The clocks had just struck midnight in Kherson when blasts echoed through its deserted streets, as the Russian and Ukrainian armies saw in the new year with an exchange of artillery fire.
It has been seven weeks since Kherson was liberated by the Ukrainian army after eight months of Russian occupation, sparking wild celebrations. But the euphoria of liberation has been replaced by the grinding terror of Russia’s daily rocket attacks on this city in southern Ukraine.
On New Year’s Eve, Yuliya Taran and her two children set out to visit family in Naddniprianske, a village nine miles from Kherson. They never got there. A Russian shell exploded nearby, shrapnel tearing into Yaroslav, 13, and his sister, Olha, 12.
“It all happened so quickly, I didn’t even hear the whistle of the shell,” Yuliya said, her face streaked with tears. “I turned round and my kids were on the ground.”
They were taken to the central children’s hospital in Kherson, where doctors fought desperately to save Yaroslav’s leg. His sister was injured but not as seriously. As the children were brought into the hospital, more Russian shells landed nearby, destroying two operating theatres and shattering windows.
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President Putin’s forces have lost control of Kherson, but they have not gone far, taking up positions on the bank of the Dnipro river, the new front line. Kherson and the wider region was shelled almost 50 times on New Year’s Eve, with rockets hitting blocks of flats, rural homes and critical infrastructure, officials said. At least one person died.
They were the latest in a series of Russian attacks that have transformed Kherson into a place of death and misery. On Christmas Eve, rockets exploded at the city’s central market, killing 11 people and injuring dozens. Another five people died in separate mortar attacks across the city that day.
On Tuesday, a Russian shell crashed into a maternity ward, destroying a reception area next to a room for mothers and their newborn babies. There were no obvious military targets in the area and Ukrainian officials accused Russia of deliberately targeting the facility.
“We finished delivering a caesarean section at 4pm. The explosions came at 5pm, as we were filling in forms,” Sergey Morozov, a doctor, said. “The first blast was a bit further away, but the second one was so close. The shell landed just ten metres from where the women and the babies were. We quickly got them into the shelter. It was terrifying.” Fortunately, there were no casualties.
Despite appeals by the Ukrainian government for residents to evacuate, some 50,000 people out of a pre-war population of 280,000 remain in Kherson. Some are too old, or too ill, to travel. Others say they will stay in the city to help save lives.
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“While there are people left in the city, they will need help,” said Oleh Mazuryak, the chief doctor at a heart clinic that was hit by shelling on Thursday night, injuring a janitor and a nurse. “I’m 74 and I’ve been a doctor in this city for 50 years. This is my duty.” The windows in his office were blown out by the blast, but staff had taped them up with plastic sheets. As he spoke, the dull thud of shelling could be heard nearby.
Oleksiy Smeshko, 25, vowed that he would not give Putin the satisfaction of driving him out.
“This is my city and I’m not going to leave it just because some shitheads want to seize it. From the start of the war, my thinking has been that as long as Kyiv stands, there is hope.”
There were other signs of defiance. On New Year’s Eve, shortly before the 7pm curfew, a member of the Ukrainian security services appeared on Kherson’s central square dressed as Father Frost, the Ukrainian version of Father Christmas. In his left hand, an automatic weapon. “Happy new year!” he shouted, before driving off in his quixotic attempt to spread some festive cheer.
Most businesses are closed, their windows boarded up. But the Black Goose, a café in the city centre, has bucked the trend. “We opened in November, ten days after Kherson was liberated,” said Volodymyr, a barman. “We wanted to bring a little bit of joy into people’s lives.”
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Russia’s invasion has killed tens of thousands of people, destroyed cities and torn millions of families apart. It has twisted the landscape of much of Ukraine into grotesque shapes, missiles slicing through tower blocks and country cottages, trees shorn in half by shelling. Villages and towns have been wiped from the face of the earth.
As the new year approached, Ukrainian social media was filled with poignant images of last year’s celebrations, of children receiving gifts from Father Frost, of twinkling festive lights in towns and cities such as Bucha and Mariupol, places that have become bywords for the savagery of Putin’s troops. In Russia, Putin addressed the nation in a televised New Year’s Eve speech.
Standing in front of soldiers dressed in combat gear, the former KGB officer claimed he had ordered the invasion of Ukraine to prevent it from becoming a platform for a Nato attack on Russia.
“The West lied about peace but was preparing for aggression,” Putin said. “Now they are cynically using Ukraine and its people to weaken and split Russia.” He gave no evidence to support his allegation of a Nato plot.
As he spoke, Russia launched more than 20 cruise missiles at targets in Ukraine, killing three people, including one in Kyiv. That was followed by a wave of attacks by Iranian-made kamikaze drones. Ukrainian forces said they had shot down 45 drones. One of them had “Happy New Year!” scrawled on its tailfin, according to the Kyiv Post newspaper.
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Jens Stoltenberg, the secretary- general of Nato, said it was clear that Putin did not plan to end the war soon and the West must be prepared to support Ukraine for the long term.
“We know that Russia has mobilised many more forces, many of them are now training,” he told the BBC. “All that indicates that they are prepared to continue the war and also try to potentially launch a new offensive.”
As the year ended, Ukrainian officials appealed to Russian citizens to turn against Putin. “This war that you are waging is not a war with Nato, as your propagandists lie,” President Zelensky said in a Russian-language message. “It is for [Putin] to stay in power for the rest of his life.”
Oleksii Reznikov, Ukraine’s defence minister, warned Russians that Putin was planning to close the borders for men of fighting age and begin a new round of mobilisation as early as this week. “I want you to ask yourselves one question,” he said. “When you go and fight in a war in which you could die or be crippled for the rest of your life, what exactly will you be fighting for?”
Back in Kherson, the Russian troops started the year as they had ended it, with a barrage of shelling.
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“Nowhere is safe here,” Morozov, the maternity ward doctor, said. “It’s a lottery if you survive the day.”
