and then burning them.

The residents report seeing Russian open trucks arriving to the site carrying black bags that were then set on fire, filling the air with a large cloud of smoke and a terrifying stench of burning flesh.

They believe the Russians were disposing of the bodies of its soldiers killed during the heavy fighting of those summer days.

“Every time our army shelled the Russians there, they moved the remains to the landfill and burned them,” says Iryna, 40, a Kherson resident.

Two Russian helmets at the Kherson landfill. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

Ukraine’s attempts to gain momentum and retake the southern city began at the end of June when long-awaited US-made Himars long-range rockets finally reached one the frontlines there. Kyiv was making good use of them to badly damage bridges across the Dnipro, destroy Russian ammunition dumps and strike enemy artillery and forces.

It was around this time, the residents said, that they first started to fear a new use for the site.

It is not possible to independently verify the claims, and Ukrainian authorities said they could not comment on whether the allegations were being investigated. The Guardian visited the landfill, located on the north-western outskirts of the town, five days after Kherson’s liberation and spoke to employees of the site as well as several more of the town’s residents, who backed up the claims made by others in the summer.

“The Russians drove a Kamaz full of rubbish and corpses all together and unloaded,” said a rubbish collector from Kherson who asked not to be named. “Do you think someone was gonna bury them? They dumped them and then dumped the trash over them, and that’s it.”

Workers at the site. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

He said he did not see if bodies belonged to soldiers or civilians. “I didn’t see. I’ve said enough. I’m not scared, I’ve been fighting this war since 2014. Been to Donbas.

“But the less you know, the better you sleep,” he added, citing a Ukrainian saying. Fear is still alive among the residents who lived for eight months under a police state, in which the Russian authorities did not tolerate the slightest hint of dissent. The price was arrest, or worse: death.

Svitlana Viktorivna, 45, who together with her husband, Oleksandr, has been bringing waste to the landfill for years in their truck, said a Russian checkpoint had been set up at its entrance.

Svitlana Viktorivna with her husband, Oleksandr. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

“We were not allowed anywhere near the area of the landfill where they were burning the bodies,” she says. “So let me tell you how it was: they came here, they left some of their soldier-guards, and unloaded and burned. One day my husband and I arrived at the wrong time. We came here while they were doing their ‘business’ and they gave my husband a hard blow in the face with a club.”

“I didn’t see the remains,” she adds. “They buried whatever was left.”

Russia’s defence minister, Sergei Shoigu, has said that nearly 6,000 soldiers have died in Ukraine, but the Pentagon in late summer estimated that about 80,000 Russian soldiers had been killed or injured.

The workers at the landfill said the Russians had chosen an area on the most isolated side of the landfill. For security reasons, it is not possible to visit. A truck driver working in the landfill said he did not rule out that the Russians may have mined the area or left unexploded devices.

“I heard the story, but I didn’t go that far with my truck to unload rubbish. But I can guarantee you that, whatever they were doing, it smelled so bad, like [rotten] meat” says the truck driver. “And the smoke … the smoke was thick.”

‘Every time our army shelled the Russians there, they moved the remains to the landfill and burned them,’ says Iryna, centre. Photograph: Alessio Mamo/The Guardian

Residents of a large Soviet-era apartment block facing the landfill said that when the Russians had started burning, a large cloud of smoke had risen up filling the air with an unbearable smell of decay, to the point that it had felt impossible to breathe.

“I felt nauseous when I smelled that smoke,” says Olesia Kokorina, 60, who lives on the eighth floor. “And it was scary, too, because it smelled like burnt hair, and you know, it also smelled like at the dentist’s when they drill your tooth before placing a filling. And the smoke was so thick, you couldn’t see the building next door.”

“It just never smelled like this before,” says Natalia, 65. “There were lots of dump trucks and they were all covered with bags. I don’t know what was in them, but the stench from the smoke in the landfill was so bad we couldn’t even open the balcony door. There were days when you couldn’t breathe because of the smell.”

