However, the mood is celebratory in the square today, as locals wave Ukrainian flags and banners marking liberation. It has been seven days since Ukrainian troops re-entered the city, but Ukrainian soldiers, police, social services, foreign reporters and anyone who has arrived from outside the city are still warmly welcomed. “I’m so happy to be home,” says one woman. “Home? Aren’t you from Kherson?” I ask. “At home means in Ukraine,” he says and hugs me. Sasha, 13, has come with her father, Victor, to charge their phones. She spent the last few days with her classmates from school waving at passing military vehicles. I am struck by her definition of freedom: “When the Russians were here, we had to walk with our heads down, without looking ahead,” she says. “Now we are back in Ukraine, we can hold our heads high and feel free.” Her father nods. Another woman, Halnya, remembers the Russian occupation. “At the checkpoints the Russians asked us: ‘Why are you in a bad mood?’ How was I supposed to answer them? What do you say to people who go on buses with machine guns – that if they weren’t here, our lives would be better?” About 280,000 people lived here in Kherson – the regional capital, now under Ukrainian control – before the Russians came. According to the Office of the President, 80,000 people remain. “I was shocked to see so many people on the streets, I didn’t know there were so many residents left,” says Svitlana, who is 75 years old. “It was always just us pensioners on the streets, as the young people feared. he was arrested and detained and remained inside. Now they’re all back.” Many people I meet say it’s the first time they’ve been in town since February. they were too afraid to come while the Russians were here. I have reported on the occupation of Donbass and Crimea, where activists, journalists and others have been forced to flee under threat of arrest or detention. When the Russians arrived in Kherson, residents took to the streets to peacefully protest the invasion. At one point they outnumbered the Russian soldiers. Moscow sent in police forces to quell the dissent with violence. Since then hundreds, if not thousands, of people have been detained in southern Ukraine. Not being an open Russian supporter was cause enough for suspicion and questioning. Ukrainian and international human rights organizations documented numerous human rights violations. People distribute aid supplies in Kherson, Ukraine, November 17, 2022. Photo: Bülent Kılıç/AFP/Getty Images My work with the Reckoning Project, which documents war crimes, included documenting dozens of in-depth accounts of the detention, torture and even execution of people in southern Ukraine. Two of our researchers come from the area. One fled as she was on Russia’s death list. The second, investigative reporter Oleh Baturin, from Kakhovka (an area that remains under occupation) was kidnapped, tortured, beaten and spent eight days in custody in March. At this early stage of the occupation, there was a sense in much of the international press and security conferences that Kherson was lost. Friends and family in the area told us how they felt forgotten, and Russian propaganda reinforced that message on the ground. It took months for the Ukrainian government to convince the Western alliance that with increasingly accurate weaponry there was a chance they could retake the region – which, due to its proximity to Crimea, is an area Moscow has clearly focused on. Kherson gave Ukrainians a taste of what victory looks like and a sense that things previously thought impossible can be done. This is, perhaps, what drives the happy mood in the region. Previously, when they reached the liberated areas, the joy was short-lived as people worried about what would be revealed – the mass graves, the torture chambers and the exhaustion of the residents from the lack of electricity and running water. In Kherson, however, people approach journalists saying: “We will deal with it, it is temporary, we are not afraid.” Their attitude makes the “with Russia forever” billboards in the city look even more ridiculous. Now, the rebuilding begins. Access to the city remains restricted as rescue crews and emergency services uncover hidden mines. As the bridges around the city have been blown up, the only way journalists can get in is with a military escort. Colleagues and friends asked me if I could get medicine from Kyiv to their sick relatives there. However, after months of the city being completely inaccessible, even seemingly small bits of news are huge. When the cell phone connection was restored in one city, I thought of my friend who can finally talk to her parents. When I see a truck delivering food, I think of a colleague who was worried about how her elderly mother was going to get enough food during the occupation. Passing a bus in ruins, I wonder if this was where a volunteer leading an evacuation of women and children from the area in May was killed by a sniper. I interviewed a witness to the incident and a sign tells me this was the place. I hear stories from friends and relatives in the Chechen region who occupy their apartments, of robberies and threats from neighbors. And that’s just the people I know. After reporting on the war for so long, the warmth of the people of Kherson is overwhelming. “We expected it. We can breathe freely. What else can I say? Kudos to the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Glory to Ukraine,” they tell me. And I know they mean every word.
