As the day wore on, Abba said that the roar of bullets and the roar of explosions began to subside. Silence descended on the city around midnight.
“And then we knew,” Abba told CNN. “It was very sad.”
Kherson, a key Black Sea port city in southern Ukraine, was captured by Russian forces early Wednesday morning after days of heavy bombing and shelling. The Ukrainian flag was still hoisted on government buildings, and the mayor of the city, Igor Kolykhaev, remained in his post.
On Saturday, Kolykhaev announced that Russian troops were everywhere and the city of nearly 300,000 people was left without electricity and water and was in desperate need of humanitarian assistance.
Kolykhaev said Russian troops were “entrenched” in the city and showed no signs of leaving.
“We have a lot of people in need here. We have cancer patients. Children who need medication. Currently, this medicine does not reach them, ”he told CNN, adding that the Russians wanted to send help, but the residents refused it. .
People living in Russian-occupied Kherson describe days of terror confined to their apartments and houses, afraid to go out even for the necessities – their city has now become a dystopian shell of the home they knew and loved.
Checkpoints manned by Russian troops dot the streets of the city, five Kherson residents told CNN in recent phone calls. The roads are practically empty because the residents either fled the fighting or stay at home, fearing to meet Russian soldiers. Grocery stores are empty and medicines are running out, residents and officials say.
Russian troops have surrounded the city and residents say they are shooting anyone who tries to leave, including a senior local health official who CNN is not naming for security reasons.
“Even if we wanted to evacuate women and children from here, it is simply impossible. They shoot anyone who tries to leave.”
Andrei Abba, resident of Kherson
On Thursday, Russian forces shot and killed two men at a checkpoint after they tried to pass, killing one and seriously injuring another, an official told CNN.
Russian troops have also banned ambulances from leaving the city and reaching villages in the province, the official said. A woman who went through a long and dangerous labor on the outskirts of the city had to resort to a panicked video consultation with her doctor because Russian forces blocked a medical team trying to help with the birth, the official said.
“About a day later, local authorities begged the Russians, the mother and child were allowed to go to the hospital,” the official said. “It was terrible.”
Andriy Abba, a tax lawyer, says he is determined to stay in Kherson, regardless of occupation, as long as the Ukrainian flag flies over government buildings.
“Even if we wanted to evacuate women and children from here, it is simply impossible,” he added. “They shoot anyone who tries to leave.”
Ukrainian authorities are working to ensure the safe exit of civilians from besieged areas as part of ongoing negotiations with Moscow. Russia agreed to fire on Saturday from 9:00 Kyiv time and set up humanitarian corridors to allow residents to leave the southern cities of Mariupol and Volnovakha, the first tangible sign of cooperation. But the agreement quickly fell apart, stalling the evacuation, Ukrainian officials said. The government has accused Russian forces of shelling cities and even hitting evacuation corridors from them. “Surrounded cities that are collapsing” are “surviving their worst days,” Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Saturday.
“Humanitarian corridors should work today. Mariupol and Volnovakha. To save people. Women, children, the elderly. To give food and medicine to those who are left.”
Yulia Alekseeva, mother of a two-month-old baby, says she has a hard time finding diapers and other baby items. “They are catastrophically few in the city. We also have a grandmother with dementia who needs diapers and drugs on a regular basis, which are also not available, ”she told CNN.
“We are hiding. There is a curfew in the city, if people go out after 8 pm, they shoot to kill.”
Yulia Alekseeva, resident of Kherson
Like most residents of the city, Alekseeva hid with her family, leaving the house only in search of basic necessities.
“We are hiding. There is a curfew in the city, if people go out after eight in the evening, they shoot to kill. You can move in the company of no more than two people,” she said.
But she remains brash, adding: “The Ukrainian flag is still over Kherson, the city has not surrendered to the invaders. The military said not to provoke them and everyone would be alive.”
On Saturday, a large crowd of protesters took to the occupied streets of Kherson, waving Ukrainian flags and coming face to face with Russian troops. Troops appeared to be firing live rounds into the air to disperse the crowd, a social media video showed.
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba shared footage from the scene on Twitter, praising the demonstrators. “Courageous Kherson inspires Ukraine and the world! Thousands of Ukrainian civilians protest against the Russian occupation in front of armed Russian soldiers. What a spirit,” he wrote on Saturday.
From her apartment in Kherson, where she cares for her grandmother, Svetlana Zorina told CNN she would stay in the city “as long as the Ukrainian flag is up and the mayor is Ukrainian.” On Friday, she went to the grocery store only to find empty shelves and then headed to her mother’s overseas apartment, where she picked pasta and rice.
“Here we are very afraid that we will become part of Russia. We don’t want history to repeat itself, as with Crimea,” she said, referring to Russia’s 2014 annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. to be bombed than to become part of Russia.”
Abba is convinced that this will not happen in his city. Although he is consumed by fear of Russian annexation, he argued that unlike Crimea, which fell relatively bloodlessly, Kherson put up stiff resistance to the occupation.
“The Russians crossed the line several times,” he said. “Can not be [another] Crimea.”
Tamara Kiblawi wrote and reported from Lviv, Ukraine. Gianluca Mezzofiore wrote and reported from London. Alisha Ebrahimji contributed to this report.