Some believe that burning bodies of their own soldiers was the easiest way to get rid of the corpses as bridges over the Dnipro River when Russians were virtually cut off on its western bank were too fragile to hold trucks.

Dozens of other Kherson residents corroborated the reports of their neighbours, but Ukrainian authorities have not so far spoken. A local official who requested anonymity said: “We are not interested in the burial sites of the enemy. What interests us is to find the bodies of Ukrainians, tortured, killed and buried in mass graves here in the Kherson region.”

Ukraine’s security service believe the bodies of thousands of dead Russian soldiers are being informally disposed of as the Kremlin is logging them as “missing in action” in an attempt to cover up its losses in the war in Ukraine.

An intercepted phone call from a Russian soldier in May said that his comrades had been buried in “a dump the height of a man” just outside occupied Donetsk. “There’s so much Cargo 200 [military code for dead soldiers] that the mountains of corpses are 2 metres high,” he said in the call. “It’s not a morgue, it’s a dump. It’s massive.”

“They just toss them there,” a Russian soldier said in another intercepted call. “And then later it’s easier to make it as if they disappeared without a trace. It’s easier for them to pretend they are just missing, and that’s it.”

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Russians struggle to make sense of Ukraine war after Kherson retreat

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On a snowy afternoon in Moscow this week, a trickle of people entered a vast hall under the Kremlin walls, past armed riot police, to see an exhibition on what Russia still describes as a “special military operation” in Ukraine after nine months of war.

Between pictures of bombed-out Ukrainian cities and the bloodied corpses of civilians presented as heroic victims of the conflict, visitors are shown a triumphant video about Russia’s recent annexation of four Ukrainian regions.

Except, since the show opened earlier this month, Russia has withdrawn from the capital of one of them, Kherson, leaving behind billboards proclaiming “Russia is here forever”. The city had fallen under Russian occupation in March, in the early days of Vladimir Putin’s full-scale invasion.

The propaganda display left Katya, a middle-aged Moscow schoolteacher, who had brought along a group of 11-year-old pupils, with more questions than answers. She said she wondered what all the casualties were for.

“No one understands anything,” she said as she left the exhibition hall, past anti-riot guards. “First we came up to Kyiv, and then we left — and how many people were killed? Then we took Kherson, and then we left it again. And how many people were killed?”

People visit an exhibit on what Russia calls its ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine at the Manege Central Exhibition Hall in Moscow © Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

“Even military men,” she said, referring to veterans of earlier Russian wars in her family, “they know how war works. But even they don’t understand this strategy.”

For many in Moscow, the retreat from Kherson has sown confusion and raised questions about the war’s costs to Russia. Most of all, the news has added to the general, simmering anxiety people have felt since late September, when Putin announced a military draft and brought the war directly into Russian homes for the first time.

“Everyone is in an unstable state, nervous, anxious,” Katya said of her friends, colleagues and family. “Everyone is depressed.”

Though life continues much as ever in Moscow, with cafés and restaurants bustling, the latest survey from the independent Levada Centre pollster, published last month, found that 88 per cent of people were “worried” or “very worried” about developments in Ukraine. Only 36 per cent of Russians said that they believed the country should continue fighting, while a majority thought it was time for peace talks.

However, if Russians are increasingly concerned about the war, they appear to feel little attachment to the newly occupied territories that Moscow annexed to great fanfare after holding sham referendums there. As a result, many have reacted with indifference to the loss of a place such as Kherson.

An exhibit at the Manege Central Exhibition Hall in Moscow © Yuri Kochetkov/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

“Of course, it’s pretty amazing how easily the Russian authorities said goodbye to Kherson,” Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of political consultancy R. Politik, wrote in social media post. “And the people don’t seem to be clinging on to the new ‘territories’ either.”

She pointed to a recent Levada poll that asked Russians to name major events they remembered from the news. Just 9 per cent recalled the referendums and annexation — in which their country claimed to have expanded by over 135,000 sq km — even though the event occurred as the survey was being conducted.

The Kherson retreat will not affect Putin’s ratings, the Levada pollster’s Lev Gudkov told the Russian-language RTVi broadcaster. Over time, it may erode faith in the president as a leader, he said, but for now, “censorship and propaganda will work to soften the meaning of this event and the severity of this local defeat”.

