(article about Kherson realities)

Lidiia Mychailivna, a 81-year-old woman, a refugee from Kherson Region, was sitting on a wooden bench in a small Ukrainian village not far from Kyiv. She looked exhausted and out of sorts.

“Afternoon! Why do you look so sad?” I got closer to inspire her a bit.

“I have just called the former head of our Dacha cooperative ‘Mriia’ (Dream), which is not far from Oleshky, Oleh, and he completely disappointed me. ”

“He is in Kherson now, right?”

“Yeah. I knew that after the inundation caused by the explosion of Kachovka Hydroelectric Power Plant, one of my small houses was destroyed by the horrible wave of water. The walls of it were too flimsy to withstand this hard hit. It cracked like a house of cards.The second house made of shell rock bricks survived. But today I found out that my second house was burnt by Russian soldiers. Oleh affirms that all the houses of our dacha cooperative were charred to ashes, the same relates to the nearest ‘Lira’ dacha cooperative…”

“Did they leave at least something after them?” I got interested.

“Just only Russian flags…”

Suddenly, Lidiia Mychailivna grinned with a sparkle of gloat, “To my surprise, the houses of two local collaborators helping Russian soldiers were burnt too. Their brownnosing did not help them. ”

So the picturesque places for family weekends and holidays, with cozy houses, green gardens, numerous lakes full of healing water with hundreds of healthy microelements and schools of fish, all of it turned into a dead dessert, a post- apocalyptic wasteland with skeletal trees, crumbled ruins and the acrid scent of ashes …

“Did Oleh add anything else?”

“Yeah, the last couple of people from the nearest village, Solontsy, a 90-year-old man and his aged wife, were driven out of their folk-style house, made of clay and cane. In spite of their begging, they were given 10 minutes to take all the necessary things to get away… Then their house with all its sheds and barns was poured with gasoline and set on fire… ”

“For these senior people, their house could be the house of their dream where they spent all their life… On the other hand, the old people are lucky because they stayed alive.”

“War is cruel,” Lidiia Mychailivna sighed and covered her face with her hands.

“They came to liberate us. From what? From our land, from our property, from our lives… ”