Stinking Water, Artillery, Paranoia: Mykolaif pushes back Russian threat, but at a heavy price

Swarms swarming around a unit of trucks and trailers as the sun beats down on the path ofin the heart of Mikolaiv. People carry his 10-liter water bottle under their arm. Some even use child strollers and electric scooters as makeshift shopping carts.

Residents of the besiegedUkrainian cityfight for fresh drinking water every day. Since the Mikolayu and Dnipro pipelines were destroyed by shelling in April, the water coming out of the taps is now a dark yellow color, smells of sulfur, is very salty and makes your lips crumple when you touch it. .

"But water is not the biggest problem compared to all others," Elena Drutskaya told Global Her News while filling her 13-year-old son's empty bottle with water. Told.

Drutsyaka's house was destroyed in an artillery bombardment on 26 February, while her family took refuge in the basement. The two lived in a dilapidated building until she fled to Odessa in April, but returned to sort out the paperwork for a possible rebuild.

So what is the biggest problem with Mykoriev right now? “We are making plans for tomorrow,” Drutskaya says sadly.

Six months ago, when Russian forces advanced from the Crimean peninsula to the Black Sea coast, it was the former Soviet Union that suffered much the same fate as her occupied neighbor Kherson, 40 kilometers to the east. It was Mykolaiv, a shipbuilding city. Instead, the southern fortifications mounted one of the bravest defenses of the war so far. It pushed Russian forces back to the front line near the Dnipro River, which had barely moved since March.

But even though no longer threatened by threats, Mykolaiv's situation remains dire. Fresh drinking water must be transported by truck from Odessa. After half the population of about 500,000 was evacuated, businesses and social services collapsed.

Rockets continue to fall regularly across the city, turning homes, hospitals, schools and hotels into rubble. I'm here. At the time of this writing, Mykolaiev has escaped artillery fire only for his 22 days out of the 172 days of war.

After four days of unprecedented relative calm ravaging the city this week, a barrage of rockets rained down on industrial facilities, homes and shops on the night of August 13th. war.

"They are only terrorizing civilians, because there is no other explanation as to why they are doing this," Mykolaiu Regional Governor Vitaly He Kim told Global His News told to

Life in Mykolaiv is anything but normal, in other words, in Kyiv, unlike other Ukrainian cities that have fended off invading forces and returned to life more or less as before.

Mykolaev under fire from "all available" artillery

Located on the Vu River in southern Ukraine Mykolaiv is the country's most important transport hub.

The shipyard built the Russian flagship Moscow. Her ship was sunk in Ukraine early in the war and is now on the bottom of the sea, but her sister ship Ukraine was built for Russian weapons, so she is rusted and almost unusable. remains in

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Some of the targets of the first shots of the Russian invasion - the Ukrainian air base of Kurbakino on the southeastern outskirts of the city - were attacked and overwhelmed in the early hours of February 24.

About a week later, thousands of Russian troops arrived on the city's doorstep, already occupying Kherson and attempting to pave the way for an attack on Odessa. Only Mykolaiv stood between Russia and the occupation of most of southern Ukraine.

"But [the Russians] are bloody idiots and honestly I hate them. before this invasion, ”says Dmitro Pretenchuk, spokesman for the regional military administration.

"They tried to capture Mykolaiv, Ukraine's largest garrison, a city full of veterans since 2014." supported by strong leadership. Vitaly Kim, Mykoriev drove the Russians out of Kurbakino and raided a small number of troops scattered across the countryside.

But Mykolaiev paid a heavy price for his heroism.

The Russians "bragging" that they have practically used all artillery means available to the Russian army here in our cities, with the exception of atomic bombs.

Destroyed riverside hotels, hospitals, schools and homes were blown up by Uragans, smart rockets and illegal cluster bombs.

Pletenchuk keeps a "personal collection" of blast debris in the rubble of his former office.

Shortly after 8:30 a.m. on March 29, at Pretenchuk in central Mikolaiv. Workers were arriving at his nine-story building. , a cruise missile launched from the Black Sea pierced the middle of the Soviet-style block as people arrived for work. The crumbling structure is now held together by his one wall panel on the eighth and his ninth floors.

