‘It was As If I had been Sitting Underwater’: Residents of Liberated Kherson Celebrate and Mourn

Chris York speaks to those who have been living with terror in the only regional Ukrainian capital Russia had captured since its reinvasion in February

At a birthday party in the suburbs of Kyiv last Friday, the first toast of the night wasn’t for the man celebrating the beginning of his 31st year, it was for the soldiers of the Ukrainian Armed Forces who that day had finally liberated the city of Kherson.

In the middle of a blackout, illuminated by candles, glasses were raised and clinked: “To the ZSU!”

“To Kherson!”

The biggest celebrations were of course in Kherson itself, where residents celebrated after more than eight months of living under Russian occupation. Among the crowds that gathered in the city’s main square was 47-year-old Lada and her nine-year-old son. 

“It was as if I had been sitting underwater for a long time, thinking that there would be no more air, and then I suddenly emerged,” she told Byline Times by phone. “There are no words.”

Stepan, a 39-year-old software engineer, who spent the duration of the war so far in Kherson with his wife and 12-year-old daughter, echoed the sentiment, said it was “hard to express everything”.

“There is joy, happiness – my child cried from happiness for the first time.”

Yet the situation in Kherson remains perilous and residents now face the daunting task of trying to return to some kind of normal existence, hampered by numerous challenges caused in large part by Russia’s destruction of civilian infrastructure as it left the city.

“Currently, we have neither electricity nor water,” said Stepan. “The situation with medicines is also challenging, there are many older people left, and winter is coming.”

There is also a continuing threat from Russian forces despite their retreat to the left bank of the Dnipro River and artillery exchanges between the two warring sides can still be heard.

“I’m still anxious about some of my friends who are still under occupation on the left bank of the Dnipro river,” 44-year-old writer Denys Martynov who grew up in Kherson and currently resides in Kyiv, told Byline Times. “I’m worried Russians are going to shell Kherson.”

Kherson was the only regional capital the Russians had managed to capture since the reinvasion of Ukraine in February and the decision to abandon the city was the third major Russian retreat of the war.

Deprived of battlefield successes that can be sold to a domestic audience as evidence the s