Russian soldiers carry this booty along the Dnieper River, on the left bank of the Kherson region. They have also deported local civilians under the guise of a humanitarian rescue mission. Others refused to leave. A 24-hour curfew was imposed. No one knows how many of the 300,000 pre-war inhabitants of Kherson are left. According to relatives of those still there, the town is mostly empty, its ghostly fate likely to be decided in the coming weeks in a series of bloody battles. Last Thursday, the Russian flag was lowered from the neoclassical building of the Kherson regional state administration. The gesture prompted speculation that Moscow was to abandon the city, which it captured in early March, paving the way for the triumphant return of the Ukrainian military. From a military point of view, this would make sense, as the Russian corps is effectively surrounded. At the same time, it seems far-fetched that Vladimir Putin and his generals would leave Kherson without a fight. The locals are unconvinced by Moscow’s machinations. “It’s probably a trick,” Alyona Lapchuk told the Observer. “Russians dress as civilians and hide in houses.” A boy looks out a bus window as civilians are driven away from Kherson. Photo: Alexey Pavlishak/Reuters Lapchuk, who fled Kherson in April, said it was more likely that Russian troops would prepare for fierce street-to-street fighting in the fall and winter. If that strategy failed, the Russian military would likely “destroy” Kherson in much the same way it leveled Mariupol, killing tens of thousands of civilians, he suggested. Ukrainian officials were also wary that Moscow was pulling out after nine months. They said newly mobilized Russian troops were setting up defensive positions on the outskirts of Kherson, while checkpoints in neighboring Chernobayevka and Stepanovka were being abandoned. The disappearance of the Russian flag from the buildings was an “information trick” to lure Ukrainian forces into a trap, they believe. “We are getting conflicting information. There is a movement from the right bank to the left bank. It is difficult to understand exactly what Russia’s intention is,” said Serhii Khlan, deputy head of the Kherson regional council. There were reliable reports of Russian soldiers going from wharf by the river to wharf, stealing some boats and sinking others. “Good boats are towed and drifted. Anything they don’t like they cut with an axe,” said a local. Khlan said Russian occupation authorities blew up web sites, leaving Kherson without internet or mobile phone connection. Amid this news blackout, Russian officials were urging locals to leave and warning of imminent “terrorist” actions by the advancing Ukrainian army. Moscow also mined the Khakhovka reservoir further upstream, with the apparent intention of flooding Kherson and wreaking environmental havoc if it falls into Ukrainian hands. Since late summer, Kiev’s armed forces have been fighting back. They have liberated almost all of the Kharkiv region in the north-east of the country and pushed into rural areas of the Kherson region, a vast steppe. Russia now controls a shrinking portion of the west bank of the Dnieper. In September Vladimir Putin “annexed” the provinces of Kherson, Zaporizhzhia, Donetsk and Luhansk. Any retreat from the city of Kherson would therefore be shameful. However, a new alternative “border” appears to be taking shape, with the Dnieper an impregnable natural barrier against future Ukrainian surges. In the past week, Russian soldiers have driven Ukrainians from their homes on the left bank of the river. Then they moved inside. A defensive line is created, stretching from the town of Velyka Znamyanka in Zaporizhzhia Oblast to Nova Kakhovka in Kherson Oblast. Russia has moved its headquarters to the port of Skadovsk, closer to Crimea. People walk past a poster that reads ‘The choice has been made. Kherson is the last week of Russia. Photo: Alexander Ermochenko/Reuters Telegram posts from villages in the area tell stories of “orks” (Russian soldiers) owning private property. In Hladkivka, Skadovsk region, they have placed two rows of concrete triangular pyramids next to a forest and dug ditches and cut down trees, locals say. In Nova Mayachka, they have moved into the council building, bringing kitchens and tanks with them. Soldiers buy utensils from shops and conduct training exercises, locals add. According to Natalia Bimbiratye, a volunteer in the Kherson region, forcibly evacuated residents are asked to take only warm clothes, valuables and documents with them. They are instructed to leave behind chickens, dogs and possessions. “This is a humanitarian disaster. Deportations have been going on for two weeks now,” he said. “Those who have stayed up until now have mostly been retirees or people with sick relatives. We don’t know how many have gone and how many have stayed.” Ukrainian human rights groups say some forcibly displaced residents have been dumped in an icy sanatorium near Skadovsk. Others have been sent to Russia’s Krasnodar region, a stopover on a journey that ends in Siberia, they claim. Several hundred children sent by Kherson parents to Russian summer schools have not been returned, their whereabouts unknown. And 2,000 people are currently in camps in the Crimean city of Yevpatoria, rights groups say, citing messages on Telegram. Archie Bland and Nimo Omer take you to the top stories and what they mean, free every weekday morning Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online advertising and content sponsored by external parties. For more information, see our Privacy Policy. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and Google’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. The Ukrainian army, meanwhile, is closing in on Kherson. He used US-supplied long-range artillery to eliminate a Russian floating crossing over the Dnieper, next to the city’s already cratered Antonivskyi Bridge. The goal is to destroy the logistics and supply chain of the Russian war machine, making its presence inside Kherson unsustainable. There were also setbacks. An attempt to break through the Russian defenses south of the village of Davydiv Brid was a costly elimination, with many Ukrainian soldiers killed. With the exception of a handful of collaborators, most Kherson residents are pro-Ukrainian. “Kherson is hell. People are kidnapped and tortured,” said Lapchuk, who ran a garage business in the city. He added: “They have the same algorithm. People are beaten badly, their ribs are broken, and then they are raped. There is currently a forced deportation from Kherson. People need to know. Russia is destroying Ukraine and the Ukrainian people.” Lapchuk spoke from terrible personal experience. In late March her husband Vitaly – a police colonel and member of the Kherson Territorial Defense Service – went out with a friend to deliver humanitarian supplies. Russian troops brought him back several hours later, covered in blood, his jaw bruised and his nose broken. “They said we were terrorists,” Lapchuk recalled. The soldiers searched the apartment and arrested her, her husband and their teenage son. They were taken to a police station, with bags over their heads. “They said we were Nazis who hated Russians. I said that was impossible since I was a Russian speaker and a Jew. It was stupid,” Lapchuk said. She said she became hysterical when, after an initial “interrogation”, soldiers took Vitali to a torture chamber in the basement. “I was told he was a ‘terrorist’ who confessed and will be tried in Russia,” he said. Lapchuk and her son were released that evening. He returned home to find that someone had fired a rocket into the living room, blowing out the roof and windows. All other buildings nearby were intact. She sent desperate messages to her husband’s phone. An FSB intelligence officer answered them, he said, posing as Vitaly. He continued to hope that he would be alive and that he could be exchanged as a prisoner of war. The horrible truth became apparent at the end of May, when a local man went swimming in the Dnieper River for crayfish. He found a badly decomposed body. A weight was attached to his legs, which were tied together. A medical examiner called Lapchuk and was able to identify Vitaly by a visible mark on his left forearm. “I was very lucky to escape from Kherson. It was too dangerous to return for my husband’s funeral,” she said, speaking last week in Kyiv. Weeping, she described Vitaly as an educated man with a PhD in psychology who taught police at the Kherson academy. He remembered their last moments together. “I didn’t realize it at the time. I looked into my husband’s eyes as they put bags over our heads and said, “We’re going to survive this.” That was the last time I saw him.”