A photographer reflects on life in a city that found something to celebrate amid constant bombardment.
From Mykolaiv to Kherson the train rattles forward, pulling just two carriages. Passengers, aware of the danger ahead, instantly become open and warm. Without introductions they exchange news, everyone afraid, each traveling for their own reasons. Police and Security Service officers walk through the carriages like a shadowed tide, checking IDs and quietly questioning passengers.
It’s early morning, and I’m craving coffee. The night on the narrow berth allowed almost no rest. Outside, the foggy steppe drifts by unhurriedly. The plowed fields are ready for winter. The pheasants that ran along the tracks last time I was here are gone.
Kherson has been free for three years – and bombed almost every day of them. Glide bombs, Grad rockets, and drones hunt people like targets in a shooting range. Soldiers, pensioners, children – it doesn’t matter. A moving shadow can draw fire.
The Volunteers Holding Kherson Together
The city shrinks against the Dnipro. Even my Shumensky neighborhood – once considered relatively safe – now absorbs direct hits. In late October, volunteer Rostyslav Kulyk filmed a Grad strike from his balcony: one explosion after another, black smoke pouring over apartment blocks.
Kulyk cofounded the volunteer group “Strong Because Free” almost immediately after the invasion.
“They invaded on the 24th [of February 2022], and on the 26th we gathered,” he said. They set up seven food points for the homeless to prevent hunger-driven looting. Volunteers even resolved domestic conflicts when Russian troops ignored civilian crime.
The city center is nearly deserted. Minibuses dart though like startled animals. Pedestrians are rare and mostly very elderly. The neighborhoods of Periekopska, Himnazychna, Soborna, Bohorodytska are near-total kill zones. The city itself begins to resemble a ghost. Destroyed, charred buildings look at me with empty, black hollows. Streets wrapped in anti-drone netting resemble the labyrinths of some giant prison.
Residents equip themselves with anti-drone detectors now, though even these tools can only do so much. With trees bare in late autumn, there’s little cover.
On my first day, I join volunteers moving from strike site to strike site. Each destroyed building reveals what’s left of ordinary human life: someone’s whole life reduced to dust in the air, belongings shoveled into the street, the remnants fitting into a few suitcases. Bewildered homeowners try to help the volunteers, who work quickly – they must finish before 3 p.m., or reaching home becomes even more dangerous. Detectors squeal, drones appear on their screens. Somewhere on the left bank of the Dnipro, across from the city, an operator sits, choosing his next target.
Back at the volunteer base, basement rooms have become classrooms, playrooms, and gyms. Kulyk grins as he throws a few punches into a bag. His birthday is coming up – the same date as Kherson’s liberation in 2022. The team has already prepared a mock certificate full of jokes.
A Picture of What Remains
The next day I head to Kherson’s main theater. Astonishingly, it is still operating. Director Oleksandr Andriyovych Knyha allows me to attend a rehearsal in the basement for the celebratory concert. In a small hall, I run into Ernest Safonov, a well-known Kherson biker and saxophonist I once photographed. We greet each other warmly.
A handful of people come to the concert – just enough to fill the allotted dozen or so seats. Given the turnout, the turnout feels miraculous. The theater is located in one of the most dangerous areas of the city, for the red zone is only a few hundred meters away.
On 9 November, I stop by the volunteer base early in the morning to congratulate Kulyk on his 45th birthday. The whole team is already there.
“Today I have a double celebration — my birthday and the day of Kherson’s liberation,” said Kulyk. “So we’re partying!”
He tells me how liberation unfolded for him. During the occupation he hid in the Kherson Cotton Plant district. Almost no one knew where he was. Then one day, he heard frantic honking beneath his window.
“I didn’t believe they came for me,” he said. Only when a burst of gunfire sounded did he dare to look outside. “I saw our boys. Well, tears – of joy. That’s how it was.”
The three years since haven’t been kinder. His brothers serve at the front. One was discharged after injury, the other still fights in the Donetsk region.
Newlyweds Veronika and Oleh (top) and Veronika in the church where they were married.
I go back to the theater, where Knyha invites me to join a tree-planting event in Lilac Park to honor fallen defenders.
Planting trees in a city burned by war feels like an act of faith. Knyha demonstrates how to properly dig, plant, and water the trees. He tells me he planted hundreds of trees near his own home – now under occupation.
We return to the city center and find out that a wedding is scheduled at 10 a.m. at a registry office near the theater. People have already gathered, but the power goes out, delaying the ceremony, but the couple, Veronika and Oleh, are in completely positive spirits. For a while, I become the wedding photographer.
“This date is very important to us,” said Oleh. “To get married on the anniversary of Kherson’s liberation, so that our love would be as strong as the city of Kherson!”
Guests pass around champagne, then vodka. After a few toasts, the tension dissolves. By the time electricity returns, no one seems to care about formalities anymore.
The last coffee shop in the city center closes its doors “until better times.” The barista, Oleksiy, gives me one of his postcards as a keepsake – he draws them himself. Another little island of local color disappears. The city feels more and more orphaned.
I return to the train station, arriving early since the city has no electricity. It’s better to allow plenty of time. Usually full of people, the train station lacks its old hustle. The square is empty. Only the sounds of distant artillery break the quiet.
Near the railway crossing, dogs whine from a shelter yard. Stray packs roam the ruined streets, sometimes aggressive, always terrified and starving. I remember that I never got the chance to go with one of the volunteers to the dog shelter.
Stanislav Ostrous is a Ukrainian photographer who lived in Kherson for many years, returning after the Russian invasion to document life in the besieged city.
