Months after expelling Russians, Ukrainian city Kherson suffers violent attacks again

The images of the crowds that filled Freedom Square, celebrating with the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag the expulsion of the Russians from Ukrainian territory, were left behind.

Now, the roar of Russian artillery engulfing the city echoes through the square. The autumn victory harvest turned into a harsh winter.

In the past 48 hours, Kherson has come under more than 130 attacks from rockets, artillery, mortars and even direct tank fire from Russian forces across the Dnieper River. Four people were killed in the same period, another twelve, or even more, were injured.

Several warehouses were also set on fire. One of them stored fireworks – bizarre goods to store in the midst of bombing raids. But also a symbol of hope, in the face of bloody experience, that someday there will be something more to celebrate.

The regional capital was captured in March last year, in the early stages of the Russian invasion. Many of its 290,000 citizens left at that time. More seem to have fled since the region was liberated in November. Ukraine’s administration has begged them to leave ever since to escape Russian bombing.

Young mothers, retirees and a handful of drunks run and stagger as fast as they can across Liberty Square to catch buses. Time above ground, just a few hundred meters from the river, is time spent in mortal danger – especially here.

A few days earlier, a chunk of the city hall building had been blown off like a slice of cake by a Russian missile. Part of the local administration building was collapsed in the street.

Ukrainian jets fly above the low clouds – at least, that’s what everyone tells themselves: “they are Ukrainians”.

The bridges to the Russian-controlled side, where the Kremlin invaders still control 60% of the province, were all blown up.

At night, reconnaissance units from both sides investigate their enemy’s positions, or hunt down command centers. A Ukrainian officer, who goes by the call sign “Sneaky”, said his men, which included several American and British volunteers, “killed 16 Russians” on a patrol a few days earlier.

“We attacked them with drones and our own weapons. All but one were killed quickly,” Sneaky told CNN .

“He was injured and was going to die when we got him. We talked to him and gave him some water and his last cigarette. So… well, he died,” she added.

Ukraine’s battlefront with Russia is at least 1,300 km long and has been moving back and forth as small villages come under Russian attack in the east of the country. There is now talk from Ukrainian officials that Russia is planning a major attack in the coming weeks.

It may not come in Kherson, where the river is a formidable barrier to land attacks from any direction. So, for now, the Russians pound the city day and night with seemingly random hammer blows.

Tatiana was in an underpass under the main street along one side of Praça da Liberdade on her way to the bus. She moved back to the city because she couldn’t afford to live anywhere else.

“I came back because where I lived I was out of work. And I couldn’t pay my rent anymore. And I came home because it is my home”.

The Russians were bombing the city, she said, “for revenge. Probably revenge, because they ran away.”

Revenge was so intense the moment she spoke that emergency teams of firefighters and doctors spoke to the CNN from a bunker in a secret location. They said the bombing was too intense for any mission to help during it. The location is secret to avoid being targeted by the Russians.

Bombing Kherson like this is not entirely pointless. Russia’s brutal logic is that targeting civilians will erode Ukrainian morale. That a daily diet of this kind of misery will weaken Kiev’s resolve and even the resolve among its allies to help Ukraine sustain a long war.

It is more likely that a Russian land offensive will come across the front from east to west as far as the city of Zaporizhzhia, or in Donbass. But Ukraine must also protect recently liberated areas in Kherson or risk a Russian comeback – and that absorbs troops.

Compared to Ukraine, Russia has troops to spare. And it’s throwing them into the “meat grinder” battle for Bakhmut in the east.

Ukraine says it urgently needs weapons to offset Russia’s quantitative strategic advantage, such as long-range missiles and fighter-bombers. Time is on the Kremlin’s side.

“Long-range weapons will change the course of war. We are sure of our victory, but victory will be faster,” said Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky on Friday (3).

Anatoly is a pensioner from the Antonivka district of Kherson. The area overlooks the river. It is close to the main bridge over the Dnieper. And it’s an easy target for Russian forces.

He came to find something to cover his windows that were blown out by bombing. He finds a piece of plastic over a broken window where City Hall was bombed and cuts it with a switchblade. Artillery and rockets sound in the background.

Enduring Russian (and Soviet) invasions and atrocities is in Kherson’s DNA. The city was one of the first prizes of the conquest of the region by the Russian Empress Catherine the Great in the 18th century.

His advisor in this colonial expansion, Prince Grigory Potemkin was buried in St. Catherine of Kherson. When the Russians were driven back last year, they took his bones with them. If that symbol of Russian imperial designs in Kherson never returned to the city, no doubt the parties would return to Freedom Square.

*With information from Sarah Dean, Olha Konovalova and William Bonnett of CNN.