I feel nervous at first, but the strength of the people here is inspiring. They reverberate deeply from a Ukrainian attack on the Russian-occupied side of the Dnieper. The manager Valentyna explains that breakfast isn’t available as there are no eggs to be had, but I’m just relieved to have a functioning roof and glass in the windows. I check in to the only guest house open in Kherson. The Ukrainians I talk to are unsure how long this war will last. They’re the only children I see during my trip to KhersonĮarly this year, David McWilliams wrote an article in The Irish Times imagining the bright postwar future of Ukraine, but while it’s possible to envision a national rebirth from the comparative safety of Kyiv, the south and east feel trapped in limbo. In the room behind the restaurant, two children play, hidden away, pale-skinned, deprived of sunlight. As Susan Sontag said, ‘I belong to that tradition of writers who believe that to be a writer is to pay attention to the world and to champion the cause of justice, to be in a position of opposition.’ I’m probably viewed by the Khersonians as a war tourist, but that would be wrong. It sounds ludicrous, like I’m the cavalry arriving with artillery. I’m hyperaware of the rattle of my suitcase wheels down the deserted side streets. The occasional Saturday-morning shopper passes by without dallying. Joy Travel Agency is spattered with dark mud from where a missile unearthed the nearby grass. Etiolated dogs own the streets and, while the vast majority of buildings are standing, many windows are broken from bomb blasts. Huge branches are lying by the pavement which has fallen into divoted disrepair. The main Ushakova Avenue must have had boulevardesque majesty before the war but is now full of plyboarded-up shops. Only a handful of passengers go all the way with me to Kherson. ![]() Later, I wake up to a teenage soldier and his girlfriend taking final selfies as the train pulls into Mykolaiv and I’m left with the poignant impression that these photos might end up in memoriam. I sleep most of the 11 hours, aware of one passenger departing in the middle of the night. I share a second-class compartment with three others. At our packed platform, the tannoy plays rousing Ukrainian folk songs to send us on our way. It’s a frontline city, but a train goes there every two days. That night, I head to the train station to take the sleeper to Kherson. They are graphically shocking: one is of a dead woman in Bucha with yellow-blistered skin and charred clothes, her face scorched.Īn open-air war display in St Michael's Square, Kyiv. A new series of photos have been erected next to the display of bombed-out vehicles. It seems fitting that Ukrainian wreaths are shaped like a teardrop. A woman next to me is crying, ribbons quivering on the ornamental trees. I walk to the Memory Wall at St Michael’s Monastery to look at the new photos of fallen soldiers. I tell her I’m planning to go to Kherson and ask if she thinks it’s dangerous. On the phone she relays the good news that her father has made a full recovery from having been injured on the front line. My friend Yasha Golovko, who once worked there, is now employed as an assistant director, working flat out on a film about an evacuation volunteer in the early days of war. I visit the aid hub Heaven to see the manager Pasha and it’s virtually empty now. People just don’t know it yet - "Owen", a soldier fighting for Ukraine in a unit made up of foreigners The upright stalks on the chestnut trees are transforming from green to white. ![]() “A little party never killed nobody” proclaims a mural on the pub opposite my hotel. The number of checkpoints has reduced and in Kyiv, where the weather is brighter, the parks are full of red tulips and the outdoor bars and cafes are busier than ever. It’s odd to see remnants of last year’s battle at the edge of a main road. It’s seven months since I was last in Ukraine and the bus takes a new route into Kyiv past a column of burnt-out Russian tanks sitting in a lay-by. It strikes me that there are millions of these forced émigrés who can never return. While she travels back and forth to see her parents in Kyiv, her boyfriend of military age can’t take the risk in case he isn’t allowed to leave. I’m sitting next to 20-year-old Nastia, who took the chance to escape Kyiv last April with her boyfriend to study in Austria. A sweeping wind greets us every time passengers disembark. Suddenly it’s clear why the spring offensive has been delayed. At the very end of April, the bus crosses the Ukrainian border, passing fields of muddy furrows, fawn corn stubble and standing water.
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