Inside, a Persian rug hangs from his sixth floor into the abyss, in what Pletentchuk describes as "the extreme tour of Mikolaiv." Shattered glass, state papers, files among his folders are strewn with high-heeled shoes and broken Christmas decorations. Most of the records held by local administrations are now lost, and the rest of the documents are in the wind.

"Of course [there was no digitization]," says Pretenchuk. "This is Ukraine."

Pretenchuk was two blocks away from him at the time of the bombing and his workplace was blown to pieces. rice field. Governor Kim, who also worked in the building, overslept that morning and was not in the office at the time. His other 37 were not so lucky.

Handprints on the walls are oozing with blood, pooling in the stairwell. One of his rather photorealistic blood smears in the third-floor hallway was from a man who had just had his morning coffee and was back at his desk, Pletenchuk says. he was among the dead.

Life in Mykolaiv gets worse

As the war drags on, half of Mykolaiv's population flees the city. rice field. Businesses closed, jobs dried up, and shelling intensified, making life increasingly difficult for those who remained.

The thunder of cannons echoes throughout the city all day long. Air raid alarms sound intermittently.

In mid-April, Russian forces blew up part of the Dnipro-Mykolaiv water pipe near Kherson. Damaged areas were under Russian control, so repairs were not possible.

Residents collected rainwater or were left out of puddles. Authorities eventually connected the city's water supply to Southern Boo, but the smelly, yellow water that now spews out of people's taps is not suitable for washing and cleaning, let alone drinking. Residents say the water shipped from Odessa isn't enough and they don't have money to buy water from supermarkets.

"I live here It is very difficult, there is no work and no water,” laments local resident Antonina Dementieva.

Prior to February, Dementieva was the owner of a confectionery shop, but the war forced her to go out of business. Her husband serves in the Ukrainian National Guard and has fought in the Donbass War since 2014, losing one leg. During the 2022 invasion, he served on the front lines with the help of his prosthetic limbs, but has since returned to serve in Mikola Iu.

Dementieva was one of about 20 people lining up for a water tanker in central Mikolaiv on a scorching Saturday morning. one of her. She has her 30 of her 8 liter plastic bottles. Some are for her and her siblings, and the rest are for her six elderly and disabled family members in the same building.

"The only way we can all survive," she says, is to unite.

But local governments neglect urban water problems. In the scheme of things, Governor Kim says that's not their biggest problem.

Tensions rise over Russian saboteurs

For now, the city is an enemy.

Two weeks ago, Kim, a provincial governor with a huge international following, tracked down those suspected of helping the Russian military identify the military location of the missile attack. Mr. Mikola Eve closed for the weekend.

While not mentioning the consequences of its closure, he declined to say how many potential co-conspirators were found or arrested, refuting figures reported in the local media and People whose subordinates help "a lot" of Russians.

"So we have a very large base now. before) fled and left the city, but we don't care. , has become a hallmark of a leadership style admired around the world. Early in the war, his daily video messages preached calm and rational defiance, guided by greetings that became the slogan, "Good morning, we're from Ukraine."

On Instagram, he has amassed half a million followers with a feed full of peace signs and selfies. Two weeks after the start of the war, Kim posted a photo of his office with his feet up on his desk and colorful socks on. The image went viral, resulting in memes with his face on it and his T-his shirt.

However, when I met Kim in her trademark graphic T-shirt at an outdoor location, she said I could neither explain nor take a picture of her, except in front of an unremarkable stone wall. His cunning social media gives him a glimpse of his persona. While keen to appeal to an international audience for help not only for Mykolaiv, but for Ukraine as a whole, "we need weapons, ammunition and money" - Kim also said not to give anything Be careful.

He is not concerned that the focus on the co-conspirator has made the people of Mikolaev appear to be very paranoid towards strangers.

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Within seconds we were filmed by passers-by and reported to the Ukrainian Security Service as our crew of journalists stepped into the city with notepads and camera equipment. Barely ten minutes passed before the police arrived. On several occasions, residents have accused us of being 'spies' or 'saboteurs', noting our camera equipment.

