Kozatske and Vesele in the Kherson region were completely destroyed

The settlements of Kozatske and Vesele of the Novokakhovsk community in the Kherson region were completely destroyed. This was reported by the head of the Novokakhov city military administration, Valery Brusenskyi.

“There is nothing there. All administrative buildings, all communications – everything has been destroyed, everything will have to be built there from scratch,” he said.

According to Brusenskyi, there are currently those who do not want to leave the settlements and they will not leave.

“In September-October 2023, we had the last evacuations, then we were more or less able to persuade people to leave. Active and hardworking people left there a long time ago. Elderly people remained,” said the head of the city’s military administration.

He added that there are generators working there, where there is fuel.

Water is pumped, food and humanitarian aid are brought. People there do not pay for anything, because there are no communal services. And they receive some payments, Brusensky noted. “We give an alternative – to leave, for example, to Vinnytsia. And a person thinks to himself: he will have to work there in order to rent housing, and no one will drive the free humanitarian “Kamaza” to them. And people refuse to leave, they say that everything is fine,” said the head of the Novokakhov city military administration. Those who remain in Kozatskе and Vesely are provided by the operating command post of the Novokakhov community “Autocenter”.

“If there weren’t people there, maybe we wouldn’t have kept him. And so we have no other options. I would be happy to evacuate all the people from Vesely and Kozatskе. This would be a huge minus of the expenses from the budget for their maintenance and we would not worry about the safety of those who go there,” Brusenskyi said, adding that, in his opinion, there should be 100% forced evacuation of people in these settlements.

It is impossible to live there. People sit in basements all the time. It is even difficult to call it life, emphasized the head of the Novokakhov city military administration.

Kozatske and Veselу are settlements in the Novokakhov community that were liberated from Russian occupation in November 2022. Since then, they have regularly suffered from shelling by the Russian army.

Most of the Novokakhovka community, including Novaya Kakhovka, is under occupation.

We will remind you that from 2022, the number of residents of the Kherson region decreased by 70%.