Local residents walk past a graffiti reading “Lets bring all our people back home” in central Kherson on December 8, 2022, amid the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Genya Savilov | AFP | Getty Images
When about 100 Russian troops rolled into Kherson’s Lilac Park on the morning of March 1, Oleh Shornik was one in every of about 20 flippantly armed Ukrainian volunteers who didn’t stand a likelihood against them.
Ukraine’s military was nowhere to be seen, and Russian troops in armored vehicles had easily entered the Shumensky neighborhood, opening fire and sending shrapnel flying all over the place, witnesses said. Civilians walking to work were hit within the short, fierce battle. The volunteers, hiding among the many trees within the park, were cut down so rapidly that they weren’t even capable of throw the Molotov cocktails they’d prepared.
“They didn’t have time to do anything,” said Anatolii Hudzenko, who was inside his home next to the park through the attack, in an interview with The Associated Press.
Left seemingly on their very own, the civilian volunteers fell quickly. A day later, so did Kherson.
1000’s of Russian troops, sweeping up from the Crimean Peninsula on Feb. 24, captured town on the Dnieper River so rapidly that many residents say they felt abandoned by the Ukrainian military and its quick withdrawal, leaving town without an adequate defense.
But was the doomed stand in Lilac Park a futile, early act of resistance to what became a bloody Russian occupation of Kherson? Was it as a result of the hasty retreat by Ukraine’s military so it could regroup to fight one other day — indeed later retaking town in November? Or was it the results of a betrayal by high-level Ukrainian security officials collaborating with Moscow?
It’s possible it was a mixture of all of those.
Now that Russia has retreated from Kherson following Ukraine’s counteroffensive within the south, residents need to know why Moscow’s forces were capable of overrun town so easily.
“There are more questions than answers to this story,” said Svetlana Shornik, standing at her ex-husband’s grave for the primary time since the Russians had blocked access to the cemetery while they’d occupied town.
Besides the volunteers killed within the park, about five others were slain that day at a roundabout nearby.
Families of the dead say they’ve been trying in vain for months to get information from the military and the federal government in order that they can have some closure concerning the deaths of their family members.
“I do know little or no,” said Nadiia Khandusenko, recounting what few facts she knows concerning the death of her husband, Serhii, who also was killed in Lilac Park.
Residents crowd around to take basic medicine supplies at an aid hub on November 21, 2022 in Kherson, Ukraine.
Chris Mcgrath | Getty Images
Wiping away tears, Shornik told the AP that she believes her ex-husband probably suffered in his final minutes because an autopsy revealed the 53-year-old retired policeman was shot within the lung. The bodies lay on the bloodstained grounds of the park for 3 days since the Russians wouldn’t allow them to be buried, residents said.
“They’re heroes,” Shornik said. “They were practically defending (town) with their bare hands,” she said.
Ukraine’s Territorial Defense Force began operating just before the Russian invasion. A volunteer militia under the command of the Defense Ministry, it was made up of civilians, part-time reservists and former troops to fight alongside the regular military.
Despite their lack of coaching and equipment, the volunteers have played an important role within the war and were a key reason Kyiv wasn’t occupied, said Mykhailo Samus, founding father of Recent Geopolitics Research Network, a Ukrainian think tank.
“When a (Russian) sabotage group gets right into a city, they expect to see civilians, but they found loads of individuals with Kalashnikov guns and it was a disaster for Russians,” Samus said.
Civilian volunteers were unable to carry back the Russian forces from Kherson, a port city with a prewar population of 280,000 that’s home to a shipbuilding industry.
Kherson is just north of Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. When Ukraine controlled town, it was capable of cut off fresh water to the peninsula, and Russian President Vladimir Putin spoke of the necessity to restore water supplies as one reason to invade.
Flat and marshy, the Kherson region has few forests or other natural barriers to halt the tanks and troops from nearby Crimea which hosts Russia’s Black Sea fleet and air bases.
As well as, Ukrainian officials corresponding to Kherson Mayor Ihor Kolykhaev told the newspaper Ukrainska Pravda in May that the failure to destroy key bridges resulting in the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions was a mistake that helped the Russians, although he stressed he was not a military man.
Antonovski Bridge, which is allegedly demolished to stop Ukrainian forces from crossing the Dnieper River as Russian forces withdrew to its left side of the river, is seen after Russian retreat from Kherson, Ukraine on November 14, 2022. The one transportation road from Kherson to Crimea was the Antonovski Bridge.
Metin Atkas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
Ukraine’s outnumbered military, meanwhile, had withdrawn from Kherson for the southern city of Mykolaiv, said Maj. Oleksandr Fedyunin, a military spokesman.
That withdrawal “ensured the survivability of troops and didn’t allow the enemy to realize fire superiority within the air,” said Bohdan Senyk, chief spokesman for the military.
Kherson’s swift capture has raised questions on whether Ukrainian collaborators aided the Russian invasion.
“Russia had its agents infiltrated into the Ukrainian security forces, and the cleanup by Kyiv was slow and inefficient,” said Orysia Lutsevych, head of the Ukraine forum on the London-based Chatham House think tank. “The price of that betrayal was high human loss.”
On April 1, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy dismissed two senior officials of Ukraine’s SBU domestic security agency, including the pinnacle of the Kherson regional branch, stripping their rank as generals for violating their military oath of allegiance. He called them “anti-heroes” and said they “had trouble determining where their Fatherland is.”
He added: “I do not have time now to take care of all of the traitors, but they are going to all face punishment.”
As well as, an aide to one in every of those SBU officials was arrested and faces prosecution for allegedly handing over maps of minefields and helping coordinate Russian airstrikes that aided Moscow’s forces, said Oleksandr Samoilenko, head of Kherson’s regional legislature.
The Russian takeover of Kherson — the one regional capital to fall within the war — ushered in a harsh, eight-month occupation that saw fierce resistance from its remaining civilians, including attacks against Moscow-installed officials, planted bombs and other threats. Moscow introduced the ruble, arrange Russian cellphone networks and cut off Ukrainian TV in the realm. Street protests were banned.
Civilians carrying Ukrainian flags rejoice at Independence Square after the withdrawal of the Russian army from Kherson to the eastern bank of Dnieper River, Ukraine on November 13, 2022.
Metin Atkas | Anadolu Agency | Getty Images
As in other Ukrainian areas that Russia seized, officials who refused to cooperate were abducted, including the Kherson mayor, Kolykhaev. Residents allege they were confined, beaten, shocked, interrogated and threatened with death in not less than five sites in town and 4 others in the broader region.
The region was one in every of 4 that was illegally annexed by Moscow in September, although its troops were forced to withdraw weeks later as Ukrainians stepped up their attacks with U.S.-supplied missiles and cut the Russians’ supply lines. The retreating forces left behind mines and booby traps, shuttered shops and restaurants, and a traumatized population.
In Lilac Park, a small memorial honors the volunteers who fell there. Wreaths are fastened to just a few trees, with some yellow roses and a plaque mounted with a cross and a small Ukrainian flag at the highest.
It reads: “On March 1, 2022, fighters from the Territorial Defense were taken to heaven.”