Ukrainians Flee Recaptured City

Russian shelling drives out Kherson residents, weeks after celebrations
By Bob Cronin,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 26, 2022 5:15 PM CST
Ukrainians Flee Recaptured City
Cars leave Kherson, southern Ukraine, on Saturday.   (AP Photo/Bernat Armangue)

Weeks after filling the streets in celebration after the city's recapture, residents again are fleeing the southern Ukraine city of Kherson. The first train bound for the west carried 100 people, CNN reports, including 20 children and seven bedridden hospital patients. City officials are encouraging residents to leave and said evacuees will receive financial support, accommodations, and humanitarian aid in the city of Khmelnytsky. Russian shelling of Kherson has intensified this week, and many residents lack electricity. Trucks, vans, and cars stretched in a line out of the city on Saturday, per the AP, some of them pulling trailers.

"It is sad that we are leaving our home," said Yevhen Yankov, a passenger in a van caught in the traffic. "Now we are free, but we have to leave, because there is shelling, and there are dead among the population." Another passenger, Svitlana Romanivna, said: "We went through real hell. Our neighborhood was burning, it was a nightmare. Everything was in flames." In Kyiv on Saturday, Poland's prime minister said that after misjudging its military might, Russia is targeting infrastructure in an attempt to defeat Ukraine.

Unable to win on the battlefield, "Russia is bringing death, starvation and hypothermia to civilians," said Mateusz Morawiecki, who was attending the International Summit of Food Security in the capital. Saturday was the 90th anniversary of the start of the "Holodomor," or Great Famine, in which more than 3 million people were killed over two years when the Soviet government seized food and grain supplies. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz marked Ukraine's solemn commemoration with a message by video. "Today, we stand united in stating that hunger must never again be used as a weapon," Scholz said. (More Russia-Ukraine war stories.)

Get the news faster.
Tap to install our app.
X
Install the Newser News app
in two easy steps:
1. Tap in your navigation bar.
2. Tap to Add to Home Screen.

X