Ukraine's frontline craves respite ahead of peace talks
KHERSON: The people of the frontline Ukrainian city of Kherson have more reason than most to want an end to the three-year-old fight with Russia. But a taste of occupation and relentless attacks since Russian forces were pushed back have made them wary of peace talks.
US and Russian negotiators were meeting in Saudi Arabia to try to seal a proposed 30-day pause on Kyiv and Moscow attacking each other's energy infrastructure and move towards a broader ceasefire. The city was once home to nearly 300,000 people, but the population has dwindled to 60,000. From March to November 2022, Russian occupying forces detained and tortured many people, residents say. The Russians, who reject allegations of abuse of civilians, were forced out by a Ukrainian counteroffensive. They now bombard relentlessly from the river's other bank.
The other bed in the room was occupied by Ihor, a bearded 30-year-old. He too was hit by a grenade dropped from a drone, he said, in his case as he walked along the street trying to find a phone signal because Russian attacks had damaged cellphone masts. He also wanted the ceasefire to work. "I don't want other people to be brought to the hospital like this," he said, gesturing to his leg, whose broken bones were being held together by metal rods. "We believe that Trump will end the war this year, as he promised, and we will have peace," said Ihor, who also declined to give his family name.
According to Oleksandr Prokudin, Governor of the Kherson region, there are between 600 and 700 drone attacks in the city each week. "They terrorise the population," he said of the Russian drone operators on the other bank. He said they routinely spot, through their onboard cameras, civilians going about their business, and then attack them. Russia denies deliberately targeting civilians in the conflict. Because of the threat of Russian drones, Maksym Dyak, a 38-year-old Kherson city bus driver, sits behind the wheel wearing a flak jacket and helmet.
Dyak said the vehicle he was driving had been hit by grenades dropped from drones ten times; he was at the wheel for five of those. A blown-out side window of the bus had been covered with a sheet of plywood, but he continues driving even when there are drones buzzing overhead. "It's very scary, especially when you have little children on the bus," he said.
The territory of the hospital where the two wounded men were being treated has been hit 21 times since November 2022, chief doctor Viktor Korolenko said. "You know, I really want all this to end ... our doctors are burning out psychologically under the bombardment," Korolenko said, adding that many of his staff had been forced to move into the hospital after their homes were destroyed, but that he planned to stay in Kherson. At a street market in the city centre last week, residents, many of them elderly, shopped for vegetables and dried fish.
Meanwhile, Ukraine's state-owned railway company Ukrzaliznytsia said on Monday traffic was not disrupted by a cyberattack that knocked out its online ticketing system. "Operational traffic did not stop for a single moment. The enemy attack was aimed to stop trains, but we quickly switched to backup systems," Oleksandr Pertsovskyi, Ukrzaliznytsia's board chairman, told national TV. The company did not explicitly identify who was behind the attack, but describing it as the work of the enemy implicitly pointed the finger at Russia.
A Ukrainian security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Moscow's intention appeared to be to create psychological pressure on Ukraine's population and destabilise the social and political situation with a cyberattack. The outage was first reported on Sunday when Ukrzaliznytsia notified users about the failure in the IT system and told passengers to buy tickets on-site or on trains. Work to restore the online ticket system has been underway since the previous day, the company said on Telegram, describing the attack as "systemic, non-trivial and multi-level". People were queuing in long lines to buy tickets at Kyiv's central station from Monday morning. — Reuters
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