In November 2022, the whole of Ukraine celebrated Kherson’s liberation. Today, the city appears in daily wartime reports. How does it survive? Ukrainian Witness journalist Viktoriia Hnatiuk and videographer Mariia Shevchenko travelled there to show what life is really like for people living every day under the sights of Russian troops.
Now, the entrance to Kherson is draped in protective netting, and a green traffic light no longer signals the right of way—it signals whether it is safe to move, whether enemy FPV drones are overhead. Drivers accelerate on instinct. At any moment, green can turn to red.
What is happening in Kherson is summed up by locals in two words: “a human safari.” One woman, who had left and later returned, says she never imagined the situation could deteriorate so sharply. Drones, Grad rockets, artillery and mortars, she says, strike “every day, 24/7.” Since the start of 2026 alone, according to the Kherson Regional Military Administration, more than 50 people have been killed and over 450 injured across the city and region. Russian forces are deliberately hunting civilians with drones: they spot a person, “track” them, and kill them.
Save the living, recover the dead
The Ukrainian Witness team spent several days with volunteer Andrii Pietukhov, known as “Boxer.” He lived through the occupation in Kherson; now he helps residents get out of the most dangerous parts of the city and region.
“With every year, it just keeps getting worse. People say they still have hope, but they barely notice how fast everything is falling apart,” Boxer says.
Every run is a risk. Sometimes there are no more than five minutes to carry out an evacuation. Working alongside the police, volunteers try to get families with children out of the “red zones,” where evacuation is mandatory. But they do not always succeed. In the village of Stanislav, we watched as a family with three children locked themselves inside a battered house with no windows and refused to leave. The case will now go to court to forcibly remove the children from a deadly zone.
There are other stories. A grandfather from Shyroka Balka agreed to evacuate only after Russian forces destroyed his home. In tears, he gathered the most precious things that had survived: a pregnant rabbit and his dog, Bonia.
Another part of Andrii’s team’s work is retrieving the bodies of the dead. Boxer recounts harrowing cases—once, he pulled a body that had lain for more than 20 days in a shattered bathtub. In another, he helped rebury a son whose mother had buried him herself in the yard.
On one trip, Boxer headed out with our film crew to recover the body of a man killed by a Russian FPV drone inside his own home. Requests to retrieve the dead come from all sides, he says—from Kherson residents, the police, and the military administration. Families ask for whatever can be recovered of loved ones, even fragments of bodies torn apart by shelling.
Under fire from above
Despite the constant danger, Kherson remains a city of stark contrasts. The once-busy Suvorova Street now stands empty under the threat of drones. Yet in the Tavriiskyi district, buses still run, families walk with their children, and cafés pour lattes and cappuccinos. The calm feels fragile. At any moment, it can be shattered—the hunting zone of enemy drones is steadily expanding.
City workers keep going. The well-known Dnipro Market sits inside the “red zone,” but it hasn’t closed—fresh fish and red strawberries are still on sale. The vendors, though, are blunt: “It’s a red zone—everything flies here.” At the sound of a drone, they drop everything and run for cover. Ask if they are afraid of the constant shelling, and the answer is matter-of-fact: “What else can we do?”
In that same “red zone,” the local maternity hospital continues to function under постоян threat, despite being targeted several times by Russian forces. Petro Marenkovskyi, head of the obstetrics department, says that before the war the hospital saw 1,300 to 1,500 births a year. In 2025, just over a hundred children were born.
Kherson today is a city where life goes on under fire. People sip coffee on benches while shells explode nearby. Some refuse to leave their broken homes, saying, “someone has to look after the animals.” Others put themselves in constant danger just to pull the bodies of the dead from the rubble, giving them a chance at a dignified burial.
