Interlude: Kherson | Part I, Suburb on the Blood

"There's nothing simpler," says the always-smiling Dima through his thick beard, as my German friend Alex and I inquire about the possibility of traveling to Kherson. It is April 2023, and although the city, lying approximately four hours' drive to the northeast, was liberated from the occupiers half a year ago, it is not considered a normal travel destination, not even by Ukrainian standards. I recently read somewhere that strangers are not allowed in the city, and that the military authorities are trying to evacuate some fifty thousand inhabitants of the once nearly three hundred thousand-strong city who have either chosen or been forced to stay there.

"You just bring plenty of Snickers, smokes, energy drinks, and Coca-Cola," explains Dima, holding a beer in his hand, "hand them out at the checkpoints, and no one will bother you." Alex and I have to admit - Dima knows how these things function. He has himself fought on the Kharkiv front and should know what the soldiers need the most and how to handle the boys on or near the front.

A week or so later, Dima, who had obviously been pondering the matter on his own, announces that an even better plan is for him and his pal Kiril to come with us to Kherson. He also says he has friends stationed in and around Kherson, on the Dnieper front, and it would be completely legitimate - and even expected - of him to visit them and bring them some extra provisions.

To be honest, it sounds ideal, as the thought of a bunch of foreigners speaking barely any Ukrainian or Russian driving around near the front with no local guide or fixer is a plan doomed to fail one way or another.

So, next Monday morning at six o'clock, we all meet at Bunin Street, where a minibus is already waiting for us, full of energy drink cans, cigarette packs, Snickers bars, and big bottles of Coke.

There are six of us in total - Dima, Kiril equipped with a helmet, body armor, and a MARS-L-type automatic rifle, the interpreter Nastya, YouTuber Schulz from Germany, my friend Alex and me. The journey may begin.

Leaving Odesa is enchanting - the sun is rising, casting a metallic sheen on the sea to our right. But the idyllic view vanishes soon, swallowed by a thick fog that blankets everything. Visibility plummets, forcing our van to crawl along. Ignoring the potholes that rattle the vehicle, I drift off to sleep.

When I wake up, it is half past nine, and we are pulling off to a petrol station to take a coffee break. We are on the outskirts of Mykolaiv. We enter the petrol station shop where apart from us, some truckers whose big trailers are parked outside, are buying coffee and hot dogs. There are also a couple of sleepy looking soldiers in the gas station store slurping their cup of joe. In general, it seems to be a slow morning.

After a quick bite, our ride continues through Mykolaiv. The oblast center, relieved from the Russian siege almost exactly a year earlier, leaves a mixed impression: the windows of many of the houses are covered with plywood, shrapnel traces can be seen on several facades. Many buildings are also in ruins. But this does not seem to bother the locals much, and the town is bustling: people are rushing to work, trolleybuses, buses, and cars fill the traffic, shops are open. Or not: in the eastern outskirts of the town, car dealers and agricultural machinery traders seem to be closed. A big building carrying the sign of John Deere stands vacant, and some other buildings seem to be in various stages of destruction. But in general, Mykolaiv seems to be having just an ordinary day.

We pass through a checkpoint on our way out of town, but there is minimal interest in us - Dima and Kiril take out their mobile phones so that the soldier at the post can take a look at their electronic identity card, but we are simply waved through. The pile of passports on the van dashboard remains untouched. We drive through the scattering fog along an eerily empty and very poorly maintained M-14 towards Kherson.

"The Russians were here a year ago," Kiril announces as we stare out the window. On either side, there is all kinds of trash and rubble, among them some very rusty pieces of vehicles - perhaps an old Soviet BMP, but perhaps just a wrecked tractor or truck. No sign of Russians though. Soon we spot and pass a couple of cars - an age-old Lada and an equally ancient Moskvitch - rolling in a breezy peace towards the southeast.

“I bought a watermelon here once,” Alex says a moment later, as we approach the village of Shevchenkove. There are no watermelons in spring, but both sides of the road are lined with piles of plastic, wooden sticks, planks, and broken pieces of cement asbestos. "And those were the watermelon kiosks!" exclaims Alex in sudden recognition, "There were watermelon kiosks here everywhere and this rubble is them!"

A few minutes later, we pass a ransacked petrol station, then another one, which seems to be working after all. The windows of the building are covered with plywood, but a car has stopped to refuel, and I can see the petrol station shop door open and close as a customer steps out.

We are about to cross the oblast border. The steppe landscape spreads out around us; I can even make up a couple of tractors plowing the fields further away. "Welcome to Kherson oblast" or something similar is written on a worn, but perhaps also bullet-holed, concrete sign, which we whiz past. To the right, small brownish-white silicate-brick houses begin to appear in the distance, most of them with lively and cute blue roofs.

As we get closer, we notice another, completely annihilated petrol station on the left-hand side of the road. On the right side of the road stands a larger structure, perhaps a school, perhaps an administrative building. Little remains of it: the central part of the edifice has been badly hit, and the concrete slabs serving as floor partitions have slid out like biscuits out of a box…

Also, a closer look reveals that there is a particular reason why all the smaller residential buildings have the same quaint-looking blue roofs: these are no real roofs at all, but plastic sheets covering those houses which are apparently at least remotely habitable. “Posad Pokrovske” - “Suburb on the Blood” announces the sign on the side of the road, and I can only agree, the name sounds appropriate.

After spending some time exploring the ruins of the petrol station and picking up a sharp splinter of a tank or a mortar projectile for a souvenir, we continue our journey. Kherson is not far away…