Kherson's liberation and the long road of healing ahead

There is little that can prepare one for the experience of visiting a city just liberated from a brutal and unwanted foreign occupation.

The scars of eight months of Russian military rule are still fresh on the streets of Kherson. The remains of hastily dismantled checkpoints dot the intersections, while demolished buildings on the approaches to the city speak to the heavy fighting on what was, until recently, one of Ukraine's most active front lines. Billboards bearing Russian propaganda slogans, describing Kherson's "centuries with Russia" or advertising the illegitimate referendum that saw Moscow officially annex the city in late September are still widespread.

Amidst all of this, there are the people.

The citizens of Kherson, who were freed from occupation just three days before CBC visited on Monday, now fill the streets again. Visibly beaming, they smile and wave at anyone entering the city, many with Ukrainian flags and posters in hand.

"For eight months, this was a dead city — silent, empty," says Fyodor Lobyanin, 39, who has come to the city centre with his wife Alyona and daughter Natalia to join the crowds celebrating their newfound liberty. "When there's checkpoints everywhere, you feel that you can be shot at any time. But the fear is gone. We can finally breathe again."

The wellspring of jubilation on display makes it abundantly clear that many in Kherson agree with him. The city's aptly named Freedom Square is packed with hundreds of locals, expressing themselves in ways that until recently would risk detention or worse. Chants of "Z-S-U!" — the acronym of the Ukrainian Armed Forces — are the most popular slogan.

"We didn't think [the liberation] would come so fast," says Lobyanin, as his daughter is handed a blue-and-yellow balloon. "We always knew they would come for us, but this was really something. The guys in the ZSU — they are so clever, the very best," he says.

Recapturing Kherson, the only provincial capital to fall to Russian control since the invasion, has been a strategic priority for Ukraine. Not only was the city a major industrial centre before the war, it also controls some of the natural resources available to the Crimean Peninsula.

Under Russian rule, daily life in the city had ground to a halt. Residents only dared venture out through the maze of checkpoints, and the threat of detention, a handful of times per week. Any thought of a normal existence melted away.

"I didn't work one day these past eight months," says Lobyanin, formerly a quality control manager at the Danone plant in the city. "How could I? Even if we had wanted to, the Russians looted the plant on their first week here and shelled it before that. Trying to survive was the best anyone could manage."

So the emotions of the victory are often overwhelming.

"It is impossible to convey how unexpected it all was," says Nikolai Korzh, 57.

His wife, Ekaterina, is dabbing away tears. "I want to cry all the time," she says. "For the third straight day, I still can't believe that everything is okay again."

Long road to recovery

In spite of the celebration, there is still a long road to recovery ahead. The city was home to roughly 280,000 people before the Russian invasion.

Exactly how many remain is unclear, with Ukrainian officials and media reports throughout the occupation suggesting that more than half the residents here had fled.

And though the city itself has been returned to Ukraine, it is still without electricity or running water. Key infrastructure has been damaged and Russian forces still occupy roughly 70 per cent of the surrounding region, according to The Associated Press.

But for the long-awaited guest who arrived at the square Monday, the focus was on the future.

WATCH | Zelenskyy calls Kherson victory 'beginning of the end of the war': 

As onlookers cheer, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy arrives, bundling out of his car in his characteristic green jacket. Despite the Russian positions just a few kilometres away, on the other side of the Dnipro river, he salutes for a rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem before giving a few remarks of his own.

"This is the beginning of the end of the war," Zelenskyy decreed, standing in the centre of the city.

"Step by step, we are coming to all of the temporarily occupied territories," Ukraine's president announced.

The joy of the moment, however, cannot erase the deep scars of occupation.

"If you saw these animals, you would understand that there is no other word for them," says Ekaterina Korzh, describing the Russian soldiers who used to patrol the streets.

"They are pure scum — dirty, vile, beasts. One day I went to the market, and I saw there that [Russian soldiers] were buying toys for their children back in Russia. I said to them, 'You bastards, you come here to destroy us and now you are buying gifts for your kids?'" she says.

"The city was very often quiet during the occupation, and that was actually the worst thing," her husband adds. "When we heard shooting, bombing, we knew that our soldiers were close. The hope was greater than the fear."

Fear of conscription

The people of Kherson did not want a fate like those of their erstwhile compatriots in long-occupied Luhansk and Donetsk — forced to serve as Russian soldiers.

"One day, the Russians started saying that they would mobilize the young guys here, that they would make them serve [in the Russian army]," says Maxim Zeleny, 30.

"I said, 'If the Russians will give me a gun, I will take it and immediately use it to shoot them. I didn't go out much, but they caught other guys [and conscripted them].

"I was lucky," Zeleny says.

The Russians ruled the city by fear, but this was still not enough for their appointed authorities to feel safe themselves, the people here say.

"Yesterday, our soldiers entered the island where [Vladimir] Saldo lived," says Zeleny, speaking of the Russian-installed political administrator who headed the occupation regime. "The entire time he was in charge, he left the island [in the Dnipro river] to Kherson itself just three times. We used to joke that his island was a separate republic."

Saldo fled the city last week; he is now in the town of Henichesk, where the Russian administration of Kherson has relocated. His fate is still a better one than that of his more-visible deputy, Kirill Stremousov, dead in what Russian authorities say was a car accident hours before the Russian withdrawal from Kherson was announced on Nov. 9.

Other alleged collaborators remain at large: some fleeing with the retreating Russians, others in the city. One of them was Zeleny's sister.

"My sister was always pro-Russian," he says. "She lived in Vladivostok for years, working at a fish factory. When the Russians came here, she was actively helping them: telling them the names of people who worked for the [Ukrainian] government, helping them identify people who might make trouble," he adds.

Zeleny says he has not seen his sister since the Russians left, and he does not know where she is now.

He was not the only tracking people's loyalties.

Igor Popov, a 30-year-old sales manager, waves a Ukrainian flag he had hidden for the past eight months. That was an especially dangerous act in his apartment building.

'My only wish, of course, was for liberation'

"We fought the traitors as best as we could," he says, describing his part in a Telegram group that tracked collaborators. "A woman who lived on my floor worked for the Russians, in their administration. She had the Russian flag hanging in her home. I have already told the [Ukrainian] police about her," Popov says.

He believes that the woman, and those like her, will be dealt with lawfully.

"She will be tried," he says. "We are a hospitable country, we are not barbarians like them."

That can all come later. For now, what's important is that Kherson is free, Popov says.

"I had my birthday during the occupation, my 30th year," Popov says. "My only wish, of course, was liberation. And our guys made it come true."