State media explained the retreat as a difficult but necessary decision, taken to save the lives of thousands of Russian soldiers. Commentators in the ultranationalist, pro-war camp took issue with the decision and this explanation, but the critiques by this minority have been muted lately, following stern warnings from the Kremlin.

Still, discontent simmers privately. A former senior official said losing Kherson only six weeks after Putin declared it part of Russia indicated the Kremlin’s lack of strategic planning. “They are just completely mishandling this. They can’t think two steps ahead. It’s completely reactive,” said the former official, speaking anonymously given the risks in articulating public criticism. “It’s completely humiliating — this was the only provincial centre Russia had, and they surrendered it in a month and a half.”

The vast majority of Russians would only truly care if Ukraine attempted to regain control of Crimea, which Moscow annexed from Kyiv in 2014, said Alexei Venediktov, longtime editor of the Echo of Moscow radio station. The peninsula has developed an almost mythical status among Russians, particularly as a beloved holiday spot. To the majority, “Crimea is sacred”, Venediktov said.

But other regions and cities to which Russia has laid claim carry little emotive resonance. “Donetsk, Luhansk, some sort of Mykolayiv, Kherson, Zaporizhzhia — where even are they?” Venediktov said.

There is, however, a sense of upset among Moscow’s elites, said the journalist, who remains in contact with many people in positions of power despite the forced closure of his radio station in March.

The top political and business circles dislike turbulence, he said, and are perturbed by the way military setbacks are bringing hardline and fringe characters, such as Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov and paramilitary leader Evgeny Prigozhin, to the political fore. “If everything froze in place right now . . . they would be pleased.”

But few around Putin dare to speak out against the invasion, said a Russian oligarch under western sanctions. “The technocrats have no instruments. It’s a very stable situation. Security is under Putin’s control. He makes his bodyguards ministers and governors. And the shift in public opinion is not happening. Millions of people who are against the war have left.”

Entering the exhibition hall next to Red Square, visitors are greeted with an immersive, 360-degree video projection of the skyline of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol. Smoke rises from destroyed apartment blocks in the city, which experienced the heaviest Russian shelling of the war, killing thousands of people.

Subsequent rooms rewrite the history of Ukraine and its relations with Russia, as well as the story of the war itself, attempting to bring Muscovites into the alternate reality that permeates state news. The brutal bombardment of Mariupol this spring, for example, is explained on a plaque on the wall: the city’s 600,000 residents were “taken hostage by the Ukrainian army”, which “destroyed its own citizens” while “snipers shot even at children”.

In a final, all-white room, filled with portraits of Russian soldiers killed in the war, visitors are invited to leave messages in a guestbook. It’s a mixed bag: scrawls by children, expressions of gratitude to Putin, calls for a much bigger, all-out conflict. And just once: “NO TO WAR!”

Additional reporting by Max Seddon in Riga

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Ukraine to begin voluntary evacuation from Kherson: Deputy PM | Russia-Ukraine war News

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Ukraine will begin to evacuate people who want to leave the recently liberated southern city of Kherson and its surrounding areas, Ukraine’s Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk has announced, citing damage to infrastructure by Russian forces that had made life extremely difficult for residents.

News of the evacuation came as Russian missiles were reported to have struck an oil depot in Kherson on Saturday evening, officials said, the first time a fuel storage facility had been hit in the city since Russia withdrew more than a week ago.

Vereshchuk said on Saturday that a number of people had expressed a wish to move away from Kherson and the area around Mykolaiv, about 65 km (40 miles) to the northwest.

“This is possible in the next few days,” she told a televised news conference in Mykolaiv when asked when the evacuations from Kherson would begin.

Vereshchuck said the government had already made the necessary preparations for the evacuation. Among those who wanted to leave were the elderly and those who had been affected by Russian shelling, she said.

“This is only a voluntary evacuation. Currently, we are not talking about forced evacuation,” Vereshchuk said.

