180 people escaped Kherson’s kill zone in one week of ceasefire

Nataliia Diadiuk hung a white towel on her gate and held a white rag in her hand to signal to Russian drone operators that she was a civilian. When a brief ceasefire began on Oct. 27, the 53-year-old woman, who lives in Kozatske, a riverside village in Ukraine’s Kherson region, finally got a moment of rest. Her home sits less than 1.2 miles from Russian-controlled territory.

The pause in fighting was tied to a humanitarian aid mission in the Russian-occupied city of Oleshky. Ukrainian regional officials, police, the Ukrainian Red Cross Society, and volunteers used the window to reach civilians on their side of the river. Many of these residents had been cut off for nearly two years. The regional administration reported that 180 people were evacuated from riverside communities and Kherson city during this period, including 23 children.

Diadiuk’s daily routine in the kill zone involves collecting rainwater, straining it through gauze, treating it with chlorine, and boiling it. She gathers firewood from around town for heat and listens to a radio for news. She has not received humanitarian aid in two years until this recent ceasefire ended Sunday night. Going outside requires dodging mines scattered across the streets.

A team from The Associated Press gained rare access to the area to document conditions. The region was designated a red zone, the highest level of military danger. Before the war, the entire Kherson region, which is now nearly 70% under Russian control, had about 1 million residents. Currently, about 140,000 people remain in the Ukrainian-held part of the region.

Life in the village is marked by destruction. Burned-out cars and wrecked ground robots line the roads. Glide bombs have left craters in the ground, and shell fragments stick out of the asphalt. Mines dropped from drones lie everywhere, some wrapped in foil or plastic. Diadiuk keeps two thin dogs that have been left behind in nearby houses. She shares her limited food with them and other stray dogs.

Oleksii Shavokin, 54, lives a short distance away. His house burned down in early 2023 after a mortar attack, but he repaired it and stayed. He lives off old humanitarian aid and eggs from his hens. He now eats once a day in the evening and has lost 66 pounds, dropping from a weight of close to 220 pounds. He says he opens his door only a crack to listen for drones.

Oleh Tarabaka, head of the Nova Kakhovka city military administration, was part of the team that tried to persuade Diadiuk and Shavokin to leave. He said many residents do not know where to go or fear they will be left without support. Some have no relatives to visit. Tarabaka stated that without the period of quiet, rescuers would not have been able to drive into the area to extract people.

The temporary truce also allowed the Red Cross to evacuate more people from Kherson city than usual. Mykola Taranenko, commander of the Ukrainian Red Cross Society’s rapid response team in the Kherson region, said his team usually evacuates about 10 people a week. During the ceasefire week, they evacuated 32 people.

Volodymyr and Kateryna Yakuba, both 77, were among those who left the city. They divorced more than 20 years ago but arranged to evacuate together to stay with their daughter in Odesa. Kateryna said the cold season was approaching and the risk of crossing was very high. She noted that it was scary to leave home because they did not know if there would be anything to return to.