An icy wind biting at their trembling hands, a makeshift platoon of the 192nd Territorial Defence Brigade crept through the trees of Kherson’s Lilac Park. Armed only with petrol bombs, they waited for the Russian troops entering their city.
It was over in a matter of minutes. Each of the 16 men died where they stood, buckled over behind trees, bombs unused, overwhelmed by the invaders’ firepower late last month. By March 1, Russian troops were in command of the city. More than two weeks later, however, it remains the only big population centre they have been able to occupy.
Militarily, the sacrifice at Lilac Park achieved nothing. But it has come to symbolise the defiance of a city proving daily to Russian forces how futile further occupations are likely to be. The past fortnight’s events have revealed President Putin’s blueprint for control of Ukraine, and how the city’s inhabitants have torn it apart.
“They occupied the TV station and Russian channels started appearing all over the region,” Yelena Plachynda, a Kherson resident, told The Times. “So we all started to get our information from the internet. After eight years our people understand well what happened to people in occupied Donbas and Crimea, and we don’t want that.”
When Russian trucks brought food and water in an effort to win hearts and minds, Kherson residents refused to accept them. A humanitarian relief event had to be staged with actors, locals said, for the benefit of a Moscow television crew. “We don’t need their food, their protection, we can take care of ourselves,” Plachynda said.
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Russian forces then tried to install a local pro-Kremlin regional authority, similar to those in the Donetsk and Luhansk “people’s republics”. Again their efforts were thwarted.
“The Russians called in deputies of the Kherson regional council and tried to force them to collaborate,” another resident, Serhiy Rodionov, 45, said. “Instead the council convened an urgent meeting via the internet and stated publicly that they would not agree to a Kherson people’s republic.”
So the occupying forces tried a different tack.
“They brought to the Kherson regional administration five traitors, pro-Russian deputies and collaborators, who announced that they had formed the Committee of Salvation for Peace and Order,” Rodionov said. “The committee immediately said they were in favour of co-operating with Russia.”
The new committee has had little local support. A recruitment drive for a police force to replace the one that withdrew with the Ukrainian military, has failed. Inhabitants of Kherson and the surrounding villages hold daily protests against the occupation, facing off against heavily armed soldiers. Protesters said that they know their city is being used for propaganda, so they wrap themselves in the Ukrainian flag and take to the streets to show the truth.
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Resistance comes at a cost, however. Russian units see the civilian population as the enemy, firing on any vehicles they consider suspicious. In Tavriisk, on the outskirts of Kherson, Oleg Fedko was on the phone to his mother as she tried to leave the city with her husband, two small grandchildren and her daughter in-in-law. Fedko told local news outlets that he heard his mother screaming and his one month-old niece crying, then the rattle of gunfire. All five were killed.
There are daily raids. Russian boots batter down doors of flats suspected to house survivors of the Territorial Defence or agents of Ukraine’s state security service, the SBU. These underground resistance fighters have helped Ukrainian forces to inflict heavy casualties on the occupying forces by providing them with target information.
“We have very busy days. We’re doing everything except murder and sabotage,” one resistance fighter in his twenties said. “There are curfews in the city from 8pm and Russian patrols, so we can’t move freely. We have no weapons, our battle is to stay alive, to stay out of sight.”
As in Russia, critical voices are also targets. Oleh Baturin, a journalist in Kakhova, and Serhiy Tsygipa, an activist in Nova Kakova, were abducted by Russian forces on March 12, according to the Institute for Mass Information, a Ukrainian NGO. They have not been seen or heard from since.
Kherson’s legitimate local authorities have managed to keep the city going, maintaining power, heating and even the internet. Children stay home for safety, but take classes online.
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However, cut off from the rest of the country, the city is beginning to run out of food. Supermarket shelves are empty and people queue for hours to buy bread. The Russians, too, are going hungry. Bemused Kherson residents have filmed soldiers chasing chickens and looting convenience stores.
The city’s most urgent need is medical supplies. Residents have set up social media groups to try to help each other find what they need.
“The city council publishes lists of pharmacies where you can buy insulin, but the city lacks other drugs,” Rodionov said. “People simply exchange them with each other.”
Civilians face other risks, too. Russian units have set up sniper positions in strategic locations, guarded by explosives linked to trip wires, easily set off by accident.
Despite the challenges, residents maintain astonishing determination in the face of their occupation. Heartened by the sound of Ukrainian artillery working on Russian defences as forces counter attack from Mykolaiv, they watch Russian convoys blitz through the city, some heading south in the direction of Crimea. They expect the embattled occupiers to leave any day.
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“What they are doing is crazy, it makes no sense for them to be here,” Plachynda said, her voice breaking with emotion. “We will never accept them. We know our goals. I want my 13-year-old son to learn many languages, to live a European life. Ukraine was just starting to grow and develop. Now they have killed our beautiful people, destroyed our infrastructure, our roads. And for what?”
Names have been changed to protect those involved