“But even in the case of voluntary evacuation, the state bears responsibility for transportation. People must be taken to the place where they will spend the winter,” she said.

The government had several evacuation options, one of which was to use Mykolaiv as a transit point before sending people further west into safer areas of the country, she added.

In August, Vereshchuk said Ukraine planned to expand the number of front-line districts where civilian evacuations would be mandatory, as those areas could be occupied and would also face problems with heating during the Ukrainian winter months.

Two missiles hit a fuel depot on Saturday in Kherson, firefighters at the scene told the Associated Press news organisation.

Anton Gerashchenko, a government adviser and a former deputy minister at Ukraine’s minister of internal affairs, posted a short video on Twitter apparently showing thick smoke billowing after powerful explosions were reported in Kherson on Saturday.

“Russia continues its daily terror,” he wrote.

 

Ukrainian authorities have accused Russian troops of destroying Kherson’s critical infrastructure before retreating earlier this month.

Local authorities also told the Associated Press that when Russian forces left the Kherson city area, they stole fire trucks and ambulances, and firefighters said they were now scrambling for resources to respond to missile and other attacks.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other officials have accused Russia of trying to destabilise the country by destroying power stations in an attempt to freeze the population into submission and force millions of Ukrainians to flee westward, creating a refugee crisis for the European Union.

Ukraine’s energy ministry said on Saturday that the country’s electricity supplies were under control despite the ongoing wave of Russian attacks on power-generating infrastructure.

Russian missile raids have crippled almost half of Ukraine’s energy system and Kyiv authorities said on Friday that a complete shutdown of the capital’s power grid was possible.

A view shows Lviv city centre without electricity after critical civil infrastructure was hit by Russian missile attacks in Ukraine on November 15, 2022 [Vladyslav Musiienko/Reuters]

“We assure you that the situation with the energy supply is difficult, but under control,” the energy ministry said in a statement.

Authorities across the country have scheduled blackouts to help the repair effort, the ministry said, urging families to cut their energy consumption by at least 25 percent.

Maxim Timchenko, the head of DTEK, the country’s largest private energy company, said the armed forces, the energy industry and individual Ukrainians were working miracles to maintain supplies and people should not flee the country.

“That is why there is no need to leave Ukraine today,” a company statement cited him as saying on Saturday.

Also on Saturday, the first train in nine months to travel from Kyiv to Kherson arrived in the city after departing the Ukrainian capital on Friday night — a journey only made possible by the Russian withdrawal.

Ukraine’s state rail network, Ukrzaliznytsia, said 200 passengers travelled on board the train, dubbed the “Train to Victory”, which had been painted in eclectic designs by Ukrainian artists. Tickets were sold as part of a fundraising campaign.



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“Torture chamber,” mass grave found in Kherson, Ukraine after Russia’s retreat

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Dnipro, Ukraine – Russian airstrikes targeted gas, electricity and other key infrastructure across Ukraine on Thursday, knocking out heating and water supplies to a huge number of civilians just as winter sets in. As snow started falling around the country, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Vladimir Putin’s tactics had left more than 10 million Ukrainians without electricity.

That includes many residents in villages, towns and cities recently liberated from months of Russian occupation in eastern and southern Ukraine. The people of Kherson, a major southern city that Russia’s invading forces only fled a couple weeks ago as Ukraine’s army advanced, are now staring down a winter without power, having already endured so much.

But right now, there’s still jubilation. Not since American troops helped defeat the Nazis has Europe seen celebrations quite like what Kherson is experiencing now.

And only now, seeing what the Russians left behind when they made their hasty retreat, is it clear just why.  

The instruments of what survivors say was torture at the hands of the invaders still litter a police station in Kherson. Residents and Ukrainian officials have said Putin’s troops turned it into a “torture chamber,” and the air is still tinged with smoke.

Oleksander, a survivor, said some of his fellow detainees at the old police station were electrocuted.

“My cellmate’s tongue was so black and swollen after interrogation, he couldn’t put it back in his mouth,” he said.

