The abandoned children’s ward of a hospital in Kherson has become a refuge for the elderly who lost everything after the Kakhovka Dam collapsed. They are exhausted and desperate, but also full of defiance.
Yuri Pekurin sits resigned and discouraged on a bed in the children’s ward of the Kherson hospital. Speech paralysis is causing him problems. He struggles for words, desperately wants to express himself and gestures with both arms. Again and again he puts his head in his hands in despair. “I am deeply shaken,” he finally puts it with infinite effort. “I will tear Putin apart,” he then fights his way out. That’s probably just a tiny part of the deep despair that this old man in the plaid short-sleeved shirt carries in his heart.
“Putin will be put on trial. That’s what it all boils down to,” says roommate Viktor Demchenko, who also comes from Cherson. He speaks calmly, but seems tense and kneads his hands nervously. Meticulously, he hides the stumps of his fingers on his left hand. “I fought in two wars,” says the 59-year-old with the gray beard and bright blue eyes. “The Russians violated absolutely every rule there is, I can say that from long experience in the war.”
The children’s ward of the Kherson hospital, which became a shelter after the dam burst.
“I do not have anymore”
In the 1980s, Demchenko was a Red Army soldier in Afghanistan after the Soviet Union invaded. It was then that he injured his left hand. Despite this disability, in 2014 he joined a Ukrainian volunteer battalion fighting the Russian attack in Donbass. He would do anything to continue, but he is classified as an invalid and is too old.
At the moment, Demchenko seems as if all his strength has left him, because he too has lost everything. “The Russians blew up the dam and the water in our district rose very quickly. I just had time to get my papers, but unfortunately I couldn’t save my military passport. I have nothing left, unfortunately no house either.” Demchenko has to swallow, but catches himself again. His wife is divorced, his children are in Norway and he feels completely alone.
“There are hardly any children here anymore”
“This is actually the children’s ward,” says paramedic Viktoria as she hurries through the corridors with piles of stuffed animals lined up in niches. Many windows are boarded up with light-colored plywood, since Cherson has not only been free since it was recaptured by the Ukrainian army last year, but has also become a highly dangerous frontline city.
The hospital has been hit by Russian attacks on several occasions, and ongoing evacuations are also under fire. “There are hardly any children here anymore,” says a doctor in passing, because many families have left Cherson.
The hospital was also repeatedly hit by Russian attacks.
“Then they decided to drown us”
So there is also room for Praskowja Andriivna in the modest sickrooms. She will be 85 in September. “Where will I be then?” she asks herself, bitter tears rolling down her wrinkled face. “The Russians bombed us for so long and we couldn’t sleep. There were impacts right next to the house and then they decided to drown us.”
“I’ll cry too,” says paramedic Viktoria in a husky voice, because this desperate old lady in the flowered dress could soften a stone. A Russian attack also destroyed the fence surrounding their home on the right bank of the Dnipro in Kherson, which is now under water.
Andriivna clutches the blue-wrapped handle of her wooden staff. “I don’t know what we’re going to do. We’re going to wait until the water is gone, but our house is in ruins. We had three chickens, but they all drowned,” says the old lady, sobbing.
“Mom, please calm down,” Natalya Nikiforenko keeps interrupting her mother. But she too tells, agitated with grand gestures, how she didn’t even understand the danger to life. She marveled at the noise the water was making that early in the morning and then saw the water almost spilling out of the well. A neighbor almost never came out of the house.
“I was in such shock that I couldn’t move at all,” says Nikiforenko. “My mother told me to come. But I couldn’t and I didn’t feel anything. It was so scary.”
Yuri Pekurin is deeply in despair.
The water recedes, the war goes on
Many were at least able to save their papers, since they have always had them to hand since the start of the major Russian invasion should they flee quickly or have to go into the basement because of Russian attacks. The water is now steadily receding, but the Russian war of aggression continues.
“Everything is flooded and we no longer have a place to live,” says Pekurin, who finds it very difficult to speak. “Everything is very bad,” adds roommate Demchenko worried. As if he had to make sure himself, he continues: “Nobody throws me out of the hospital. I’m a war invalid and I have many medals, nobody throws me out.”
They have all lost their homes for the time being. The children’s department of the hospital in the frontline city of Kherson has become her safe haven.