The Kramatorsk Diaries part 11

Idiots

For the past week, the car has been sounding unhappy. A vicious rattle emanating from the passenger side front wheel has grown steadily louder, and my attempts at fixing the problem, closing the window and turning up the radio, have so far failed to cure it.

I've tried applying gaffer tape to bodywork shaken loose from driving over shell craters at speed, but the problem persisted. A visit to the car doctor was in order.

Our friend Volodymyr had set us up with his mechanic, one of the few still operating in Kherson, and the next day, I watched nervously as my tired Honda CRV rose on the hydraulic ramps. A burly mechanic prodded her undersides with a crowbar, and after a traditional sharp intake of breath, he started laughing, not hysterically, just little chuckles.

"Why's that about?" I asked Zarina, looking at the laughing mechanic.

The burly mechanic saw the look on my face and responded reassuringly, "I laugh when I'm nervous."

"Nervous?" I asked, my anxiety increasing.

"Do not drive fast, and be careful going round corners, or the wheel will fall off," he said, minus the nervous laughter.

Back home in the UK, that may be wise advice, but the last time I drove down this road, there was an artillery attack, and Volodymyr had screamed at me, "FULL SPEED, FULL SPEED!"

"I can fix it Monday, and remember, drive slowly."

I eased her out of the garage and wound down the windows to listen for incoming artillery. Damn, I thought as we turned gingerly onto the deserted road, three days of meandering through falling shells or risk losing a wheel.

Over the previous month, we had heard rumours of child disappearances during the Russian occupation. Still, we'd had no luck finding a direct source until Zarina took a call from a lady called Tetiana earlier in the week.

Tetiana told us she had lost contact with Andriy, her severely learning-disabled son, who was at boarding school on the left bank when the Russians invaded in 2022.

We asked for an interview, but Tetiana fled Kherson with three other children when the Russians arrived and now lives in Ternopil, central Ukraine. However, Andriy's Granny, Yaroslava, lives in a village forty minutes from Kherson and would be happy to talk.

Leaving Kherson means you lose the anonymity of the city; you are one car among many, and that brings a sense of security. A few days ago, the Russians dropped explosives on a funeral car, killing one and injuring two. In Kherson, there is no peace, not even in death.

The road to the village runs parallel to the River Dnipro, the source of the heavy weapons targeting Kherson, and there is an ever-present threat of FPV attack drones. My prematurely ageing car has a secret weapon: an anti-drone sunroof, which means you can simultaneously watch the road ahead and monitor the sky above.

Yaroslava greeted us with a welcoming smile as we pulled outside her village house. She was full of life and chatted happily as she led us through the pretty communal garden to a doorway guarded by a sphynx-like Maine Coon cat.

Only inside did we first glimpse the deep sadness concealed within her outgoing persona.

"Andriy was a beautiful baby," she said, clutching a stack of well-thumbed photographs of a laughing, two-year-old toddler, "but I knew he was different even then," she said, looking at the pictures. "The older he got, the more his needs increased, and Tetiana, my daughter, was struggling with her three other children.

Yaroslava stopped to wipe away a tear.

"Eventually, we found a boarding school that could meet his needs. It was a hard decision, but it was only in Oleshki on the other side of the river, so not too far to visit when we wanted,"

Yaroslava fingered the photographs nervously. "It got harder to visit him when Covid came along, but then the Russians invaded, and Andriy got trapped on the left bank. We haven't seen him since."

"We called the school every day, we wrote letters but heard nothing back. All the staff had abandoned the school when the Russians came, and the last we heard, they had moved all the children to be used as human shields."

Yarosllava wiped away another tear. "He was so beautiful, but we have got used to the idea that we may never see him again."

Her grief filled the room, and we could do little to ease her burning pain. As heartbreaking as Andriy's story is, it's not unique; the Ukrainian authorities claim the Russians deported thousands of children from the temporarily occupied territories.

The Ukrainian people's ability to absorb pain is humbling.

As we walked out to the car, Yaroslava led us to a taped-off area just 50m from her home. "I was outside when it landed," she said, pointing to an unexploded rocket sticking out of the ground. "I heard it land. There was a loud fizzing sound and then nothing. The army arrived and told us if it had gone off, all of our flats would now be gone." Again, that nervous laugh.

As we discussed the case on the drive back, the boom of a Grad rocket launch shook the car. "Outgoing," I reassured Zarina. A few minutes down the road, there was a loud bang, and Zarina said, with all the confidence in the world, "Ooh, a stone just hit the car."

"Incoming," I told her less reassuringly.

We continued with the windows down, listening for drones and mysterious stones falling from the sky.

Back in Kherson, 'The Idiots', our generic term for the Russians on the left bank, had been hard at work. A 152mm artillery shell had hit a children's hospital, causing immense damage. Mercifully, the children had already been evacuated from that ward after two prior strikes had hit the hospital.

Two hours later, we were at the Kherson University main auditorium, where an artillery shell had ripped a gaping hole in the roof. The building now stood open to the elements; winter was coming, and I'd be surprised if they could repair the destruction caused by the strike before the snow came and caused further damage.

Drained, we drove back towards our apartment, only to find a volunteer clean-up crew brushing up glass and debris from another strike. This one was only a few hundred metres from our block.

We glanced at each other, and I hit the pedal, accelerating away from the stricken building, hoping the wheel remained attached long enough to get us home.

The attacks continued unabated overnight, and in the morning, Russians dropped two KAB aerial bombs, knocking out the electrical and water systems across Kherson. Driving the streets, we saw the emergency water stations, set up for just this occurrence, were already running dry and watched as elderly people carrying water bottles wandered hopelessly searching for water.

As the temperature drops, the war on infrastructure enters the next phase and Russia once again prepares to make the harsh Ukrainian winter a living hell for its embattled inhabitants.