AS HE SPEEDS down Zalaeherseh Street in Kherson, Artem, a Ukrainian soldier, points to blown-out apartments and debris. “The Russians call this the red zone,” he says. No one lives here any more. Close to the Dnieper river, which forms the front line in Kherson, this part of the city is under constant drone attack. Artem wheels the car about and heads for a safer part of town, where he parks in front of a café. On Ukraine’s south-eastern approaches, talk of a ceasefire is just distant chatter.
Drinking a cappuccino, Artem peers at his phone and watches a live feed from a Russian drone flying over the red zone. It is a cheap one, he says, so its communications have been hacked. In theory, this means you could watch yourself being attacked. The Russians are testing different types of drones in Kherson, he says, but so are the Ukrainians.
Russia continues to bomb civilian targets. On April 13th two ballistic missiles killed at least 32 people in the north-eastern city of Sumy, including two children. The missiles struck while many worshippers were at Palm Sunday services.
But Kherson is especially hard hit by drones. There were 7,000 drone attacks in the province last month, according to Oleksandr Prokudin, the head of Kherson’s military administration; 6,300 were thwarted by jamming. “It is Star Wars here,” he says. He spoke while inspecting a school basement that had been converted into bunker classrooms. Along the river a defensive electronic curtain has been created, according to Artem.
In November 2022 the centre of Kherson was full of Ukrainians rejoicing at the Russians’ retreat from the city, which they had held for more than eight months. Now its central square is empty and dangerous. The city is bounded by the mighty river. While the Russians are dug in on the Dnieper’s left bank, troops engage in desultory clashes over marshy ground on the mostly uninhabited islands that lie between them. The Russian aim is to retake the city, whereas the Ukrainian one is to expel them from areas they are occupying. The stalemate pins down soldiers who would otherwise be freed up to fight elsewhere.
More than 70% of the provinces of Kherson and Zaporizhia are occupied by the Russians. They are two of the four Ukrainian regions that the Kremlin claims to have annexed in 2022. (Only North Korea and Syria, then led by former dictator Bashar al-Assad, officially recognised Russia’s claim.) Last year Vladimir Putin said that the parts of these provinces still controlled by Ukraine would have to be turned over to Russia as a condition for a ceasefire. “We are prepared for all kinds of scenarios,” says Mr Prokudin, but surrendering the unoccupied part of Kherson is not one of them. The Russians have tried four times to assassinate him, according to Ukrainian intelligence sources.
Inspecting another brand-new bunker school in neighbouring Zaporizhia, Ivan Fedorov, the province’s governor, is equally trenchant. Ukraine faced a far tougher time in February 2022, when the full-scale invasion began, he says: “Now we are stronger.” At the time of the invasion Mr Fedorov was mayor of Melitopol, a city now in the occupied part of the province. He was arrested by the Russians but released in a prisoner exchange after refusing to collaborate with them.
Ukraine will never accept the loss of the occupied lands, he says. “We understand that without British, European and American support we can’t liberate our territories,” but if a ceasefire were imposed on Ukraine it would only be a matter of time before the war resumed. “Trump can make decisions about the territory of the United States,” he says, “but not that of Ukraine.”
On the Orikhiv front 60km south-east of Zaporizhia city, the fighting is constant. But soldiers there say they have not yet seen any major new offensive. Morale and confidence are higher than a few months ago. “Battle Witch”, the deputy commander of an artillery battalion, says that the supply of ordnance has improved greatly, though she has never had enough of either foreign- or Ukrainian-made shells. New battlefield technology has improved accuracy, meaning fewer shells are needed per target.
While politicians are defiant and soldiers are quietly confident, the mood in Kryvyi Rih, 115km to the west of Zaporizhia city, is very different. Here grief is curdling into calls for revenge. On April 4th a ballistic missile killed 19 people, including nine children in a playground. The Russians said they had launched a “precision strike” against a meeting of soldiers and Western military instructors in the RoseMarine restaurant. In fact, said staff who were cleaning up, a children’s birthday party had just ended, along with a meeting of a local business association. The missile fell hundreds of metres short of the restaurant, just beyond the playground next to it.
Five days after that strike the district of 1970s-era low-rise flats was eerily quiet. A steady stream of people carried teddy bears, flowers and toys to leave on growing piles. One of those who died was nine-year-old Herman Trempolets. After the invasion his family had first fled to Poland, said his mother Ilona, sobbing. They returned after a year because “we did not think this could happen to us. This is not war, it is Putin’s terror.”
At a small nearby shop, Natalya, a paramedic, recalled the carnage after the strike and the fear that a second missile might follow. Outside the shop stood flowers in memory of Vita Holovko, a friend of Natalya’s who had worked there. When Ms Holovko died she fell on top of her small granddaughter, saving her from the shrapnel slicing through the air. Natalya, standing beside a cabinet of frozen food and ice cream, was implacable. “We need revenge.” ■