"That's good," Kim said with a wry smile, returning the anecdote to him. He strongly believes that there is no such thing as an "overly delusional" public.

"(This job) is worth dying for. Not too much," he says.

Besides, he reasoned, some people do not even know they are supporting an enemy cause. Some Russians drop questions about military installations into conversations with locals and ask other harmless questions.

So some of his local military jobs, he says, are simply telling people not to talk or share photos with strangers. When asked if most of his lockdown strategies are about education, Kim responds with a grin.

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Telegram chats where people shared military facilities are now "clean", he added, but will impose more lockdowns in the future. to maintain that state.

Kim continued to downplay the concept of crisis in his city, saying there was no humanitarian issue. City cleaners cleared the site of the rocket attack the next morning, supermarket shelves were stocked, trash was collected, and people were taken care of. The water problem is not "tragic", it just "needs more time to be resolved."

It doesn't seem to reflect the real situation in a city where vans are parked in the city center every day and overrun with crowds. People in desperate need of food and other supplies.

When asked what the city's biggest current problem was, if not water or humanitarian aid, he replied that Mikolayiv simply said, "Like the whole of Ukraine, a small part of it has the same problem." ' said.

However, he changed course somewhat when he issued his one final rally call abroad.

"I don't want people in other countries to feel that our wars are a show. So when you get tired of wars, just turning off the TV won't make them go away. We count wars by casualties, not by days.”

“For one of our guns, they has 10'

More than 120 people died in Mykolaiv. More than 500 people have been injured since the war began.

On 13 August, after four days without artillery fire, six of his Smerch rockets landed at about 8:00 pm, damaging homes, shops and industrial facilities. .

Eight rockets hit the city the following night.

When asked why Mykolaiv had been successful in his recent few nights of disrupted sleep, Pletenchuk simply replied with his one simple answer: "Because of HIMARS." he is grinning.

The highly regarded American High Mobility Artillery Rocket System was launched by the Ukrainian Army. Used on 13 August to attack the Antonivsky Bridge in the Kherson area, it was unable to resupply the Russian forces on the other side of the Dnipro.

It also helped Mykolaiv liberate the villages of the area. This means that currently only 5% of his in the Mykolaiv region (the village of Snihurivka) is occupied compared to his 60% in the Kherson region.

We believe we are turning the tide of war – slowly. Their tactic, he says, is not to "climb" the Russian defense line, but to keep ground forces alive with long-range artillery.

"Russia has the manpower and technology advantage. One of our guns, ten of them."

Locals using evacuation buses as public transport

Despite the trauma of living in Mykolaiv, many residents refuse to evict. Even those who left early in the war have returned, often against the wishes of the authorities. According to

Kim, the official advice is: When there are no jobs or tasks to win, you can be in a … safer place.

As of 10 August, approximately 9,100 civilian buildings had been destroyed, including 320 educational institutions, 65 medical facilities, and 5,885 residences.

Evacuation buses from Mykolaiv run to Odessa several times a week. However, Pretenchuk said it is currently only being used as public transportation.

"He cannot collect a single bus full of people wanting to move... People are just using it to make trips to Odessa."

Read more: Propaganda or Providence — A Ukrainian Wild Survival Story

Personal Protection Sacrifice. When air raid sirens sound, residents rush to crowded shopping malls. Air raid shelters are rarely used. Residents continue to die in their homes.

"This is a very interesting paradox," says Pletentchuk. "People are afraid, but 15 minutes after the shelling, children are playing 20 meters away from the corpse. I have seen this."

People say they stayed to serve the city they loved.

Maria Nevinska responded to artillery fire several times on her 28-kilometer drive from Nova Odesa. She says she collected fresh water in Mykolaiv because she has lived for 46 years and does not want to live anywhere else.

She and her husband are chemistry teachers. Her two schools where she used to teach were destroyed by the war.

"We are old people, but we love our work. We teach very good children, and they work hard even if they are in another city or another country." she says.

"It is very important for us to stay."