Themes by tag: Kherson
Nataliia Shmahel has been practicing yoga for eight years and working as an instructor in Kherson for the past three. The youngest participant in her classes is 18, the oldest is 63.
Training sessions depend on the security situation in the city. When heavy shelling begins, the instructor notifies participants via chat that the session has been canceled. Last year, as Nataliia was heading to a class, a drone struck Kherson, forcing her to take cover under a tree.
She says that fear is something everyone experiences, but the classes help people cope by relieving tension and helping them clear their minds.
Interviews with Nataliia can be arranged in Kherson or online upon request.
Background: russian forces occupied Kherson at the beginning of the full-scale invasion on March 1, 2022. Ukrainian forces liberated the city on November 11, 2022. russian forces continue to shell the city regularly.
Leonid Cherniavskyi is a distinguished coach and vice-president of the All-Ukrainian Kyokushin Budo Karate Organization. He spent five months in occupied Kherson after russian forces seized the city at the start of the full-scale invasion. In summer 2022, he managed to evacuate to government-controlled territory in the Mykolaiv region.
After the de-occupation of the right bank of the Kherson region, Cherniavskyi proposed opening a children’s karate section in the village of Mykhailiv.
At first, the karate club operated in an old kindergarten building, part of a school that had survived a missile strike. Later, the need for a larger space arose, and the club began renovating a damaged cultural center. International donors helped restore the building, and British sponsors purchased tatami mats. Today, parents of the students help maintain the club.
The “Katana” karate club currently has 32 children — both local residents and children from nearby villages in the Kherson and Mykolaiv regions. In bad weather, they sometimes walk 5 kilometers to training, as heavy rain makes roads impassable. The coach travels by moped from the neighboring Mykolaiv region.
In more than two years of operation, students of the club have competed in European and world championships. Two girls have become Candidate Masters of Sports and won prizes at international competitions. The “Katana” karate club has become one of the largest sports organizations in the Kherson region.
Journalists can arrange interviews with Leonid Cherniavskyi, as well as with students in the village of Mykhailiv in the Kherson region or online.
Background: Kherson was occupied by russian forces at the beginning of the full-scale invasion (March 1, 2022). The Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated the city and the right-bank part of the region in November 2022. The area continues to be regularly shelled by russian forces.
On March 26, volunteer doctors from FRIDA Ukraine will travel on a mission to a children’s home in the Kyiv region. The team includes around 20 medical professionals, including a pediatrician, neurologist, psychologist, urologist, and surgeon. The doctors regularly visit the facility and provide medical care to children.
On March 28–29, FRIDA Ukraine teams will travel to the Sumy and Kherson regions to deliver medical assistance to civilians.
By prior arrangement, journalists can cover the work of medical volunteers and conduct interviews with patients and doctors.
Background: FRIDA Ukraine’s medical volunteer missions are regular deployments of teams of doctors to frontline and remote communities across Ukraine. Each mission includes more than 20 specialists from various fields, including neurologists, surgeons, gynecologists, therapists, dermatologists, and others. During these visits, free medical consultations, check-ups, and tests are provided to local residents. The team has also recently introduced cancer screening services.
A North Korean cluster munition that hit the window of the Kherson Regional Museum has been added to the exhibition “Unbreakable Kherson Region.” The exhibition features exhibits about the defense of Kherson, the occupation, the liberation of the city from russian troops, and life under shelling. The Korean munition got stuck right in the window of the exhibition hall. A fragment of a russian shell warhead was also found in the museum courtyard.
In addition, museum staff created an exhibition called “When War Loses Its Power” from the remains of weapons used by russian troops to shell the city. Fragments of various types of weapons became parts of works of art.
Due to constant enemy shelling, the Kherson Regional Museum is closed to visitors, but virtual tours are available.
Before the full-scale invasion and occupation, the Kherson Regional Local History Museum had one of the largest collections of antiquities in southern Ukraine. In October 2022, russian occupation forces stole more than 23,000 exhibits from the museum’s collection. Among them were archaeological finds, Scythian gold, antique icons, ethnographic collections, and archival materials. After the de-occupation of Kherson, the museum resumed its work. More than 160,000 exhibits were evacuated to safer regions.
For reference: The museum was founded in 1890 at the suggestion of Ukrainian archaeologist and local historian Viktor Ivanovich Goshkevich. The buildings that house the museum’s exhibition are architectural monuments of the 19th century.
Former Kherson mayor Volodymyr Mykolaienko joined Ukraine’s territorial defense forces on the first day of russia’s full-scale invasion. When russian troops occupied the southern city in early March 2022, the 62-year-old former official went underground. He also took part in public rallies against the occupation, joining thousands of Kherson residents who defied russian forces. The largest demonstration, on March 13, 2022, drew more than 10,000 people into the streets.
In April that year, russian forces abducted Mykolaienko. He was held for more than two weeks at a police station in Kherson that the russian military had converted into a makeshift detention and torture site. According to accounts of his captivity, he was subjected to repeated beatings, interrogations, and abuse.
From Kherson, Mykolaienko was transferred to occupied Sevastopol and later moved twice more between detention facilities. He returned home on Aug. 24, 2025, as part of another prisoner exchange. Before that, he had twice refused to be included in swaps, opting instead to give his place to another captive who was gravely ill.
Mykolaienko is still recovering from the physical and psychological toll of his imprisonment. Even so, he has already resumed efforts to help secure the release of other Ukrainians held in russian captivity.
He can be reached for online or in-person meetings in Kherson by prior arrangement.
