The vagueries of obtaining press permission to enter the de-occupied, frontline territories meant I had to spend five nights in Odesa awaiting the green light to drive the final three hours to Kherson.
Odesa is a beautiful city in the summer, but winter is coming, and the fact that Kherson was within spitting distance made for a frustrating time. On day five of my Odesan exile, I got a call from Zarina in Kherson, "You're in. The press office has cleared you," she said excitedly, "I'll see you at the flat."
Aside from the fact that we could continue working on the film, I suspect there was another reason for Zarina's joy. While in Odesa, I had picked up some cold-weather gear from her apartment, which included all-in-one, thick, fleecy pyjamas. Shocking pink doesn't convey the true radioactive colouring of said item, and I suspect they're the only pyjamas visible from the moon with the naked eye.
At the final military checkpoint, on the perimeter of Kherson city, I detected a marked change in the atmosphere. There was a tension I hadn't felt in previous crossings, and many calls were made to various press officers before I was waved through with the ominous words, "Put your body armour on and good luck."
I always drive with a window open; otherwise, I deprive myself of one of only two senses available to help keep me alive: sound and vision. Within minutes of passing the checkpoint, I heard the sickening rumble of artillery in the city centre. The omens were not good.
In my absence, Zarina had moved into a smaller apartment. Since I was now returning, she had renegotiated the deal to move back into our old one with our slightly shifty landlord, Max. Max, who had assured us that it was one of the safest neighbourhoods in town, had been a little loose with the facts. We only learned the truth when our friend Andrey, a Kherson resident, visited. "What the fuck are you doing living here?" he had asked, incredulous.
"Erm, because Max said it was really safe."
"It's one of the most dangerous places in Kherson," Andrey laughed.
"Yes, we did think it was a little loud," said Zarina, as we realised that perhaps Max had sold us a pup.
When confronted by Zarina, Max had shifted his sales pitch, "Well, being journalists, I thought it would be perfect for you to be in the middle of the action." Landlords...
It's no secret that the Ukrainian armed forces are crossing the Dnipro River and establishing bridgeheads on the Russian-occupied side, and this goes a long way toward explaining the massive ramp-up of artillery attacks. It doesn't, however, explain the increased ferocity and regularity of attacks on the civilian areas of the city. We spend long periods looking for logical explanations for this tactic, and every time, we arrive at the same conclusion: sheer bloody-mindedness. If they, the Russians, can't have it, no one can, which makes the destruction in Kherson City a campaign of pure terror.
I've been writing this article for little more than an hour, and in that time, we've had three air alarms, meaning Russian bombers have been dropping massively destructive KAB aerial bombs. I've lost count of the amount of artillery and GRAD rocket explosions in the city, and now the sound of heavy machine gun fire, indicating the presence of drones, is filling the destructive soundscape of everyday life in Kherson.
Yesterday, Zarina visited a children's library that had been destroyed by shelling the previous night. This was no mistake. The Russians occupied Kherson for nine months and have a network of collaborators still in place; they know only too well what is where, and it's the second library in twelve days destroyed by the Russian war machine.
On Wednesday, I was alone in the apartment when I received a call from Zarina, who had been at a yoga class during a hefty round of shelling. "Paul, there's been a hit near the Foxtrot store. Meet me in the courtyard at the back." I grabbed my body armour and camera to drive the quarter mile to the scene.
On route, I was flagged down by our dear friend Volodymyr, "Follow me," he shouted from his car. Minutes later, we arrived at a residential courtyard at the back of the store. The fire brigade had already arrived, but as we parked the cars, the scream of an incoming GRAD rocket caused us both to turn, and the rocket exploded on the roof of the city hospital no more than 50m away.
We raced around the corner and took shelter in a doorway with the Ukrainian military. It was a double tap strike; that is, the Russians would attack a target, wait fifteen minutes till the rescue services arrived and then launch again at the same spot, thereby killing as many people as possible.
Zarina joined our group in the stairwell, where we waited another fifteen minutes until we figured it was clear to leave. The rocket had hit the gas mains, causing a secondary fire that destroyed three flats in the same building.
Outside, on the cold, muddy floor illuminated only by torchlight, lay the corpse of a man killed in the initial strike. A few yards away, a dog, caught in the same attack explosion, had bled out into the sodden earth. Two police officers searched the man for identification. He had none, and the neighbours said they had never seen him around before.
We filmed and eventually packed up, leaving the nameless man and the dead dog in the pouring rain as the rescue workers went about their grim task.
I'd been back less than twenty-four hours.
The bombardment continued into the night, and as usual, we tried to piece together the threads of an invisible battlefield. We knew the attack would go unreported in the media; the world is looking the other way at the moment, and by tomorrow, the dead man in the mud would be forgotten by all bar his grieving family.
"Oh, I forgot, how was your yoga class?" I asked Zarina.
She pondered my question momentarily, "It was pretty weird hanging upside down during an artillery strike. Not that relaxing, to be honest."
Somehow, life goes on here, and for now, I'm resisting peer pressure to join the yoga class due to my perennial problem of chronic leotard chaffing.
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Trust Zarina, visit that yoga class!
Great post.