Vitaly and Alesha said they were blindfolded and then taken into a basement after relaying intelligence to Ukrainian forces.

“Around my kidneys, over here, they kicked me, and they punched me in the face until my nose was bleeding” said Alesha. “They even said they would force us to walk through a minefield towards Ukrainian positions.”

The Russian troops have retreated, but they’re still within earshot, just across the Dnipro River. The river now forms the front line between Ukraine’s defenders, who have retaken ground and pushed right up to its western bank, and the occupiers, who have dug in on the other side.

That leaves the city of Kherson, on the west bank of the river, and all of its people still within range of Russian-controlled cell phone towers — not to mention its artillery, and even gunfire.

In addition to traumatized survivors, the Russian retreat has also left behind mass graves.

Ukraine’s chief investigator said the bodies in one Kherson gravesite all bore signs of torture.

Dmytro Lubinets, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, said more than 3,000 crimes were committed during Russia’s months-long occupation of the Kherson, and 90% of them were war crimes, including rape, torture, and murder. 

Ukrainian media quoted Interior Minister Denys Monastyrsky as saying, meanwhile, “that the search has only just started, so many more dungeons and burial places will be uncovered.”

Tucker Reals

Tucker Reals is the CBSNews.com foreign editor, based at the CBS News London bureau.

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Stealthy Kherson resistance fighters undermined Russian occupying forces

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November 18, 2022 at 3:42 p.m. EST

Ihor stands on rubble in a parking garage in Kherson city that he says was hit by Ukrainian artillery after he and other resistance fighters provided the location of Russian military vehicles. (Ed Ram for The Washington Post)

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KHERSON, Ukraine — Ihor didn’t even know the first name of the person who contacted him. The man said he was a member of Ukraine’s Special Operations Forces and wanted to know if Ihor was interested in helping fight the Russians occupying his city of Kherson.

“Sign me up,” Ihor responded.

For months, the two kept up a coded communication over the Telegram messaging app. Sometimes Ihor would be asked to help pinpoint locations from which the Russians were firing artillery. Other times, he sent the man, who asked to be called Smoke, the positions of Russian troops, armored vehicles and ammunition stocks.

Then in August, Ihor had a more dangerous task from Smoke. There was a cache of weapons hidden somewhere in Kherson, and Ihor needed to bury them in a different location and wait for the signal. Eventually, Smoke told him, Ihor might be called on to take up one of the arms and help Ukrainian soldiers if the battle for Kherson turned to street fighting and small sabotage groups would be necessary.

“Around the city, there were a lot of people with weapons who were waiting for the right time to use them,” Ihor said. He declined to provide his surname out of concern for his safety, and Smoke asked to be identified only by his call sign because of his work in special forces.

During more than eight months of Russian occupation, an underground resistance movement formed in Kherson, the lone regional capital Vladimir Putin’s military was able to capture since the start of its invasion last February.

Stories of brave Ukrainian citizens standing up to the invading soldiers have been widespread throughout the war. But Kherson, occupied since early March, was a unique hub for resistance activity where many civilians worked in close coordination with handlers from Ukrainian security services.

Help from inside occupied territories — at times beyond the reach of Ukraine’s missiles and artillery — has proven key for Kyiv in pulling off some of its most brazen attacks, including at an airfield in Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014.

In Kherson and in the occupied city of Melitopol, about 140 miles to the east, there have been mysterious explosions during the war that have killed or injured Russian-installed authorities. Those blasts are believed to be the work of resistance fighters, also known as partisans, or Ukrainian special forces working behind enemy lines. Sometimes, bombs exploded in occupying officials’ cars or at their homes.

Witnesses recount detentions, torture, disappearances in occupied Kherson

People often did not know who among their neighbors or co-workers were also resistance fighters. In interviews, two members of the resistance claimed that they managed to kill a few drunk Russians walking alone in the streets by stabbing them. Those claims could not be verified. But mostly the partisans were given nonviolent assignments, resistance fighters and military officers said, such as hiding weapons or explosives at a certain location, identifying collaborators, or reporting where Russian soldiers and their materials were based. That information was then used to direct Ukrainian artillery fire.

