The largest number of explosive objects among all the de-occupied territories was found in the Kherson region.
Who reports: Head of the National Police of Ukraine Ihor Klymenko
In the region, sappers conducted a survey of about 450 hectares of liberated territories. More than 3,500 explosive items were found and seized on them.
“Thanks to the work of deminers, it was possible to save hundreds or even thousands of lives. So we personally thanked the bomb technicians for their service and presented them with awards and titles,” writes Ihor Klymenko.
What happened before
On November 24, the Russian occupiers made 49 strikes on the territory of the de-occupied Kherson region. As a result of these actions, two more children were injured. Namely – an 11-year-old boy from Kherson and a 16-year-old girl from Beryslav.
After the liberation of Kherson, the Russian invaders continue to bombard the city and the surrounding settlements of the region on a daily basis.
This was announced by the head of the National Police of Ukraine, Ihor Klymenko. According to the latest data, after the deoccupation of the right-bank part of the Kherson region, the Russians killed 32 civilians.
– Daily Russian shelling destroys the city and kills civilians. A total of 32 civilians have been killed by Russia since de-occupation in the Kherson region, Klymenko notes.
According to him, some local residents are beginning to evacuate to temporarily wait out the danger in other regions of Ukraine. However, many Ukrainians still remain in their own homes, despite the threat.
Klymenko emphasizes that the main task of the National Police is to ensure the maximum possible safety of Ukrainians. He is convinced that a great victory awaits Ukraine soon.
In Kherson, as a result, of Russian shelling, at least one person died and 3 others were injured, the president’s office reports. As journalist Mstislav Chernov wrote on his page, one of the seriously injured was 13-year-old Artur Voblikov, whose arm was torn off during the explosion.
“His mother Nataliya Voblikova was not at home when the blow happened, and when she heard the explosions, she did not know whether he was alive or dead. Since Russia retreated from the regional capital nearly two weeks ago, leaving water cut off and power lines down, doctors say the concern for patients has become even greater.
Across the city, many doctors are working in the dark, unable to use elevators to transport patients to surgery, and working with headlamps, cellphones and flashlights.
In some hospitals, key equipment is no longer working. Carefully maneuvering stretchers up the hospital’s narrow stairs, a team of medics carried the 13-year-old child six flights to the operating room, where they had to amputate her arm.
They sat in the dark corridor of the hospital with their daughter, waiting for the end of the operation. The boy’s mother said: “They are not people. You can’t even call (Russians) animals, because animals take care of their own. They shoot at civilians, at children. We did not call them here and did not kill any of their children. So why are they killing our children?”
According to the journalist, one of the surgeons reported that the children arrive with severe injuries to the head and internal organs. Meanwhile, on the upper floor of the hospital, the staff cares for the children in the ward with the help of a single lamp.
Queues for products and cash, “squeezing” of business, inclination to “cooperation” and constant search for pro-Ukrainian citizens. All these are the “attributes” of the eight-month occupation of Kherson, the first and only regional center that the Russians managed to capture since February 24. Olena Hrushka, an employee of the local cancer dispensary, managed to stay in the occupied city for almost five months.
Now the woman lives in Odesa, says that “the climate here is similar to Kherson, and close to home”, and is waiting for the opportunity to return to the already liberated by the Armed Forces, but still very vulnerable city. Olena worked as a metrology engineer in the regional oncology dispensary, she was in charge of checking all the equipment. The woman says that the medical facility was large and modern, the equipment cost millions of hryvnias and was installed by specialists from Germany. Because of this, according to Elena, patients from the entire south of the country came to Kherson for treatment.
The cancer dispensary is actually located on the outskirts of the city, near the exit to the left bank of the Dnieper, 5 kilometers from the Antoniv bridge. Olena lived right there, literally across the street. Therefore, the woman both heard and saw the first battles for the city and the bombing.
The Russians entered Kherson on March 1. Olena says that at that time there were almost no law enforcement officers left in the city, they allegedly left earlier. Since the local authorities were not too actively involved in the defense of Kherson, the locals, at the start of a full-scale invasion, began to independently manufacture anti-tank hedgehogs and Molotov cocktails, which, however, could not greatly interfere with the armored vehicles of the Russians.
“On the night of March 1, I was in the dispensary’s bomb shelter. Usually, not only patients and workers, but also ordinary residents hid there: some with children, and some with cats or dogs. Loud explosions rang out all night, but by morning everything had calmed down and we went home. When I came home and read that the Russians had entered the city, I was already so exhausted that I just exhaled, took a shower and went to bed,” Olena recalls.
