Kiwi photojournalist Tom Mutch has been embedded in Ukraine since just before Russian President Vladimir Putin unleashed his military might on the country. He tells of a terrifyingly close shave while following Ukrainian special forces in Kherson as they evacuated civilians from occupied regions in the country’s east.
The bombing was so terrifying that Christiian, the Dutch correspondent next to me on the boat, said he’d just made up his mind to propose to his girlfriend if we got out alive.
It was the three of us, with our New York Times colleague Brendan and a gruff local Ukrainian guide, and we were driving down a four-metre-deep canal that had been a city street just three days previously. The explosions around us got louder and louder until one rocket whizzed through the air and smashed into the water just a few dozen metres in front of us.
It was the most terrifying moment of our lives. As the Russian artillery started hitting the water around us, the only thing I could do was curl into a ball on the deck with my hands over my head and hope that I didn’t get hit by a stray piece of shrapnel. We had no protection - our boat was an inflatable rubber dinghy in the middle of a river, with the nearby buildings almost fully submerged.
Ukrainian servicemen arrive by boat with civilians during an evacuation from the flooded Kardashynka village on the left bank of the Dnipro River near Kherson, Ukraine. Many small boats carrying volunteers and Ukrainian soldiers have shuttled across from Ukrainian-held areas on the west bank to rescue desperate civilians stuck on rooftops, in attics and in other areas amid the deluge. (AP Photo / Evgeniy Maloletka)
The boats around us take shelter under the tips of trees or the hull of a grounded cargo ship. In a dangerous area on land, you would usually be wearing body armour, but even that was dangerous here as it risked pulling you to the bottom of the water if the boat capsized.
We were in the southern city of Kherson, a gateway to the Crimean Peninsula which has become a key strategic battleground during the war. It was occupied by Russian forces without a fight in the first months of the full-scale war, becoming the only regional capital they managed to capture. Nine months later, Ukraine liberated the city after a long struggle.
I was there on an unusually bright day last November as cheering crowds greeted Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as he proclaimed Ukraine’s victory was close at hand. But instead of the citizens here returning to their regular lives, as they had in other liberated regions, the Russians took revenge.
From artillery positions just on the other side of the river, they relentlessly bombarded the city, killing dozens of civilians over the course of the next six months. Then, just over one month ago, the Nova Kakhovka dam on the Dnipro, the large river that bisects Ukraine, was destroyed.
This was most likely done by Russian troops who had access to the foundation structures. This flooded the surrounding area and left large streets in the city under water and entire villages submerged. The Ukrainians, always unwilling to leave their people behind, were taking small boats out on the river and evacuating civilians from their flooded buildings. We had been following and photographing them when we all came under fire.
Local residents carry their belonging as they evacuate from a flooded neighbourhood in Kherson. The wall of a major dam in a part of southern Ukraine has collapsed, triggering floods, endangering Europe's largest nuclear power plant and threatening drinking water supplies. Photo / AP
Our boat eventually made it to land and then I hightailed it out of the city, but it was the closest call I’ve had in over a year covering the conflict. The promised victory was also looking very slow to materialise. By January, the war seemed to have hit a stalemate.
Last year was an overwhelming year dominated by significant events. The original invasion and attack on Kyiv, the horrific massacres found in Bucha - but it ended with triumphant Ukrainian counteroffensives that liberated large amounts of land in Kharkiv and Kherson. But this year, the frontlines had become static, the winter had set in and the war had turned into a gruesome artillery slugfest in the eastern Donbas regions.
Conflict had first broken out here between Russian-backed separatists and the Ukrainian Army in 2014 after Russia annexed Crimea and began funding and arming insurgents. Now, the full-scale Russian invasion had greatly expanded the fighting here, making Ukraine’s Donetsk Oblast the most violent place on the planet.
The epicentre of the fighting became the small city of Bakhmut, previously a pleasant town full of flower gardens and parks that was known for exporting sparkling wine. But after 10 months of fighting, the name had become a byword for the hell of war. In mid-April, I was ensconced in a trench next to Kateryna, a young woman who had previously been a fashion blogger in Kyiv. I’d met her in a wine bar shortly before the war began. Now she was dressed in full military uniform and wincing as shells from a Ukrainian howitzer less than five metres in front of us blew smoke and dirt into our faces.
Her transformation was dramatic, but it was normal for the young men and women in the trenches all around us. They had come from all walks of life - engineers, IT technicians, farmers, lawyers. Now, they were getting brutalised by what they called “zombie waves”, endless lines of convicted prisoners that had been recruited by the now infamous Wagner mercenary group.
They had been promised freedom if they would risk death in Ukraine. Ukraine’s casualties are a closely guarded military secret, and true numbers are not revealed in order to not have a negative impact on morale. But a recent Ukrainian survey showed that 63 per cent of the population reported having a family member or friend killed since the war began last year. Even for those outside the direct battlefields, the war is never truly far away.
A Ukrainian soldier fires a mortar at Russian positions on the frontline near Bakhmut in the Donetsk region. Photo / AP
In some respects, Kyiv can seem calm and normal. Shops, restaurants and other businesses have all long since reopened. A viral video taken by a Ukrainian politician that showed a McDonald’s on the city’s main boulevard thronged with customers caused bafflement - many wondered how a country at war could seem so calm. But just a few days later, another video was released of a different McDonald’s in the southern city of Odesa.
This one was full of rubble and charred metal as it had just been destroyed by a Russian missile fired the previous night. Bakhmut eventually fell a few short weeks after I left the Donbas, but Ukraine has since begun a counterattack that has taken large parts of the flanks around the city.
It has also begun a large-scale counteroffensive in the south and east of the country to attempt to liberate the parts of its territory still under Russian occupation. The humanitarian situation in Kherson is slowly getting better, according to those working there.
Liz Olegov, a humanitarian coordinator currently working in the region, said, “The water level is back to where it was… the roads and access points have been restored and the aid is flowing better.”
But she warns that “flooding has left a massive array of destruction - many things are rotted, houses are falling apart from the water damage and all the wells are drowned and poisoned by the floodwaters”.
Worst of all, the Russians have stepped up their attacks on the defenceless civilian population.
“The shelling has increased a lot more… given the circumstances, people assumed that Russian troops would kind of back down for a bit. But the opposite has been true. There has been very heavy shelling of all the areas lining the Dnipro, so although the access has made it easier to get there, the danger has definitely increased.”
Meanwhile, regular life goes on as best it can. The last time I walked through the central Taras Shevchenko Park, I was greeted by a group of young smiling and laughing students, dressed in red and white and wearing mortar boards. It was their university graduation, and they were surrounded by proud parents snapping photos. It was hard to believe this was the peer group of the soldiers that were manning the dirty and bloody trenches of Bakhmut.
And just last weekend, I got a text from Christiian, who had returned to the Netherlands and gone through with his promise. “Well, she said yes!”
