Galyna Lutsenko, a crisis psychologist, is moving busily among a small group of children seated around a table in a basement in Kherson, unique in being Ukraine’s only leading city almost directly on the frontline with Russian forces – and one where people live with the daily threat of attack.
She dangles a plasticine butterfly on a thread over a playhouse on the table. Her own house in the city, she says, was hit by Russian shelling in 2024, injuring her in the leg and stomach.
This basement is a safe space in a dangerous city. Used as a shelter by local people, other rooms in the complex are hosting yoga, a dance rehearsal and a craft session for a group of older women screen-printing T-shirts bearing the city’s name.
The streets above ground explain this subterranean activity. Supermarket and shop windows in this city on the right bank of the Dnipro River are boarded against shrapnel, while other buildings show damage caused by artillery and glide bombs.
Long stretches of the city’s streets are being draped in anti-drone nets, including the main approach from the coast – a 20-minute drive away – that is now a net tunnel on three sides.
With Russian forces just across the river, daily life is lived under cover for the 60,000 residents – including 5,000 children – who remain, out of its original 300,000 inhabitants.
“The children are always under pressure,” Lutsenko says. “They are always stressed, with some of the children afraid to come out after the shelling.”
She gives a plasticine turtle to one of the children and asks whether he would like to put it in the house. “It is important to give them choices to make them feel that it is not just about surviving,” she says. “But living and feeling everything around them.”
And Kherson is a hard place to live. Overrun by Russian forces at the beginning of the war in 2022, it was the only regional capital of Ukraine to be occupied. Nine months later it was liberated as Russian forces retreated across the Dnipro after a lightning offensive by Ukraine.
But if people in the city thought the nightmare was over, they were mistaken. Dug in on the far side of the river, Russia launched an escalating number of attacks.
The infamous Russian “drone safari” beginning in May 2024, which pursued and killed Kherson’s citizens, took place in its streets – which explains the 62 miles (100km) of anti-drone nets installed by the authorities.
While that has been effective against small exploding drones and drone bombers, the Russians are dropping mines from drones or scattering them by rockets. The boom of artillery and sound of drones is a daily occurrence. The “red zone” – a 1km-deep strip along the Dnipro waterfront facing the Russian positions – is the most dangerous area in the city.
Authorities have moved key locations underground, not just in the city but in the wider region. While it is too dangerous for children to come to school in the city regularly, outside the built-up area schools have relocated below ground.
The city’s main perinatal clinic, located just within the red zone, is in an old Soviet-era bomb shelter with blast doors and a drone-netted entrance. Khrystyna Furman, 23, who has been admitted because of fears she may give birth prematurely, is one of about 1,000 women who use the clinic every month.
“Life goes on,” she says. “We live on the outskirts. This is one of the most dangerous areas of the city here. But everything is OK. I’m local, all my family are local. And this is my home.”
She says many people will avoid using the shelters unless alerted to the risk of a glide bomb, but the nets are a different issue. “It has had a real impact on morale. When you drive under the nets you suddenly feel OK – protected. But the truth is, nets aren’t everywhere.”
Others prefer to limit their exposure to risk as far as they can. Volodymyr Gorbachevsky, director of the perinatal clinic, lives even deeper in the red zone than his clinic and explains that his apartment block, once home to 15 families, is now occupied by only three.
“I don’t go to cafes or restaurants. We stay at home and use the internet and watch TV. I only leave the house when it is necessary,” he says. He uses the shelter at work because the nearest to his building is two blocks away.
In his underground office, Oleksandr Prokudin, military governor of Kherson, says that – like Gorbachevsky – many are careful about their exposure to the risks of being out in the open.
“Most people try not to go out if it’s not necessary. This morning I had to go to a couple of events. Twice we had to take cover inside a church and shop because drones had been spotted,” he says.
“Just now I’ve heard a child was injured in the city. So far this morning we have had five people injured by drones and artillery.”
There is no other major city in Ukraine like Kherson, he says. “It is 1km from the frontline and from the enemy. If we didn’t have the anti-drone protection that we have, we would definitely be a ‘grey zone’ now [under the control of neither side]. Instead, it is only the river islands that are a grey zone.
“But while we are trying to evacuate those in the red zone, most people don’t want to leave the region.”
The answer, he says, is to provide more cover against attacks. “We are trying to put nets everywhere people move and walk. Right now, we have more than 100km of nets. We want 200km within the next two months and our plan is to have 300km by the end of this year.”
In addition, Prokudin plans to expand the network of underground facilities across the region, including clinics and schools. “It is too dangerous to take kids to underground schools in Kherson,” he says.
“Online schooling is just about surviving, so we are building underground schools but 30km from the frontline. We are also focusing on medical, with 12 underground medical facilities in the region being equipped.”
In Myroliubivka, 15 minutes’ drive from the city, Larysa Rybachuk, director of the village school, walks through the empty classrooms above ground and descends a flight of stairs into the basement. In one room a group of older children listen to a biology lesson. In another, a nursery class has toys spread out on the floor.
She says that during the Russian occupation, just 50 out of 300 children stayed. Now the school caters for 120 pupils, many of whose families returned on the wave of optimism that accompanied Kherson’s liberation.
“The first challenge when we started teaching underground was the lack of space,” says Rybachuk. “For the children who had lived under Russian occupation, many had not gone further than their courtyards. There was a challenge of resocialising them.”
Expanding the basement made more space available for teaching. “We have alarms five times a day here. You can’t hear anything and it makes it easier for the children. They don’t have to run out of class to go to the shelter.
“The parents decided that they would stay. I live in the village too,” Rybachuk adds. “When we don’t see the drones, it feels like normal life.”
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