Kherson by night: On the frontlines in two worlds
Jonathan MS Pearce reports from Kherson, a frontline Ukrainian city that has borne the brunt of Russian aggression and is now suffering the consequences. There is no military benefit to assaulting Kherson. It is an act borne out of deep-seated vengeance. Hope is in short supply.
The deep bass whoomph of outgoing artillery is enough to keep me on the edge of my guesthouse seat—a place that gets no business outside of NGOs and the like visiting Kherson. The crackle, fizz, and loud thump of incoming munitions, on the other hand, can make you jump. These explosions are close enough to rattle the windows and make the room shake.
We entered the town at night for reasons of safety—not so much for ourselves but for the host of the establishment where Greg and Zhenya often stay when delivering aid to the area. The city has its fair share of collaborators and drones buzzing in the night sky looking for such accumulations of people. The four of us are in a Ukrainian Nissan Navarro. Most similar pickups we have passed today have been foreign, often British, crowdfunded and donated from abroad to help the war effort.
The invisible city
We stop at a supermarket that you wouldn't know was a supermarket, or anything at all right now. The city is a modern iteration of Blitz London, with every window blacked out or sealed tightly with layers of curtains and every street light switched off. The place is eerily quiet and completely dark.
"That's a gas station next door," said Greg, who runs an NGO getting various aid to frontline units. "And it's open."
"No way!" I could see nothing but a small green light coming perhaps from a pump. Quite how you would negotiate filling up your vehicle in these conditions is beyond me.
Before entering the supermarket, Greg's charity partner Zhenya makes sure the lights are properly blacked out on the back and partially blacked out on the front. He tapes card over the central interactive screen on the dash. We will be driving the rest of the way with sidelights until the final few hundred meters in complete darkness. We won't even look at our mobile phones as they emit too much light.
The supermarket summons us only with a crack of light under its automatic doors. The windows are completely boarded up with chipboard. Where most businesses have closed down in this once-bustling small city on the Dnipro River, chipboard merchants must be having their best years: every other window is boarded up.
But when the automatic doors are triggered, there is no hiding the bright lights of the supermarket beyond. It is a veritable Aladdin's Cave—nothing unusual, but with its clean interior and stocked shelves in the context of a pitch-black neighborhood, the shop becomes something more. The security guard eyes us suspiciously as we purchase food for our rooms tonight.
There will be no restaurant meal this evening in Kherson, that much is certain.
Outside the bright interior of the supermarket, an old woman is standing with a small paper cup, begging for some sustenance. Zhenya stops to talk to her, to get an idea of her story, of who she is. Dirty and with the aroma of someone who genuinely lives on the streets, she proudly talks of how Ukraine will prevail. Greg and Zhenya take her back into the store to load her up with food.
The security guard side-eyes them again as they purchase food for a woman without a room for the night.
Eventually, we return to the truck. "Is it time to get the body armor on?" asks Pierre, a British humanitarian worker who normally works in Ukraine's eastern town of Kramatorsk. He's used to what happens next, joining us on this loop of the whole frontline with his own body armor and helmet.
It's always better to be over-prepared and cautious when operating in a warzone. Wearing body armor unnecessarily has killed few people. But not wearing it? It's not worth the risk.
[Waiting to drive into Kherson in darkness.]
I don the front and back plates for the very first time. Pierre and Greg help me put it on in the pitch black under the light of a head torch. I have primary progressive multiple sclerosis and my balance is not good at the best of times. Having these heavy weights thrown over my shoulders and have Pierre give me a friendly whack on my front with a "There you go Johnny," and my online moniker "A Tippling Philosopher" briefly changes to "A Toppling Philosopher" as I wildly grab Pierre's arm to stop me falling on my posterior.
It's at these times that I wonder what I am doing here.
