Kherson’s liberation was greatly celebrated on Nov 11 2022 but today, only the river stands between its residents and Putin’s looming forces
19 February 2024
It was one of the greatest victories of the war.
Ukrainian troops marched through the streets of Kherson, waving their nation’s flag high above their heads in awe of what they had achieved.
Children wrapped in yellow and blue raced into their arms and women threw endless streams of flowers into the air.
At the time, many of those who had lived under Russia’s occupation described the day Ukraine liberated the city as the best moment of their lives.
But as the second anniversary of Vladimir Putin’s invasion approaches, some fear their freedom may be short-lived as Russia’s forces are on the front foot again after making their first major gain since May.
One soldier who helped Ukraine liberate Kherson told The Telegraph he worries about the possibility of Russia seizing the city once more, undoing all of the work built on heavy sacrifices.
“There is always a chance. Russia has a large population and a very strong and large army. It is a difficult opponent, so everything depends solely on us,” he said.
“I hope someday I will be able to come to the anniversary and celebrate. Now I am continuing my journey in the war. Glory to Ukraine.”
The Telegraph reconnected with people who previously spoke out about living under Russia’s occupation and found a disconnect with their liberated city.
Many have fled to safer parts of Ukraine. Just 71,000 of the city’s pre-war population of 300,000 remain.
Yar Linscky, a 20-year-old student, visited Kherson over the summer but found that the city he remembered had long disappeared.
“I just smiled with nostalgia and cried with grief. What has become of my city?”
Mr Linscky recalled jumping into the air so much when he heard Kherson had been liberated that his phone flew from his hands and shattered but said that the happiness he felt was short lived.
“Now Kherson is being shelled, the places of my childhood and my warmth are being destroyed. To live under occupation and war is to be dead in a living body.”
Kherson was seized by Russia in the early days of the war, becoming the first urban centre to fall into Putin’s grasp.
A puppet government was installed, Russian TV broadcast daily and the use of Ukrainian currency was discouraged.
Under the occupation, even ordering a coffee in Ukrainian became a crime.
Then Ukraine rolled back Russia’s troops on Nov 11 2022, in one of the country’s biggest successes in the war.
Volodymyr Zelensky triumphantly walked the streets in the days that followed, hailing the win as the “beginning of the end of the war”. Many hoped that it would be followed by more swift victories.
But today Russian troops remain on the left bank of the Dnipro River with water the only barrier between them and Kherson.
Ukraine was forced to retreat from the city of Avdiivka in Donetsk on Saturday, marking the first major loss in months, as Kyiv warns over dwindling weapons supplies.
Residents of Kherson have become so familiar with the crackle of gunfire, whistling of missiles and crashes of them hitting their homes that silence is disconcerting.
Di, who chose to keep her identity secret for safety fears, said: “I feel normal during shelling.”
She has spoken to the Telegraph monthly since Kherson was first invaded.
“On the contrary, I feel uneasy when it is quiet. My psyche has adapted to explosions and it’s just not used to being quiet. My body has adapted to these realities.”
Between 40-80 shells of different varieties are thought to land in Kherson city daily, according to officials.
Kit was one of the soldiers greeted with waving flags and flowers after fighting in the Kherson area.
He paid a heavy toll for Kherson’s freedom, losing an eye and witnessing the death of his commander, making victory “even sweeter”.
“The day of Kherson’s liberation is one of the happiest and most memorable events in my life,” he said.
Kit described civilians tearing down Russian propaganda billboards and burning them, repainting anything in Russian colours with blue and yellow.
“The commander allowed us to get out of the car and go to the people, where we were greeted as their sons, brothers and fathers,” he said. “People could not believe they were seeing us. The feeling was incredible.”
Kit’s fight continued before the celebrations were even over. He currently serves the army in an undisclosed location in eastern Ukraine.
Anton Tatochenko, 24, told The Telegraph that living in Kherson was now “like a permanent lottery game, where the max prize is life”.
“If you don’t accept the fact that tomorrow may not come, you just can’t get over it mentally.”
Mr Tatochenko said that the moment he saw Ukrainian military vehicles rolling through the streets left him in a state of “euphoria”.
“When the city was liberated, it was euphoria, I can’t put it any other way. It was a state of blind joy when you are just happy to see our military, you want to touch them, hug them, and say “thank you”. For me, this was the best day of my life.”
But he said this state of jubilation lasted just one week before the realities of the war sunk back in.
“Now, of course, everything feels different – people are simply tired.”
Although the city’s streets were packed full of crowds on Nov 11, today the city remains a ghost town.
‘My life has changed irreversibly’
Photographs show piles of rubble left behind and deserted streets. The centre of Kherson is too close to the ongoing fighting for locals to feel safe.
“The city centre feels like a desert,” Mr Tatochenko said. “Very rarely cars drive there, not many people visit and of course, there are missile attacks. I don’t think there is a single building left in the old centre of Kherson.”
Evhen Spichak, 36, believes the war will not leave the psyche of the people of Kherson because of the sheer devastation the occupation wrought.
He grieves daily over the loss of his brother, who had been his only remaining blood relative.
Mr Spichak did not discover that his brother had been killed by invading Russian troops until days after he had been buried in a mass grave.
“I believe that Kherson has truly become a victim of this war,” he said. “After this event, my life changed irreversibly. And if someone says that time heals – it’s just a cliche and an excuse. Do you think that I’ve let go, that I feel better? No, no, no.”
