SUNDAY, APRIL 10 , 2022. THE WASHINGTON POST EZ RE A21
war in ukraine
BY ISABELLE KHURSHUDYAN
IN MYKOLAIV, UKRAINER
ed-and-white police
tape blocked off the pe-
rimeter of the strip mall
as if it were a crime
scene. The glass storefronts were
all shattered. Some potted plants
remained on a table where a
woman’s flower stand had been.
Dried blood stained the ground
next to it.
The day before, the area — a
residential part of Mykolaiv
called Victory Square — was hit
with suspected cluster muni-
tions from a Russian multiple-
launch rocket system. It was
around 4 p.m. on Monday, when
people were shopping at the
grocery store or pharmacy, or
waiting in line at the busy bus
stop.
Russian shelling killed 10 peo-
ple and injured 61 in the town
that day, according to the Myko-
laiv regional governor. One busi-
ness owner still opened her flow-
er shop across the street the next
morning. She said the only thing
that sells these days are the red
carnations, a flower Ukrainians
traditionally place on caskets at
funerals.
Russian bombardment isn’t
new to Mykolaiv, a southern
Ukrainian city of about 500,000
people. This has been a key front
since the start of the war, where
the Ukrainian military has
barred Russian forces from ad-
vancing west toward the key
Black Sea port of Odessa.
But as the Russian military
has withdrawn its troops from
the Kyiv region in an apparent
shift in strategy, people here fear
that Moscow is preparing a new
offensive to gain more ground in
the south. Over the past week,
there has been an increase in
attacks during daylight, when
civilian areas such as Victory
Square are most crowded. Multi-
ple hospitals have been hit. The
head of the Mykolaiv district
prosecutor’s office was detained
Tuesday for allegedly passing
sensitive information to Russian
security services in exchange for
his safety should the region fall
to the invading forces.
A city that has been a symbol
of Ukrainian resolve and defi-
ance is suddenly on edge.
Local officials, including Gov.
Vitaliy Kim, say the Russians are
trying to sow panic and fear
among Mykolaiv’s residents. The
morning after the strikes on
Victory Square, hundreds of peo-
ple waited in line at a parking lot
for evacuation buses to Odessa
and the Moldovan border.
“We held on here until the last
possible moment,” said Angelina,
who boarded one of the buses
with her four children. “Now it’s
too much. We have to leave.”
Analysts who track Russian
military movements on open
sources said there is no evidence
yet that Moscow is deploying
more forces to Kherson, a Ukrai-
nian city about 50 miles to the
southeast that Russian troops
have occupied since the early
days of the war. Although Ukrai-
nian forces have kept Russians
out of Mykolaiv, parts of the city
remain in artillery range of Rus-
sian positions in Kherson.
Meanwhile, the Ukrainians
here have launched counterat-
tacks on the Russians. In an
unverified video that Kim, the
governor, posted on his Telegram
channel this week, Ukrainian
forces launched a missile at a
Russian tank in the distance and
then celebrated when smoke
rose in the distance.
“You broke a window in our
house, and we took a tank from
you,” a soldier said in the video.
Rob Lee, an expert on the
Russian military and a senior
fellow with the Foreign Policy
Research Institute, said Mos-
cow’s initial campaign to ad-
vance along Ukraine’s Black Sea
coast failed because the military
units in the area “bit off more
than they can chew” between
occupying Kherson and then try-
ing simultaneously to capture
both Mykolaiv and Mariupol, a
port city on the Sea of Azov.
“It doesn’t appear they’ve
made Mykolaiv a priority for the
last two weeks or so,” Lee said. “I
think they just ran into a point
where they were like, ‘We just
can’t take this city.’ ”
Lee said that the Russian mili-
tary objectives now appear to be
maintaining their positions in
Kherson while focusing more on
the eastern Ukrainian Donbas
region. He said Odessa is “pretty
much out of reach at this point.”
But officials in Odessa and
Mykolaiv said they are worried
and planning for increasing Rus-
sian aggression.Dmytro Pletenchuk, a press
officer for the Mykolaiv regional
government, said, “We are pre-
paring to defend our city.”
“We know their plans aren’t
changing,” he said. “We know
that after us, they have Odessa in
their sights.”
In a video that Kim, the gover-
nor, posted to Telegram on Fri-
day, he said Ukrainian “rein-
forcements are on the way” to
Mykolaiv. He did not offer any
details.
In Bashtanka, a town about an
hour northeast of Mykolaiv, local
people are similarly bracing for a
second bout with the Russians.
The first was a surprising and
convincing victory for the Ukrai-
nians. Some 50 members of the
Territorial Defense Forces, made
up of civilian volunteers, and
other residents rebuffed a Rus-
sian advance that included some
250 armored vehicles, the mayor
said.
“Grandpa Vasiliy” is now a
legend around town after the
elderly man purportedly single-
handedly knocked out a Russian
tank with a molotov cocktail, or
petrol bomb. His identity is a
local secret: people around town
fear that if the Russians return,
soldiers could target him. The
Washington Post could not inde-
pendently verify that story, but
locals insist it is true and say it
has inspired the town.
Bashtanka is in a key position
on the road to Mykolaiv. Any
Russian plan to encircle Myko-
laiv must account for this town
of about 12,000 people. Mayor
Oleksandr Beregovyi said only 20
percent of the town’s residents
have remained. The 40-year-old
has evacuated his own youngfamily because Ukrainian offi-
cials have said that several may-
ors in places captured by the
Russians were kidnapped.
New Ukrainian defensive
trench positions are being pre-
pared, and unexploded ordnance
left behind in the Russians’ last
attempt to enter the town is still
being removed. More than 170
buildings were damaged in the
fighting, Beregovyi said.
“We’re ready,” he said.
“We’ll definitely defeat them,”
Beregovyi added. “I wouldn’t call
them warriors; they are just
crooks, murderers, rapists. They
aren’t human.”
To Mykolaiv’s northwest, inthe small city of Voznesensk,
which is close to a nuclear power
plant, Mayor Yevheni Velichko
said he has information that the
Russian forces are gathering for
a second offensive in the area. As
in Bashtanka, the Russians suf-
fered losses in Voznesensk. But
that doesn’t mean the locals
want to repeat the fight.
“I don’t know if we’ll ever be
ready for war,” Velichko said. “We
are peaceful people. We don’t
want this war. But to the last
man, we’ll defend our families
and our land.”Oleg Oganov contributed to this
report.Mykolaiv region on edge amid fear of a new o≠ensive
A city that has been a symbol of Ukrainian resolve and defiance is preparing for increasing bloodshed as Moscow shifts its strategy
PHOTOS BY MICHAEL ROBINSON CHAVEZ/THE WASHINGTON POSTABOVE CENTER: A woman
waits aboard a bus in
Mykolaiv on April 5 to travel
to the border with Moldova.
ABOVE: Blood stains the
floor and boxes of a fruit
stand in Mykolaiv last week.
A Russian strike in the busy
area k illed 10 people,
including a woman working
at this stand.TOP: Broken glass and
damaged store fronts are
seen in a shopping area
last week in Mykolaiv,
Ukraine. The Russian
military cluster-bombed
the area on the afternoon
of April 4.
ABOVE: Shops
destroyed by a Russian
rocket attack are seen in
Bashtanka on April 6.
BELOW: Vitaliy
Gomerskiy walks among
the debris of a destroyed
home in Bashtanka on
April 6. The building
was struck by a Russian
parachute bomb.