Kherson, Ukraine, is the only regional capital that Russia has captured since Vladimir Putin’s forces invaded Ukraine a year ago.
The city was liberated in November after eight months of occupation.
Still, now its residents are under fire almost every day as the Russians launch artillery attacks from their position across the Dnipro River, less than a mile away.
Holly Williams and a 60 Minutes crew reported from Kherson for this week’s broadcast.
They found Halyna Luhova, who was put in charge by Ukraine’s president to rebuild Kherson, managing aid distribution, power outages, and an avalanche of problems caused by Russian shelling.
Kherson has been shelled more than 2,000 times in the last three months.
Luhova said the Russians are targeting schools, humanitarian aid points, and critical infrastructure with the knowledge they gathered during their city occupation.
“During a long period of occupation for eight months, they know all the information as for our infrastructure,” Luhova said. “So they know everything.”
About 60,000 of Kherson’s 300,000 pre-war population remain.
The shelling has killed more than 80 people. A fire station and 19 medical facilities have been hit.
Nothing, it seems, is sacred. There’s a bomb crater right outside the Church of the Exaltation of the Cross.
Kherson’s defiance was obvious as the Kremlin’s troops rolled into town last March.
Thousands demonstrated, but Russian soldiers opened fire within days and began arresting protestors.
Residents were ordered to use Russian currency, and schools were told to adopt a Russian curriculum.
Katya Fateeva would have none of it. Fateeva and her 9-year-old son, Max, refused to leave despite offers of a place to stay from friends outside Ukraine.
Fateeva’s father, Vladimir Sagayak, manages a foster home outside the city.
After hearing reports that Ukrainian children were being deported to Russia, Sagayak hid 46 kids in his care.
More than 6,000 Ukrainian children have been taken into Russian custody since the war began, according to research by Yale University.
Last June, when Russian soldiers came to Sagayak’s foster home, he told them he’d sent the children back to their families.
Hundreds of others who resisted were brought to a place known as “the pit.” Andriy Andryushchenko said he was tortured there with electric shocks to his head and genitals.
People he knew were being beaten in adjoining cells. His crime was painting pro-Ukrainian graffiti.
By November, the occupiers had lost their grip on Kherson.
Squeezed between the advancing Ukrainian army and the river, they withdrew, but the shelling began soon after, and Halyna Luhova, Kherson’s mayor, believes Russian collaborators still lurk in the city.
“They phone them to the left bank of the river and say where I am, where our team is, what we are doing. They say everything,” Luhova told Williams.
“And what should happen to those collaborators now?” Williams asked.
“We have to kill them,” Luhova said. “I think that they have no right to live.”
Despite the ongoing violence, many of Kherson’s residents refuse to leave.
Fateeva and her son continue to study in their Ukrainian school, using Zoom with their teachers.
However, Luhova believes it would be better for all civilians to leave the city, as they never know if they will be alive the next morning.
»Kherson is the only Ukrainian city under Russia’s control«
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