ENG
Meetings with relatives, queues for pineapples and champagne, photo shoots near Santa with deer - the usual New Year's bustle, like in any city in the world.
Cars constantly stop near the “Kherson” stele. Kherson residents, guests, military. On the ceiling - deer, santa, Christmas trees - made of cardboard. This place is symbolic, so they take photos here. “Ukraine will win” and “Glory to the Armed Forces” are already inscribed with a marker under the decorations. Here you can meet anyone. These meetings take place to the accompaniment of explosions.
People stopped to take a selfie. These are men, Kherson. They go home - because most locals plan to celebrate at home.
“New Year's mood is always, if we don't sport it. Kherson - an unbreakable vegetable garden and we have nothing more to add”, they explain.
Volunteers stop near the stele - the parents of the soldier. Loaded the food machine for the son's unit.
“We are from the Nikolaev area, but we have a son here and we are here carrying goodies”.
And here are a dozen military. This is 192 battalion - Kherson. We came to the stele to write New Year's greetings. They want peace, good and victory. Their chevrons look like the American flag - only it is painted in the colors of the Kherson watermelon. They sign the same flag to send to the museum.
Caniss jumps from the military vehicle of the Marine towards us. He is Jack Russell. He is a year and two months, of which a year the dog is at war. Already fought in Donetsk region, and now in Kherson region. His owner under the pseudonym “White” is frankly proud of his pet. The dog has a chevron unit on the neck. The owner has a prosthesis instead of one leg, a spike - in the second.
The squares and streets appear empty. There are few people, there are few cars and far away. Minibuses and trolleybuses run, traffic lights work.
In fact, many people can be seen in shops and supermarkets. People choose pineapples and peas, meat and champagne - alcohol in Kherson is sold until 3pm.
Two young girls carry a crate of beer. The older woman goes to buy meat for the roast: she lives alone in the entrance, so she just cooks an ordinary dinner.
Galina in bright red clothes carries a bottle of wine and fruit in her purse: “A holiday is a holiday. How not to prepare for it? As far as possible. At home, quiet, but we will. Me and my daughter actually. And two cats. I bought a cat, a pineapple and apples.”
We buy champagne and tangerines in the supermarket and already at the exit we hear loud arrivals. Locals jump to the mobile shelter. We run after them. Arrives somewhere nearby.
“It's hail”- Kherson residents sum up and less than a minute after arrival leave the shelter.
Shelled a store, residential buildings, shrapnel hit a supermarket. In the parking lot near the pet store, the car is completely beaten. Everything around in the glass. There is blood on the doors and asphalt.
Above the car - broken wires. Near small shops - sweep the glass. The saleswoman is upset and tortured.
“I was inside, but I didn't see anything. Heard. The Four Parishes”- she reluctantly tells. The wounded have already been taken away. The man is in serious condition. Two more people - a man and a woman wounded - were taken away by an ambulance. Two more later arrive at the hospital by themselves.
At 13:10 the Kherson Military Administration publishes its results of the year. We calculated the following: 356 adults and 8 children of Kherson region died during this year.
1,589 Kherson residents received injuries, 65 of them children.
Released over the region - 133 308 shells. 26674 attacks in Kherson region.
Due to the explosion of the Kakhovskaya hydroelectric power plant, three dozen settlements were in the water - and in them 3,500 homes.
There is no number of destroyed fates in the construction - it is impossible to calculate.
Two hours later, that statistic changes. Again shelling, and again on a residential area.
Ammunition flies into the store. In the store cubicle, two boys were playing on phones. The mother of one of them, a 9-year-old, is the owner of this store. Her son has a splinter in his head. He is taken to the hospital by an ambulance crew. But the child is not left in the hospital - there is a shortage of doctors in Kherson, and the child needs the help of a neurosurgeon.
The child was evacuated by the crew of Vitaly Tokarev. He is an ambulance paramedic, but he is not used to the fact that children suffer from shelling.
“We have a difficult situation here with shelling, with doctors, and the boy had to be evacuated to Nikolaev, because there are neurosurgeons there. The boy was unconscious, his condition worsened, and in order not to wait for things to be bad, the doctors decided to evacuate him to a specialized hospital.”.
The other boy died. He was 11 years old. His mother almost immediately runs to the scene of the tragedy.
“The boy, unfortunately, died, I understand, there is a utility room, they were there together, one was lying on the other, and the deceased was lying on top, maybe he did not even have time to understand what happened. Children's injuries, extensive damage - it is difficult to bear. We adapted a little, but children - it always hurts, and everyone who was there was. A lot of people were screaming, crying, there was a terrible sight at the scene, it is impossible to get used to children's injuries and deaths.”- Vitaly says with regret in his voice.
During this “festive” day, a total of 13 adults and one child were injured in the city. The deceased - 1. At night, the occupiers shelled Kherson several times - 92 shells flew over the city during the day..
Now the streets are empty. A thick fog descended on the city. It is flooded with houses and trees, lone passers-by and stray dogs. Due to the fog, the crushed by shelling is less visible. The fact that we are in Kherson, and that all this reality that is happening to us, is only reminiscent of patriotic billboards.