A comment from an educated person yet who knows nothing about Ukraine:
t torman
One of the worst outcomes so far of this war is to bring Russia up to speed with what works and what does not in modern conventional warfare. They were obviously incompetent and unprepared for things like drone warfare when the invasion was launched and paid a heavy price. They are no longer making those mistakes. I know of no analysts anywhere who now think that Ukraine can actually ‘win’ in the normal sense of the word. Russia has moved to a full war footing and ramped up weapon manufacture. The Russians can only be beaten if NATO forces attack them and a full scale war is declared and no one is going to do that.
Huge numbers of Ukrainians have died in the fighting and even more will die if the conflict continues for no apparent gain. All that is now going to happen is the Russians make slow costly gains and the eventual negotiated settlement will be worse for Ukraine. So negotiate now and let Russia have the Russian speaking areas. It’s not a win for Putin given around 500,000 Russians have died and much of their military destroyed.
Paul Anderson
If Russia retakes Kherson the blame will lay entirely with Donald Trump and his puppet, Speaker Johnson.
Paul Pelosi
Only Biden stands between Ukraine and the Russians, and he is waving goodbye as we speak. The US has refused all along to aid Ukraine with the weapons it needs to make war seriously unattractive for Putin. Russia itself remains essentially untouched while Ukraine is more than essentially wrecked. Biden and the west will be happy for a negotiated peace, i.e. a new Russian border along the present frontline of hostilities.
When Trump gets in that’s what will happen. Putin will have won and will remain in power to win another day. When that day will come could be soon or it could be later. It might well be soon given that Putin will likely be keen to exploit further the present weakness of the west.
Ian Palmer
Those of us old enough to remember Chernobyl, from when it really happened, not the TV show, already knew what Ukrainians were made of.
We learned some folk song once about cossacks as English schoolchildren, and it’s clear that Ukrainian people still have that fighting spirit in them today.
As Anthony Joshua recently found out. Twice.
The point being, that if and when talks ever happen, I hope the Russians have the sense to be fair, and send the Ukrainians away happy.
The British know to their cost from Northern Ireland, that having a formidable and unhappy neighbour on your doorstep, who can come in and out of your house when they want to, and you won’t always see them, is not a good place to be.
I really hope this s—show ends soon, on terms everyone feels they can reluctantly live with.
May God bless everyone.
William Blake
“Russian Troops on the front foot again after making their first major gain since May” ? Absolute rubbish and typical of the very inaccurate commenting by the DT. The Russians have lost a vast amount of equipment and suffered a loss of 17,000 soldiers. Ukraine has merely and very sensibly made a temporary tactical withdrawal due to a shortage of shells.”
John Bolwell
Just what is wrong with the West?? Preventing war is much better and cheaper than having to fight one! If Putin is allowed to win this war who knows what will happen next and what the cost of addressing it might be. Get your fingers out and do what is necessary for Ukraine now and then start spending on defence for our own sake.
Comment from A.N. Asshole:
Frederick Farrar
One thing’s for sure _ propaganda and manipulation of information has been ubiquitous on both sides of this war. I’ve been doing my best to see through this and get as accurate a picture of what’s been going on as I could, and from this I’ve never believed the liberation of Kberson by Ukraine was going to be any kind of lasting victory. To be precise – and I wish journalists would be precise on something as serious as this – Ukraine’s armed forces did not drive Russia’s forces out of Kherson. Russia’s forces were overextended and the Ukrainian pressure persuaded them of the wisdom at the time of withdrawing across the Dnieper where there was no chance of large numbers of them being logistically cut off. It was an organised withdrawal with relatively low casualties compared to the very high nunber that Ukraine sustained. Russia has never put forward occupation of the whole of Ukraine as a long-term political goal, but rather, demilitarisation and denazification, in other words, as with the US in Vietnam, achieving the highest kill-loss ratio possible. It’s been absolutely obvious from the beginning, and competent commentators unswayed by wishful thinking have long pointed this out, that Russia’s forces originally were far too small to occupy a hostile Ukraine, and Russia’s leaders would have known this. Whatever their initial objectives were, these seem to have quickly been adjusted to reflect the circumstances on the ground, and since then have proved to be very formidable. Russia’s now fighting a war of attrition with NATO in Ukraine and pacing herself accordingly while adapting very well to the new conditions. Our leaders should be worried.
Dominic Shelmerdine
If only the Russian people and armed forces could rise up and kill Vladimir Putin.
He flagrantly risks their elimination in a nuclear exchange by threatening the West with nuclear weapons and whose actions have cost thousands of Russian soldiers lives in Ukraine.
Russian civilians in Saint Petersburg and Moscow should be aware that if Putin levels London, they, too, will disappear in a mushroom cloud.
Instead of being guided by fear, the West should confront Vladimir Putin head on.
Star comment: Peter Rhodes I can only hope that at the brink of defeat NATO finally realises how pathetic they have been and the full force of the European & US forces arrive at the Ukranian front line and push the Russians all the way back to Moscow and give the Russian ppl Putin to do with him what they want. An end like Mussolini would seem just.
Another star comment:
Andrew Cook
In insisting that only the river is holding back the Russians this piece does a grave disservice to the small detachment of staggeringly brave Ukrainian marines who have crossed the river and established a bridgehead on the far bank. These men have inflicted a staggering number of casualties on the Russians, defeating wave after wave of armoured and infantry assaults. If the West stood by its promises and gave these people the weapons and support that was promised they could do wonders.