Ukraine maintains its reconquest celebrations, though it is concerned that Moscow will order the city to be bombed from across the Dnieper
Ukrainian civil and military administrations were reinstalled in Kherson yesterday. Police began patrolling the city again. In the afternoon, scattered groups of residents – the few resistance fighters left behind in this city once inhabited by more than 200,000 people – were still celebrating the arrival of the Kievan army, which was met with overwhelming joy on Friday when the Russians settled across. the river Dnieper, so close together that they could see each other in their seclusion and spartan seriousness.
The policemen’s first mission is a journey into infinite sadness. The city’s new authority explained yesterday that it consists of searching for corpses that have been tortured or with signs of summary execution. They are responsible for handing over to the prosecutor’s office possible war crimes committed by Russian soldiers against the civilians of this enclave that was occupied for eight months. The gate of hell has not yet opened. But it’s close. Ukrainians are afraid to find makeshift graves or cemeteries, as happened before in Bucha or Liman. The agents are also looking for collaborators of the invading forces. It is likely that many mobile phones with compromised messages or calls are buried or at the bottom of the Dnieper.
The scenes of the entry into Kherson are those of a subjugated city from which the pressure valve has been removed. An elderly woman hands out a belt of machine gun ammunition to a group of soldiers. He says he took over from a Russian unit that set up a firing position next to his house. Another old woman receives her grandson at the door of her house. He’s military. One of the first to arrive. He had not heard from her since the beginning of the war. The two embrace at the door. They kneel. They hug again.
The video was posted on the website of a Kiev newspaper. Exciting reunions abound, including a hasty wedding of bride and groom once separated by bullets, jubilant shots in Kherson as well as in Odessa and Kiev, where dozens of citizens took historic Maidan Square in celebration. All of Ukraine is celebrating the reconquest of the oblast bordering the Dnieper as if it had won the war. But not. It barely liberated 25% of Kherson and 3% of the Zaporia region. “This is just the beginning, although rest assured that we will arrive at the gates of Russia. And we will shout loudly,” exclaims a soldier with the surname Kazarya.
“Don’t write that the Russians left Kherson. It’s not true. They left because we left them no choice,” said Yurii Gudymenko, a member of the National Armed Forces. And he proclaims that behind every meter of land gained from the invaders, “there are lives of Ukrainian soldiers. Everyone’s sweat and tears. For every meter we pay a price that cannot be higher,” says Gudymenko.
“We are trying to get a good return to normal life,” Yaroslav Yanushevich, the new head of the regional administration, said yesterday. His first order to the civilian population was to institute a curfew between five in the afternoon and eight in the morning. In winter it gets dark early. And both in the center and on the outskirts of the city, the Russians destroyed the power grid before withdrawing. Authorities warn that it is “very dangerous” to take to the streets and roads in this way, believing they have been heavily mined by the invaders. “It is our job to ensure the safety of their lives,” Yanushevich said, before adding a second order to the population: “The ability to leave and enter the city will be limited until demining measures are taken.”
In contrast to the disorderly evictions in Liman and other recaptured enclaves, the military commanders admit that in this case the Kremlin army made a remarkable tactical withdrawal. The occupying forces set up several lines of resistance parallel to the front, stepping back one by one until they moved on to the left bank of the river, as if it were the bellows of an accordion. On paper, a strategy that seems simple, but which led to the departure of 30,000 men and 5,000 pieces of equipment, including hundreds of artillery batteries. Not a single cannon was left behind.
The key to mining is time. According to the military command, the Russians have had “many hours” to carefully booby trap pathways, basements and apartments. Some 3,000 mines have been dug up in some places that they have been hastily abandoned. According to these sources, it will take days to evacuate the entire city, “maybe weeks”. And as long as the enemies don’t launch their grenades across the river.
“We are very happy despite everything.” For example, Olga speaks on a square in Kherson where citizens wave Ukrainian flags at journalists. She is sure that the Russians “will not come back” and that “we will even kick them out of Ukraine”, as President Volodimir Zelensky said in a speech in which he promised to wave the national flag in Crimea.
Olga lives with her family. “We endured fear and hunger,” says an elderly man nearby. His refusal to be part of the more than 80,000 civilians evacuated by Moscow now seems like a reassuring decision to him. “We have waited many months for this moment.”
He is confident that things will soon return to normal, even though Nataliya Chornenka, head of Korabelny district, agrees with regional authorities that the humanitarian situation is “precarious”. “There is no electricity or water or communication links,” he says, though he acknowledges that “everyone” who fled to other regions at the time “is now calling us to return home.”
Amid the euphoria of reconquest, another sound is reminiscent of war. Air raid sirens sounded again yesterday in what appeared to be an attack similar to the one that killed seven people the day before in Mikolaiv. The Ukrainians are aware that the enemies lie ahead, separated only by the Dnieper, a expanse of water between two and twenty-three kilometers wide that can be crossed by two separate bridges at Zaporizhia and Kherson. The latter has ceased to exist. Presumably blown up by Russian wreckers.
The Russian front is easier to defend than to attack. It is very difficult to cross the Dnieper with attack boats – in fact, the Ukrainians have already tried unsuccessfully – and the fighter jets are within range of the anti-aircraft defenses. Moscow has set up a fortified bridgehead. You can bomb Kherson and deal very heavy damage with artillery and drones.
Never since the Second World War has the Dnieper been the theater of war to which it now seems doomed. Then Russia and Hitler’s German army clashed. One of the greatest battles ever witnessed by mankind. It mobilized four million soldiers on a front of 1,400 kilometers. Hundreds of thousands died in a ditch filled with water. The then Soviets managed to route the Nazis and recapture Kiev. Today the story is different, but the dead continue to sow the banks.
Source: La Verdad
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