It was time “to leave the occupied territories safely … to survive,” said Julia. The Russians had occupied their village, Verkhnii Rohachyk, and the Nesterenko family feared the consequences. With nothing more than a backpack and her important documents, the family followed what seemed to be the easiest route to the Ukrainian territories, he said. On April 7, the family of three and 11 others boarded an evacuation boat, operated by a local resident, crossing the Dnipro River from the southern, Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region to the Ukrainian-controlled area on the other side of the river. . The Dnipro, one of Europe’s largest waterways, crosses Ukraine and the Kherson region before flowing into the Black Sea. Crossing by boat, which started from the shore of the fishing village Pervomaivka, should be simple. It was the seventh boat evacuation from the village to a Ukrainian-controlled area on the north bank of the Dnieper River since the start of the war, according to Oleksandr Vilkul, head of the Kryvyi Rih military administration in the Dnipropet district. . Instead, it turned into a bloodbath, according to Julia, two other survivors, a friend of a victim and several regional officials. They described how Russian missiles and gunfire targeted the ship after it was inadvertently dragged to the front line. Roman Shelest, head of the Kryvyi Rih Eastern District Prosecutor’s Office for Ukraine, told CNN that the boat was dragged to the front line between Russian and Ukrainian forces and shot 70 meters off the coast. A survivor, who declined to be named for fear of safety, explained that the boat was lost in a smokescreen believed to have been created by the Russians. CNN could not independently verify this claim. “This launch was done using a system of multiple missile launches, possibly Grad, but we could (only) say the exact type of weapon only after the forensic (research) investigation is completed,” Shelest added. One of the survivors also said he believed they had been hit by Russian Grad missiles. When the boat’s navigator indicated that the group had been swept away near the Russian-controlled village of Osokorivka, the morning silence soon penetrated the sound of rocket fire, survivors said. Vladimir bled to death in Julia’s arms. “My husband behind me also fell on me when he was shot in the head,” Julia told CNN in a soft, monotonous voice, seemingly unmoved after all she had lost on that trip. Four people were killed in the attack that day. Oleh was among three who died on the boat. Vladimir died shortly afterwards in hospital. Another victim was a lawyer who had traveled to the Kherson region to rescue her son and deliver humanitarian aid, the lawyer’s friend Tatiana Denisenko told CNN. Photographs from the aftermath of the attack showed something resembling rocket debris on the shore and bullet holes and debris in the hull. “Based on the shells and ammunition we saw in the area and on the shoreline, we could see the direction of the shooting – which shows that (they) were coming from the south, and this is the territory that was currently occupying and below “Control of the armed forces of the Russian Federation,” prosecutor Celeste, who is investigating the attack, told CNN. CNN contacted the Russian Ministry of Defense for comments. Since the outbreak of the war, Russia has repeatedly denied targeting civilians – a claim denied by attacks on civilians and political targets verified by CNN and other news outlets.