In Kherson, it all added up to a subtle insurgency that Ukraine’s military leaned on as the southern front line drew closer and closer to the city, ultimately forcing the Russians to retreat last week. With Kherson city now free of Russian soldiers, the resistance movement is rising to the surface.

In the central square this week, Smoke, wearing a balaclava, ran up to Ihor and hugged him tightly.

“The main thing for me is that people remained alive,” Smoke said. “This worried me the most. But they survived and, thank God, that’s the most important thing.”

There was a time when Ihor wasn’t sure he would.

There was one other person he and Smoke were working with who was also tasked with burying weapons, Ihor said. That man was caught by the Russians and, after being beaten, eventually gave up the location where he was supposed to meet Ihor. Ihor was then captured, too, he said, and spent 11 days in August at a detention facility where the Russian guards tortured their prisoners.

Visiting liberated Kherson, Zelensky sees ‘beginning of the end of the war’

As Ihor returned to the prison for the first time, accompanied by Washington Post journalists, he struggled to hold back tears. Tatyana, a 74-year-old woman who lived next door to the detention center, said she could hear men screaming every day. “I never wanted to see this place again, but coming back like this is sort of funny,” Ihor said. Some people standing outside asked Ihor if he had been held there.

“I was in there, too,” one man said.

“Who wasn’t?” Ihor responded.

Because Ihor was still in communication with Smoke, who was based outside in nearby Ukrainian-controlled Mykolaiv, the Russians released him and said they would be monitoring any text exchanges between the two. They asked for Ihor to send screenshots of their conversation any time there was an update — and threatened his life if he did not cooperate.

But Smoke and Ihor had agreed on a subtle code that could act as a warning — for example, responding to a message with “ok” instead of “all right.”

Ihor still took risks after that. In September, he noticed the Russians had based several transport trucks at a car park near downtown Kherson. Ihor walked past the building with a phone to his ear, pretending to be on a call while his camera recorded what was inside. Two days later, the place was hit with artillery.

Several resistance fighters told The Post that they had reported the location, which helped the Ukrainian armed forces confirm it was a worthy target.

One member of Ukraine’s special services, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak publicly, said he acted as a handler for several informants during the occupation, which required assessing what each could do. A person with a car could drive around and mark locations of troops and weapons. Another with a view of a main road could report on the Russians’ movements.

“If, for example, a bridge or an important communication hub, such as power lines, is blown up, then that might have been with our help,” the handler said.

“We are talking about valuable equipment, not just armored personnel carriers, but about command and staff vehicles, communication vehicles, air defense or electronic warfare,” the handler added. “The destruction of what is expensive and available in small quantities can incapacitate the Russians and give a certain tactical advantage to our armed forces in some parts of the front.”

Some members of this internal resistance were trained and prepared before Russia ever invaded — just in case, the handler said.

Loss of Kherson city shatters Putin’s war goals in Ukraine

Others were unlikely partisans, like Iryna, a 58-year-old woman who worked for the local government. Iryna, who declined to provide her surname out of concern for her safety, had contacts in the SBU, Ukraine’s main internal security service, and regularly passed them information about how occupation authorities were organized and who was working with the Russians. They also had their own code. Once, she even sent a message to her daughter in Bulgaria to forward on to her handlers.

One day, some men Iryna described as “fellow partisans” came to her home and asked to bury some things in her yard. She agreed, covering the spot with tomatoes. When Russian soldiers searched her home, she claimed to be just a woman who was helping cook meals for the neighborhood.

Her SBU acquaintances visited her earlier this week and dug up what had been buried in the yard. “They told me it was everything to make explosives,” she said.

Some of the resistance was more public, but for psychological effect. An organization called Yellow Ribbon regularly spray-painted locations around town — marking Russian establishments with a yellow ribbon symbol or the Ukrainian letter “i.” They targeted Russian banks, places where the Russians were handing out passports, and where referendum ballots on Russian annexation were being prepared. The Russians would cover up the paint, but Yellow Ribbon would just mark it again.