Three teams of volunteer doctors with FRIDA Ukraine are scheduled to deploy on December 13-14 to deliver medical care to civilians living near the front lines. The groups will travel to communities in the Sumy, Kherson, and Chernihiv regions.
Journalists, by prior arrangement, will be able to document the work of the medical teams and speak with both patients and staff during the missions.
For reference: FRIDA Ukraine Medical Mission dispatches regular medical teams to the frontline and hard-to-reach communities, sending more than 20 health professionals, including neurologists, surgeons, gynecologists, internists, dermatologists, and others. During each deployment, residents receive free consultations, examinations, and diagnostic tests. In recent months, the teams have also broadened their services to include early cancer screening to detect the disease at its most treatable stage.
Svitlana Matsiuta is an artist from Kherson. For the past 20 years, she has worked as an assistant set designer in a theater.
She experienced the full-scale invasion in her hometown. During the occupation, Svitlana and her son avoided leaving home out of fear of russian soldiers.
Despite financial hardship, she rejected all offers to work in the theater under russian control. In March 2022, reports began circulating in media and social networks claiming that wild geese had “downed” an enemy military plane. Inspired by this story, Svitlana created her own toy combat geese.
These toys symbolize Kherson’s unbreakable spirit and resistance.
Svitlana says the combat geese are especially popular among Kherson residents who have relocated to other parts of Ukraine or abroad. She has received orders from the U.S., the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy.
In addition to geese, the artist makes roosters inspired by the folk art of Maria Prymachenko and Polina Raiko. Creating these toys helps Svitlana distract herself from the shelling and keeps alive her dream of victory and the liberation of the rest of the Kherson oblast.
Svitlana Matsiuta is available for interviews online or in person in Kherson, by prior arrangement.
Leonid Kondratskyi is 66 years old. He is a resident of Nova Kakhovka, a town in the Kherson oblast that russian forces occupied on the first day of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Prior to the war, Leonid was a pensioner who worked as the deputy head of the municipal guard for the Nova Kakhovka town council. During the occupation, he provided assistance to civilians in Beryslav, a nearby town.
The russians detained Leonid several times. On October 7, 2022, russian soldiers came to his home in Nova Kakhovka, took him away, and transported him to an unknown location. It was later revealed that Leonid had been taken to Crimea. He is currently being held in a pretrial detention center (SIZO) in Kamyshin, a village in the Volgograd region of russia.
The International Committee of the Red Cross has confirmed that Leonid is being held captive. In total, he has been held captive for over three years.
By prior arrangement, journalists can speak with Leonid’s daughter, Iryna, online.
Before the full-scale invasion, Nataliia Havrylenko was an entrepreneur in Kherson. She was preparing for war and planned to join the Territorial Defense with her beloved. On February 24, 2022, the couple went straight to the military enlistment office. Soon, the Kherson Territorial Defense fighters, of which Nataliia was a member, received weapons. However, they only managed to serve for two days.
Nataliia recalls how a battalion commander entered the office of the newly formed unit, ordered them to lay down their weapons and flee home through the fields, and then left. In that moment, she and her husband, along with the other civilians, realized that they would have to defend their hometown on their own. Thus began the partisan movement in Kherson. Nataliia and her comrades set up a field hospital and established cooperation with the Special Operations Forces.
On July 7, 2022, russians broke into Nataliia’s home, where she was staying with her daughter-in-law, son, and grandson. She was taken to a temporary detention center, where she was held for several months. Although she was not physically tortured, she was interrogated using a polygraph and forced to give an interview to russian propagandists. Nataliia was released on November 1, 2022, without documents, money, or a phone.
Today, she continues her volunteer work supporting Ukrainian military personnel.
Nataliia Havrylenko is currently in Kamianske, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. She is available for interviews, both online and in person, by prior arrangement.
Background: Kherson was occupied by russian forces at the beginning of the full-scale invasion (March 1, 2022). The Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated the city from russian troops on November 11, 2022. The occupiers continue to shell the city regularly.
Serhii Ofitserov was born in Kherson, Ukraine, but his parents took him to russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula as a child. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, his father, Hennadii, returned to Ukraine, and Serhii followed in 1998. While in russia, Serhii received a russian passport and lived in Kherson with a residence permit. He had applied to renounce his russian citizenship to obtain Ukrainian citizenship, but he was unable to complete the process due to the start of the full-scale invasion.
russian forces kidnapped Serhii on August 3, 2022, while Kherson was under occupation. That autumn, his father, Hennadii, learned of his son’s fate: first, a former detainee who had been released from a torture chamber in Kherson reported seeing Serhii there. Later, Ofitserov appeared in a video filmed by russian propagandists about the detention of people allegedly “part of a terrorist group”.
Serhii is currently being held in a pretrial detention center (SIZO) in Rostov. He is one of nine Kherson residents kidnapped by the russians who have been accused of international terrorism under three articles of the criminal code. The trial is ongoing. According to his father, Serhii was held in a Kherson torture chamber for two or three months, where he was tortured and forced to sign everything demanded of him. Consequently, the fabricated case against Serhii is riddled with inconsistencies.
While in captivity, Serhii began drawing with simple pencils. His drawings depict Kherson landscapes, portraits, fantasy scenes, and life as a prisoner, including barred windows. Some of these drawings have been smuggled to Ukraine and are kept by his father who only receives about half of the letters his son sends.
By prior arrangement, journalists can speak with Serhii’s father, Hennadii Ofitserov, in Kyiv, Kherson, or online.
Background: Kherson was occupied by russian forces at the beginning of the full-scale invasion (March 1, 2022). The Armed Forces of Ukraine liberated the city from russian troops on November 11, 2022. The occupiers continue to shell the city regularly.
