Billboards that still line the main road to Kherson promise that “Russia is here forever.” And there were times when residents of this city, liberated on Friday by the Ukrainian army, feared that their future was indeed to live as involuntary citizens of the Russian Federation. Through more than eight months of occupation, this city – the biggest prize captured by Russian forces in more than 260 days of war – and the lives of its inhabitants were integrated into Russia step by step. The first to change was the television. Kherson’s main television tower was destroyed on March 1, the same day Russian tanks and infantry entered the city. When the signal was restored, Kremlin-controlled broadcasts falsely portraying Vladimir Putin’s colonial-style invasion of Ukraine as an operation to liberate the country from its “Nazi” leaders were the only ones on the airwaves. Three months later, Ukraine’s mobile phone networks were suddenly blocked, forcing residents to buy Russian SIM cards – something they could only do by presenting their passports to the occupation authorities, something many Kherson residents were afraid to do. Currency followed, with the Ukrainian hryvnia being phased out in favor of the Russian ruble. The people of Kherson were also forced to live their lives on Moscow time, with all clocks set one hour ahead of the rest of Ukraine. “At first, people refused to take anything from Russia, pensions or anything else. Then, after a while, they created such conditions for us that we were hungry here, that we had to take it … people were starving,” said Julia Rudeva, a 31-year-old acrobat who came to Kherson’s central square with her friends on Sunday to celebrate , for the third day in a row, the end of Russian rule. “But once the Russian government evacuated… it took a day for people to get rid of the ruble. No one accepts it anymore.” Julia Redeva, a 31-year-old gymnast from Kherson, came to the city’s central square with her friends to celebrate the end of Russian rule. Anton Skyba/For The Globe and Mail Ukrainian symbols and infrastructure returned to Kherson with impressive speed over the weekend – just six weeks after Mr Putin claimed to have annexed the entire region – even as regional governor Yaroslav Yanushevych warned residents on Sunday not to gather in the city center because “the enemy has laid mines almost everywhere.” He ordered a curfew from 5pm to 8am as the Ukrainian army continued to search for pockets of resistance in and around the city. On Saturday, the city’s main ATB grocery store began stocking its shelves with familiar Ukrainian products as the first trucks full of food arrived. On Sunday, the Kyivstar mobile phone company was building a tower in the city’s central Freedom Square as excited residents gathered around, frantically ringing their phones in the hope of a signal and ignoring the sounds of a merciless artillery duel in the distance. . Mrs. Rudeva’s watch, however, was still set to Moscow time. “We’re still in transition right now,” she said when pointed out. “We’re lost right now.” The Ukrainian flag was raised in Kherson after the withdrawal of the Russians At a rehab center in Ukraine, amputated soldiers learn how to start their lives again Repression was another feature of the occupation. While Russian troops met little resistance when they entered the city in March, Kherson residents were nonetheless defiant in their opposition to Russian rule. They staged a series of peaceful demonstrations, including one where protesters marched through the city center carrying a huge Ukrainian flag. The protests were initially tolerated, but Russia’s FSB security service soon began searching for those who had taken part. Many residents told The Globe and Mail how they saw civilians being abducted from the streets, with bags over the victims’ heads before being forced into cars. Some were questioned for several days and then released, others were never seen again. “People would come up to you and say they supported Ukraine and if you answered they would grab you,” said Irina Dobrynina, a 42-year-old saleswoman. “People who told the truth perished.” Ms. Rudeva, who previously worked as a translator for election observation missions funded by the Canadian government, said the worst days of the occupation were the early days, when Russian soldiers would shoot at cars for no apparent reason. “We were finding a lot of shot cars in the city. There were many bodies in them,” he said. Rape was also commonplace. “Women were afraid to go out. I dressed as badly as I could. People stayed inside.” In his late-night video address on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said investigators had already found evidence of more than 400 alleged war crimes committed by the occupation forces. “Bodies of dead civilians and soldiers were found,” he said. People gather in the main square of Kherson as the city remains in blackout. Anton Skyba/For The Globe and Mail Some locals disappeared after sending information to the Ukrainian military that helped them target Russian troops stationed in and around the city. “We tried to research the locations of Russian troops and send the coordinates to our contacts in the Ukrainian-controlled areas,” said Alexandra Parkhomenko, a 30-year-old teacher. The effort ended, she said, when her point of contact, another woman living in Kherson, was kidnapped and taken to a prison in nearby Crimea. The intelligence-gathering operation was effective while it lasted. Ukrainian artillery pounded the Russian base at Chornobaivka, a military airfield on the outskirts of the city, so often that Chornobaivka was associated with the film Groundhog Day in Ukrainian online memes. Hundreds of Russian soldiers, including two-star general Yakov Rezantsev, were reportedly killed in the attacks. Not everyone resisted in Kherson. The defense of the city ended so quickly in March that many here believe that local political elites cut a deal to surrender the city. Russian wages and pensions were often higher than those in Ukraine, and many Kherson residents – Russia claims 115,000 – accepted the offer to evacuate across the Dnipro River to other Russian-held areas of Ukraine before Russian troops withdrew from the city. last week “In this city, 80 percent worked for the Russians and were well paid,” said Artem Yuryevets, a 40-year-old businessman standing in the square watching the celebrations in silence on Sunday. While some of those who accepted the Russian offer to evacuate wanted to take Kherson because they feared there would be a prolonged civil war in the city, he said, others “worried they would be killed or oppressed for working with the Russians.” Ukrainian soldiers pose for photos at the entrance to the city of Kherson. Anton Skyba/For The Globe and Mail Russian troops left behind a city – which had a population of nearly 300,000 before the war – that on Sunday was still without electricity, heat, water or communications. As Kyivstar rushed to restore cell phone service, a crowd gathered at a riverside park where they could get a signal using their Russian SIM cards. Tatyana Ivanovna said she had been trying unsuccessfully on Sunday to call her children, who were staying with their grandmother in another city in Ukraine, to tell them they were okay. Although the first Ukrainian troops arrived in the city on Friday, she said it took her 48 hours to believe that the Russians had really left Kherson. “On Friday I didn’t believe it. I thought it was a trick,” said the 42-year-old grocer. “Only today when we see so many Ukrainian flags in the city, we started to believe it.” Back in Freedom Square, a group of Ukrainian troops were greeted like rock stars when they arrived in front of the main city administration building. Oleh Khilyuk, a 19-year-old student, asked everyone to autograph a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag that could not be flown until Friday. “It’s a piece of history, a souvenir of the time when we were liberated,” Mr Khilyuk said with a broad smile. “If not for the soldiers whose names are on this flag, we would not be free.”