The organizers tagged the home of Kirill Stremousov, one infamous Moscow-installed official in Kherson who recently died in a car accident. They defaced Russian billboards proclaiming that “Russia is here forever” or that “Ukrainians and Russians are one.” And they posted photos of “collaborators” eating at a restaurant around town or walking down the street.

“Then they all started to walk around with bodyguards after that,” said Yellow Ribbon’s organizer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of concern for his safety.

One goal, he said, was to make the Russians paranoid about the resistance that existed around them. Sometimes people would take a photo of two Russian soldiers walking from behind, and then Yellow Ribbon would post it on their Telegram channel, with a warning: “We’re watching you.”

One of the posters Yellow Ribbon hung in the city made a reference to HIMARS, a weapon system that the United States provided to Ukraine. “If HIMARS can’t reach you,” the poster said, “a partisan will.”

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They call it ‘The Hole’: Ukrainians describe horrors of Kherson occupation

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  • Residents describe detention, torture and death in Kherson
  • Nine-month occupation ended on Friday as Russians retreated
  • Among those detained were suspected resistance fighters
  • Russia denies mistreating detainees
  • U.N. officials say both sides have abused prisoners of war

KHERSON, Ukraine, Nov 16 (Reuters) – Residents in Ukraine’s southern city of Kherson call the two-storey police station “The Hole”. Vitalii Serdiuk, a pensioner, said he was lucky to make it out alive.

“I hung on,” the retired medical equipment repairman said as he recounted his ordeal in Russian detention two blocks from where he and his wife live in a tiny Soviet-era apartment.

The green-roofed police building at No. 3, Energy Workers’ Street, was the most notorious of several sites where, according to more than half a dozen locals in the recently recaptured city, people were interrogated and tortured during Russia’s nine-month occupation. Another was a large prison.

Two residents living in an apartment block overlooking the police station courtyard said they saw bodies wrapped in white sheets being carried from the building, stored in a garage and later tossed into refuse trucks to be taken away.

Reuters could not independently verify all of the events described by the Kherson residents.

The Kremlin and Russia’s defence ministry did not immediately respond to questions about Serdiuk’s account or that of others Reuters spoke to in Kherson.

Moscow has rejected allegations of abuse against civilians and soldiers and has accused Ukraine of staging such abuses in places like Bucha.

On Tuesday, the U.N. human rights office said it had found evidence that both sides had tortured prisoners of war, which is classified as a war crime by the International Criminal Court. Russian abuse was “fairly systematic”, a U.N. official said.

As Russian security forces retreat from large swathes of territory in the north, east and south, evidence of abuses is mounting.

Those held in Kherson included people who voiced opposition to Russia’s occupation, residents, like Serdiuk, believed to have information about enemy soldiers’ positions, as well as suspected underground resistance fighters and their associates.

Serdiuk said he was beaten on his legs, back and torso with a truncheon and shocked with electrodes wired to his scrotum by a Russian official demanding to know the whereabouts and unit of his son, a soldier in the Ukrainian army.

“I didn’t tell him anything. ‘I don’t know’ was my only answer,” the 65-year-old said in his apartment, which was lit by a single candle.

‘Remember! Remember! Remember!’ was the constant response.”

‘PURE SADISM’

Grim recollections of life under occupation in Kherson have followed the unbridled joy and relief when Ukrainian soldiers retook the city on Friday after Russian troops withdrew across the Dnipro River.

President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said two days later that investigators had uncovered more than 400 Russian war crimes and found the bodies of both servicemen and civilians in areas of Kherson region freed from Russian occupation.

“I personally saw five bodies taken out,” said Oleh, 20, who lives in an apartment block overlooking the police station, declining to give his last name. “We could see hands hanging from the sheets and we understood these to be corpses.”

Speaking separately, Svytlana Bestanik, 41, who lives in the same block and works at a small store between the building and the station, also recalled seeing prisoners carrying out bodies.

“They would carry dead people out and would throw them in a truck with the garbage,” she said, describing the stench of decomposing bodies in the air. “We were witnessing sadism in its purest form.”

