“Only by conquering Moscow will we stop the Russians”

So she puts her mobile in her bag, while her fingers caress the flare of her white dress with numbers printed in black. A nervous tic that seems to settle after several hours of waiting on the sidewalk of a flooded street of Kherson. Only 450 meters distance the intersection of Bohorodytska street with the western bank of the Dnieper. Insufficient space for the pace at which the prey bleeds out.

Since last November, after the Ukrainian recapture of the only regional capital taken by the troops of Vladimir Putin from the beginning of the invasion, the river became the main defense wall of the city. A parapet that protected from a new Russian incursion, but not from an incessant artillery that has left more than 200 dead since the liberation. However, after the destruction of the wall of Nova Kakhovkawater has become the main threat, at least against the civilian population.

“The world must react. Russia is at war against life, against nature, against civilization,” denounced the Ukrainian president, Volodimir Zelensky in one of the messages in which he accuses the Kremlin of being behind the sabotage. A hypothesis that kyiv has been warning about -along with a false flag attack on the Zaporizhia plant- for months and that would fit, according to engineering specialists interviewed by The New York Timeswith the most likely explanation: a blasting from inside.

And the counteroffensive?

As with the attack on the NordStream2 gas pipeline, there are many theories. The same thing that has been happening for weeks with the start of the expected Ukrainian counteroffensive. After Prigozhin announced the seizure of Bakhmut and counter Ukraine’s symbolic defeat with raids on Belgorodthe destruction of the dam represents a departure from what happened in the previous days: partial advances in different points of the east and south, confirmed, for the most part, by Russian Telegram channels themselves.

For this reason, the Ukrainian president assured this Tuesday that attacking the largest dam in southern Ukraine has no influence on the chess game that the generals are waging to recover the territory (somewhat less than 20%) seized in the run-up to the invasion.

[Ucrania exhuma cadáveres soviéticos para que no estén con sus muertos: “Lo hacemos con humanidad”]

“Fucking Russians. Sometimes I think that this war can only be ended by conquering Moscow”, shouts Dima, a Ukrainian veteran who arrived in Kherson on Wednesday to save the furniture and appliances in his apartment.

But not everyone has the same fate.

This is the case of Víctor, the old man in the sheet, who rests on a stool while his wife asks for help to drag three large bags full of everything he has had time to collect and get on the barge. A sailing through the same avenues that until a few days ago suffered the traffic of cars and bicycles.

The block of flats where he lived with his parents is one line further back, flooded by water that could affect the inhabitants of

With a boat and a rifle on his shoulder

In the wave of Ukrainian solidarity that has not subsided since February 2022, volunteers from other regions have decided to change their plans in the east of the country. Now evacuate, distribute food, and rescue animals. “Only today there have been more than 100 cats and dogs”, says Aleksandr.

Their barking inside the cages is mixed with the noise of the engines and the roar of the artillery. Other rescuers move up the river in surfboard and with rifles on the shoulder. It will be one of the biggest natural disasters for Ukraine after Chernobyl, but it is still a war.

The cannons continue firing at close range, but the evacuations do not stop. According to calculations by the Kherson Press Office, around 7,000 people (of the 16,000) inhabitants of this area they would have been evacuated and up to 80 towns and more than 40,000 people are at risk of ending up under water. According to information from the Secretary General of the United Nations, Antonio Guterres,
16,000 people lost their homes in the first 24 hours.

But not everyone wants to leave. “If they are on the first floor we don’t ask. Through the door or through the window, we get them out of there; but if they are older and live on a third floor, we often end up asking what they need. Basic elements such as food, clothing or hygiene products for a population in whose houses electricity, gas and drinking water have stopped working. The situation is so serious that in cities like Kyiv, Lviv or nearby Mykolaiv are looking for donors and adapting accommodations.

—Sergiy, you look too happy.

—All my relatives are alive —he says in a brief pause— a house is only money. Besides, I’m young.”