SOUTHERN UKRAINE – Some fled on foot, climbing over a bridge destroyed as the fighting engulfed their village. Others followed the convoy of cars past Russian military checkpoints. What these families have left behind, they say in interviews on their search for safety, is escalating danger and difficulty in the Russian-occupied Kherson region and surrounding areas, where the pivotal confrontation of the war is taking place.
Tension was evident on the tense faces of passengers as half a dozen cars pulled up late in the afternoon at a checkpoint near the Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia last week. “Glory to Ukraine,” cried a woman, hugging a soldier. “I saw the Ukrainian flag and I started crying,” said another woman, Anna. Her 7-year-old son quietly stares from the car window.
With Russia tightening border controls, the number of families leaving Russian-occupied territory in southern Ukraine and into Ukrainian-controlled areas has dropped to a trickle – about 20 people a day on average, down. compared to 100 people at the beginning of the year.
Some of those who made it through last week were taking passengers in need of medical attention, but most were families who said they were only in the final stages, as Ukrainian forces pressed a counterattack and Russian troops commanded them. civilian houses to escape deadly precision bombardment.
“We have no strength left,” said one man, Vadym, grimacing to stop himself from crying. He had traveled with his wife and mother-in-law from the town of Vasylivka, just across the front lines, with a few belongings in a plastic bag and their ginger cat in a pet basket.
His wife, Iryna, said. The last straw was when the Russians began to occupy the apartment complex where her mother lived.
“She was the only resident left in the five-story apartment building and they started moving in,” Iryna said. Like most people fleeing a war zone, they asked that their last name not be released for security.
Another family group said they had decided to leave their village of Chervonoblahodatne, in the eastern Kherson region, when Chechen members of the Russian National Guard had occupied it a week earlier.
“They moved into empty houses,” said Lyudmyla, 40. The army set up checkpoints and began searching for residents, and shooting and shelling began, she said. “You can’t go out because of the shooting.”
The Russian military has increasingly sought shelter in residential areas and private homes across the region as well as in the busy city of Kherson as Ukrainian forces targeted schools and administrative buildings they used. as bases. Many of those fleeing complain that the Russian military has used civilians as refuge from Ukrainian fire, or is even carrying out shelling on villages on its own and then blaming for the Ukrainian army.
Some even said they welcomed the increasingly intense bombardment of Russian positions by Ukrainian forces.
Amid confusion and conflicting information, most assume that under pressure from the Ukrainians, Russian troops are retreating in the Kherson area, territory Russia has occupied since the spring.
“They’re not just leaving, they’re running away,” says Vladimir, 38, a builder from Kherson City, grinning.
In the city itself, Russian authorities evacuated all members of the police and national guard forces, as well as those working with Russian authorities, he said.
“They are taking all the equipment from the hospital and emergency services,” he said. “I was driving home near the teacher’s academy and I saw soldiers taking out documents. What they need those things for, I don’t know.”
However, Russian military forces are still in the city, said Vladimir, the Ukrainian builder, and there is little sign of armored vehicles and heavy tanks leaving because of the main bridge north. across the Dnipro River was breached and frequently set on fire. As soon as the armor columns try to break through, he said, they will be hit. “I think they’ll stay,” he added.
Russian officials, including President Vladimir V. Putin on Saturday, also urged civilians to flee western Kherson before intense fighting. Most of those leaving have connections to the Russian-installed authorities and are moving to territory on the eastern bank of the Dnipro River, which is more firmly established under Russian occupation.
Vladimir describes Ukraine’s increasingly devastating attacks on buildings used as Russian bases.
“What pleases you is that our boys are hitting very precisely the positions of the Russian army,” he said. “They are attacking very precisely.”
In September, when the pro-Moscow authorities passed a referendum on annexation and the Ukrainians began to counterattack, the atmosphere became more oppressive, said a former Kherson resident.
“They started tightening the screws,” said Yevhen, 29, an activist who left the city at the end of September. He was detained by the Russian military and severely beaten in May, accused of acting as a contact for the Ukrainian military and later as an informant for Ukrainian intelligence.
“If you give them the wrong answer, you get at least a few hits, or five or six men start beating you,” he said in a phone interview from western Ukraine, where he currently living. “I was sitting on a small stool, with a bag on my head. All my back, ribs, head are blue.”
Yevhen was forced to participate in a propaganda video before his release, but he continued to live in Kherson, volunteering, distributing illegal drugs to those in need.
But in September, soldiers visited his home and questioned him several times. “They started searching more actively and detaining people with pro-Ukrainian views, activists and ex-soldiers,” he said. “I’m afraid that one day they might take me away again.”
To reach Ukrainian-controlled territory, Yevhen and his wife had to ask for a way across the Dnipro River and go to the only border crossing near Zaporizhzhia. They waited in line for two days, he said, because only one ferry was operating and the army was evacuating armored vehicles, trucks, ammunition and soldiers to the east bank. Only some civilian vehicles were allowed to cross the street with them, he said, possibly for cover.
As they were waiting for the ferry, Yevhen said, Ukrainian missiles hit two public buildings being used by the Russian military in the city. Moments later, five or six buses full of wounded soldiers arrived at the ferry terminal in front of them.
The punitive attacks on the Russian army and the steady evacuation of the Russian authorities have led to a change in mood in Kherson, Boris said. “People can’t wait for the Ukrainians to come.”
At the stores, salespeople unequivocally refused to pay in Russian rubles, he said. “They openly mocked the Russians.”
Vladimir said he left the city of Kherson a few days ago to take a neighbor who had suffered a stroke and his wife to Zaporizhzhia for medical treatment.
The journey took two days and Vladimir said Russian soldiers challenged him at every major intersection, regardless of his ailing passengers.
“They didn’t care that he was sick,” he said. “They messed with us at every checkpoint. They say, “You’re young, you’re 38, you’ll come back with weapons.”
Vladimir said that while enjoying a free life in the city of Zaporizhzhia, he intends to return home to Kherson city as soon as possible, despite the dangers of war.
“I was worried at first, but not anymore. I was trying to worry,” he said. “Here it is just the sirens of the air raid, but there are explosions every day. Here people are panicking about rockets and kamikaze drones, but there your whole house is shaking.”
But he said he did not want Ukrainian forces to give up. “Let them open fire. It’s my country,” he said. “It’s my country being robbed of its territory.”