Reuters journalists visited the police station on Tuesday but were prohibited from going beyond the courtyard, rimmed by a razor wire-topped wall, by armed police officers and a soldier who said that investigators were inside collecting evidence.

One officer, who declined to give his name, said that up to 12 detainees were kept in tiny cages, an account corroborated by Serdiuk.

Neighbours recounted hearing screams of men and women coming from the station and said that whenever the Russians emerged, they wore balaclavas concealing all but their eyes.

“They came in the shop every day,” said Bestanik. “I decided not to talk to them. I was too afraid of them.”

RESISTANCE FIGHTERS

Aliona Lapchuk said she and her eldest son fled Kherson in April after a terrifying ordeal at the hands of Russian security personnel on March 27, the last time she saw her husband Vitaliy.

[1/7] Vitalii Serdiuk, 65, who says he was tortured by Russian service members, and his wife Olena speak during an interview with Reuters after Russia’s retreat from Kherson, Ukraine, November 15, 2022. REUTERS/Valentyn Ogirenko

Vitaliy had been an underground resistance fighter since Russian troops seized Kherson on March 2, according to Lapchuk, and she became worried when he did not answer her phone calls.

Soon after, she said, three cars with the Russian “Z” sign painted on them pulled up at her mother’s home where they were living. They brought Vitaliy, who was badly beaten.

The soldiers, who identified themselves as Russian troops, threatened to smash out her teeth when she tried to berate them. They confiscated their mobile phones and laptops, she said, and then discovered weapons in the basement.

They beat her husband in the basement savagely before dragging him out.

“He didn’t walk out of the basement; they dragged him out. They broke through his cheek bone,” she said, sobbing, in the village of Krasne, some 100 km (60 miles) west of Kherson.

Lapchuk and her eldest son, Andriy, were hooded and taken to the police station at 4, Lutheran Street, in Kherson where she could hear her husband being interrogated through a wall, she said. She and Andriy were later released.

After leaving Kherson, Lapchuk wrote to everyone she could think of to try and find her husband.

On June 9, she said she got a message from a pathologist who told her to call the next day. She knew immediately Vitaliy was dead.

His body had been found floating in a river, she said, showing photographs taken by a pathologist in which a birth mark on his shoulder could be seen.

Lapchuk said she paid for Vitaliy to be buried and has yet to see the grave.

She is convinced her husband was betrayed to the Russians by someone very close to them.

‘THE HOLE’

Ruslan, 52, who runs a beer store opposite the police station where Serdiuk was held, said that at the beginning of the occupation, Russian-made Ural trucks would pull up daily before the grey front door.

Detainees, he said, would be hurled from the back, their hands bound and heads covered by bags.

“This place was called ‘Yama’ (The Hole),” he said.

Serhii Polako, 48, a trader who lives across the street from the station, echoed Ruslan’s account.

He said that several weeks into the occupation, Russian national guard troops deployed at the site were replaced by men driving vehicles embossed with the letter “V”, and that was when the screams started.

“If there is a hell on earth, it was there,” he said.

About two weeks ago, he said, the Russians freed those being kept in the station in apparent preparation for their withdrawal.

“All of a sudden, they emptied the place, and we understood something was happening,” he told Reuters.

Serdiuk believes he was betrayed by an informant as the father of a Ukrainian serviceman.

He said Russian security personnel handcuffed him, put a bag over his head, forced him to bend at the waist and frog-marched him into a vehicle.

At the station, he was put in a cell so cramped that the occupants could not move while lying down. On some days, prisoners received only one meal.

The following day, he was hooded, his hands bound, and taken down to a cellar room. The interrogation and torture lasted about 90 minutes, he said.

His Russian interrogator knew all of his details and those of his family, and said that unless he cooperated, he would have his wife arrested and telephone his son so he could hear both of them screaming under torture, Serdiuk said.

Two days later, he was released without explanation. His wife found him outside the shop in which Bestanik works, virtually unable to walk.

Tom Balmforth reported from Krasne, Ukraine; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Philippa Fletcher

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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