According to Elena, the townspeople did not receive any explanations on how to behave in case of occupation, so when the Russians entered the town, everyone was shocked and depressed. The woman says that the locals expected at least minimal resistance.
In the first two months, the occupiers, busy dispersing rallies of pro-Ukrainian citizens and establishing control over institutions in the city center, did not visit the oncology clinic. This allowed workers not to remove the Ukrainian flag from the gate – it flew there until May. The institution continued to work as usual: it received patients and performed operations. The hospital was designed for 260 places for patients and at the beginning of the full-scale war, most of them were occupied.
Life in the city during this period was much less stable. Olena says that the pharmacies immediately stopped working, and when they opened again, they were already selling medicines brought from Crimea – several times more expensive than before. The occupiers also instantly “squeezed out” all gas stations, city transport came to a complete halt. The chains of Ukrainian supermarkets worked, but here, standing in a long line, you could only buy the remnants of the assortment, usually the most expensive items.
“First you had to wait in line, and then take what was left. We bought those goods that we did not need at all, such as canned mushrooms in jars or pineapples. But they took at least something,” Olena explains.
Spontaneous markets began to appear en masse on the streets of the city. People walked tens of kilometers every day to sell their products and earn at least some money.
“Kherson returned to the Middle Ages during the occupation. Sellers overcame 20 roadblocks a day to sell their products. They were examined, their phones were checked. If the Russians liked a phone, they simply took it away,” the woman recalls.
Ukrainian banks managed to stay in the city until the end of spring, and long queues formed there every day. In order to get money, people began to travel around Kherson early in the morning and take their places in queues near each branch. Once, Olena’s family stood in line for five days and as a result received only one thousand hryvnias, because the bank could not issue more due to a lack of funds. At the same time, so-called “minyali” or “baryg”, as the locals call them, appeared in the city. Kherson residents could get cash through them: they sent them money from the card, and received bills. For such services, the “exchangers” received their share — they took 12% from each transaction.
“Later, a Russian humanitarian was brought to Kherson, there was no Ukrainian. At first, antisocial people stood behind her, apparently drug addicts or homeless people. Obviously not ours, brought in, which were filmed on camera during distribution. The locals started taking this humanitarian when there were no other options,” Olena adds.
According to Elena, the Rosguards were the first to enter the city, militants from the partially occupied Luhansk and Donetsk regions, and Buryats appeared here later. Tricolors began to be hung around the city, and anti-tank hedgehogs made by the townspeople already guarded the captured administrative buildings.
The occupiers also took local cars, mostly old models, in order to be able to find parts for them during repairs, engaged in looting, primarily those premises and houses whose owners had left Kherson, and hunting for pro-Ukrainian citizens. According to the woman, the Russians liked to do the latter at night, knocking down the doors of apartments in groups.
“About a month after the occupation, I went to the city center for the first time. Russian flags were everywhere. It was very difficult. I started to cry and to hide my tears, I put on dark sunglasses. That’s how you walk along Svobody Square, and they are everywhere. When I saw anti-tank hedgehogs and dug trenches near the regional council, it made a huge impression on me,” the Kherson woman recalls with sadness.
The connection in the city disappeared at the end of spring, but the Internet still continued to work. Large national providers left Kherson immediately after its capture, and local providers switched to Crimean networks. To contact relatives or learn about events in the country, people wandered around the city in search of points with available wi-fi. The hospital where Elena worked gradually began to lose staff – some resigned, others took unpaid leave until the end of the war. Initially, mostly female doctors left, but in April, after the first rumors about a possible pseudo-referendum appeared, doctors also began to leave more actively, fearing forced mobilization.
At the beginning of May, the representatives of the occupation authorities came to the oncology clinic for the first time – the pseudo-head of the regional health department, Vadym Ilmiyev, accompanied by people in balaclavas. Olena says that the “visitor” had a holster with a weapon hanging conspicuously on his belt – so that all the staff could see it. Ilmiyev offered the head of the hospital, Irina Sokur, to cooperate, after which she took sick leave and left the city, continuing to manage the institution remotely.
According to Elena, since then the remaining staff began to live in two parallel realities: to follow all remote instructions of their manager and to watch how the occupation authorities put “their man” in Sokur’s place – the gynecologist Oleksandr Nesterenko, who agreed to head the oncology dispensary and cooperate with the Russians.