Kherson in crisis

The Nesterenko family is just one of many in Ukraine whose lives have been uprooted or destroyed by Russia’s unprovoked invasion of the country. More than 7.1 million people are internally displaced in the country, according to the United Nations, with almost two-thirds of Ukrainian children having fled their homes in the past six weeks. At least 191 children were killed and more than 349 were injured in the Russian invasion, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office on Wednesday.
Hersonissos was one of the first cities to be occupied by the Russians. Mayor Ihor Kolykhayev said people were “actively” fleeing Kherson and other cities in the predominantly Russian-occupied southern region following the outbreak of atrocities in the Kiev region following the Kremlin’s hasty withdrawal from northern Ukraine. “Cities are being emptied,” he said on Tuesday as Russia resumed its offensive in eastern Ukraine. “It hurts a lot when people leave Kherson. (Leaving) their homes, people will never go back home,” he said. Rumors are rife that a referendum will be held in Russian-controlled areas of Kherson, especially on the left bank of the Dnieper River, in a bid to legitimize Russia’s illegal abduction. A similar tactic was used in eastern Ukraine in 2014, when pro-Russian separatists in Luhansk and Donetsk held referendums on the formation of “people’s democracies”, which were rejected by Ukraine and Western countries as fraud. Ukrainians living on the left bank of the region have peacefully resisted Russian occupation with rallies in Kherson and Kolykhayev, the mayor said on Tuesday. At a previous rally in Kherson, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky accused Russian forces of firing on unarmed people. “Russian soldiers do not even know what it is like to be free,” Oleh Baturin, a journalist with the local newspaper Novyi Den, who recently left the area, told CNN.
On the right bank of the Dnipro Peninsula, Baturin describes a “tragic situation” that echoes the devastation in the Kiev region of the capital. People living in villages bordering the front lines in the Mykolayev and Dnipropetrovsk regions told him of robberies, beatings and threats from Russian forces, he said. “For example, Kochubeivka, Novovorontsovka (where Osokorivka is located) and the settlements of Vysokopillia – there are villages that were wiped out in the first half of March and were completely looted and destroyed,” he said. Only when the Russians leave will the complete horror of the occupation emerge, Baturin predicted.

Ruined lives

Three survivors described the trauma of the boat attack last week in interviews with CNN. “It was so sudden, everyone was shocked,” one of the survivors told CNN. As rockets hit the area, debris began hitting passengers, he said. The survivor said he escaped injury because he fell from the boat in the early moments of the bombing. “I was wearing such heavy boots that they immediately pulled me to the bottom (of the river). Then we heard that (rockets) were falling in,” he said. They were drawn to an active front line embracing the north coast around the village of Osokorivka. Ukrainian soldiers started shouting from the river, dropping their weapons on the ground and sinking in the water to retrieve the boat and civilians, the survivor said. It took them up to 15 minutes to get them out of the water around the Novovorontsovka area. CNN geographically located the following images on this coastline. “Our children (Ukrainian army) helped, of course … rushing into the water and swimming up to the boat,” pulling the boat ashore, the survivor said. Julia said the shock of the moment and the trauma that followed meant that the memory of the event was blurred. “I do not know why we were shot. We did not understand what the sounds were: bullets, bombings, explosions?” he said. “And I did not understand what was happening – I was just in a fog.” She remembers soldiers carrying her husband’s body and “putting him on the beach”. Vladimir’s son was still alive, but seriously injured. “He was breathing, he had a serious head injury (and) he lost a lot of blood. We took him 40 kilometers to the nearest hospital,” he said. “He was operated on. There was still hope that they could save him. But as the doctors later said, ‘it was an injury incompatible with life.’ Maxim Kolomiyets, a burly 37-year-old craftsman, took the boat so he could leave the area and join the Ukrainian army. He was knocked unconscious in the first moments of the bombing, waking up hours later in hospital with a shrapnel wound in his left arm. A day after the April 8 attack, Lyudmila Denisova, the Ukrainian parliament’s human rights commissioner, described the boat bombing as a “war crime and a crime against humanity,” in a Facebook post. Speaking to CNN, Vilkul, head of Kryvyi Rih’s military administration, said the Russians were “doing everything they can to prevent civilians from leaving the occupied territories.” for their positions “. Julia now lives with relatives in an area controlled by Ukraine, where she buried her son and husband. He has lost what he needs to do next. “We wanted this trip (to be) an opportunity to escape the occupation … For us it was like a light at the end of the tunnel. Because it was already unbearable for us to be where we were,” he said. “This war has destroyed my family, my life – and the killing of people must stop. Immediately. Because it (destroys) destinies, lives.” CNN’s Tara John reported and wrote from Lviv. Oleksandr Fylyppov, Sandi Sidhu, Julia Presniakova reported from Lviv. Nathan Hodge, Julia Kesaieva and Olga Voitovych contributed to this piece.