Olena and her other colleagues performed not only their duties, but also worked for accountants, the personnel department, and took care of the reception desk. In July, the woman was fired for her pro-Ukrainian position, because she continued to communicate with the pseudo-leadership in Ukrainian. After the words of the occupiers “go, wait for your Armed Forces of Ukraine”, the woman realized that she had to leave. The newly appointed “director” began to form his own, already pro-Russian staff with lawyers, secretaries and accountants.
For several days, Olena was looking for carriers. The woman calls the route through the Crimea the safest way to leave, but it was too expensive. The woman, together with her retired mother, decided to enter the territory controlled by Ukraine through Vasylivka, Zaporizhzhia region. One ticket in this direction cost 6 thousand hryvnias.
The queues were huge. When their bus reached the checkpoints, it turned out that there were almost three hundred of them, and the Russians were passing no more than 100 cars per day. So, their group had to wait five days to leave the occupied territories. They spent these days in nearby settlements.
“We stayed in the city of Dniprorudne for three days. The drivers agreed in advance that we would be accommodated in a dormitory of a local school. They started there at eight in the evening and we had to vacate the premises already at eight in the morning. We spent this time in the city — walking, eating something hot, looking at the city,” she says.
The drivers warned the passengers in advance that provocateurs might approach them, looking for pro-Ukrainian citizens, receiving money from the occupiers for this.
“Once a woman came up to us and started asking where we were going and where we came from. Then she started tweeting, saying, don’t leave, we’re doing well here, the Russians give out money, organize concerts. Well, of course, we should have reacted sharply, but everyone fell silent and turned away. Then a pensioner came up and also started asking us questions, as if he himself wanted to leave. Well, we answered – the drivers are there, come up and ask them anything that interests you. At this he began to argue and said that we must have been bombed a few times. We were all shocked by these words,” says Olena.
Now the city is liberated, the Armed Forces are gradually de-occupying other territories of the region. Some of the collaborators left the city during the so-called “evacuation”. Elena knew some of them personally.
Journalist and volunteer Ihor Zakharenko, who currently works in Kherson, talked with local residents. They told him about the Russian occupation and the war crimes of the Rashists.
“They wanted the volunteer to help people on behalf of Russia. They came to her and found an embroidered chevron of the Armed Forces. They couldn’t believe that a simple Ukrainian girl loves her country and army so much that she keeps a chevron at home. The woman was thrown into prison, kept in the basement for 3 weeks – beaten, interrogated, tortured with electric shock, and a nail was pulled out. They said that loving Ukraine is bad, and Russia is here forever.
She was a teacher. The Russians forced her to teach at school according to their curriculum. She refused. So they kept her for two and a half weeks – they beat her badly, tortured her – poured water on her clothes, and then electrocuted her… They pulled out her nails with pliers… They broke her kneecaps… They came with ready-made lists. They came to an acquaintance for her husband. And he died on the Antonivsky bridge… So they forced the grave to be torn open to prove it. They put her on her knees and started shooting next to her… They gave her 2 hours to make a certificate of her husband’s death. She didn’t put in the time – how was she beaten at her husband’s grave…
Someone’s nephew was taken to the basement, beaten, tortured, beaten with a stun gun…” As residents of the city told the journalist, someone was constantly brought or taken to the prison. Many cars came from the morgue, because they were tortured to death. “People were beaten, tortured, women were raped. Inhuman screams could be heard far from the prison…
In the store nearby, they asked to turn on some music so as not to hear hysterical screams.
Those who managed to get out of the torture chamber alive were baptized and quickly ran away.
Someone is looking for their friend who was taken back on June 1. He was kept in prison. Russian propaganda made a story about him that he helped the partisans.
Another man came to find his employee, an engineer… He was also brought to prison. And my interlocutor was taken from home at night, taken to the office – there they were beaten, interrogated, tortured. They ransacked the office, which they couldn’t take away, broke it up. The man was thrown out near the house with threats that they would come again… They brought the grandfather in only underpants, with his hands tied behind his back. It was difficult for him to get out of the KAMAZ, he was shouted at, and then hit on the head with a butt.
Some man saw from the window of the apartment how people were being brought in, how they were severely beaten and tortured. It was hot in the summer, people opened the windows for ventilation, and inhuman screams could be heard from there…
One woman saw looted goods being taken away – washing machines, refrigerators, TVs, computers, benches were dug up from the park, a children’s train was stolen.”