The large village on the Mykolaiv-Kherson highway, Posad-Pokrovske, was on the front line from the beginning of the full-scale invasion until the liberation of the region. There is not a single undamaged house here. In the period from March to November 2022, almost all residents had left, but a year after the cessation of hostilities here, a third have returned home. “We breathe our air, we look at our yards,” say the residents of Posad-Pokrovske. They believe that the village will recover, and they want to live here and nowhere else. The usual peacetime rituals help them keep going.
Olena prepares for the holiday
In the evenings, singing can be heard throughout Posad-Pokrovske. It comes from the tent of the local Point of Invincibility. The women who came here stopped tending to their other responsibilities and, to the accompaniment of a cell phone loudspeaker, are singing a pop version of “Oi ne svity misiachenku” and other mournful and happy songs. They’re preparing a concert for the Day of the Village. Rehearsals have to be held on ruins, as there is not a single undamaged building in Posad-Pokrovske. So, the words “in the village center” don’t mean stores with brightly-coloured signs, coffee shops, or a fitness club, which Posad-Pokrovske, situated just 30 kilometers from Kherson, had before February 24, 2022. Some of it still exists on Google Maps.
The only more or less undamaged buildings in the center now serve as village council and a hospital – all other social infrastructure was destroyed. The phrase “not a single undamaged building” has become something of a new brand for Posad-Pokrovske. On the streets, these words manifest in yellowy-brown sawdust panels and blue roofs. The panels, like mosaics, cover the holes in the walls and broken windows in every house. The blue roofs stretch into the horizon – it’s not roof tiles, but film branded with an international humanitarian mission logo. The film protects the buildings from rain and rustles in the steppe winds – that is now the sound of Posad-Pokrovske.Instead of the House of Culture there is now a modular house with plastic walls – something in between a tent and a house. But even in such conditions, the director of the bombed-out club Olena Tatochenko is happy to talk about the upcoming festivities.
For many years, the Day of the Village has been held in the fall, after the residents had finished working the land. Even though Posad-Pokrovske sits almost exactly in between two regional capitals, Kherson and Mykolaiv, and many people had jobs in the city, for most, agriculture comprised a large share of the family budget. The script for the concert hasn’t changed in years; for an outsider, it could have seemed boring, some might even call it “sharovarshchyna.” But from what Olena has told me, it becomes clear that everything is thought out so that every resident feels included. After the singing and dancing goes the awarding of the residents by nominations: the oldest resident, the youngest married couple, etc. The nominees would receive gifts from the village council – linens, or comforters. This time around, there are changes in the script. After the welcome dance, the presenter comes out to the stage with such words: “Even though the war continues, the village lives on.” Olena Vasylivna tells this while we walk to the House of Culture after the rehearsal. This has been her place of work since the 1980s. A huge building with a concert hall for 600 people, a gym, a library, a bar – now it is destroyed. It’s clear that it has seen no refurbishings since it’s been built, but its director still loves the place. Olena Tatochenko tries to describe her feelings when she saw what became of the House of Culture, but she struggles. She’s listing emotions out loud – there is love, hatred, despair – but nothing really fits.
“I’d never felt anything like it,” she says in the end. The director carefully steps on the brittle debris on the floor, from time to time pointing out things: “There, my performing shoes!” She smiles at the fact that her former office doesn’t have a wall anymore. She’s either an optimist, or this is just the new modus vivendi of Posad-Pokrovske, which Olena puts into words like this:
“Here we’ve stopped crying a long time ago.” – The village is destroyed, but everything will work itself out. We’ll rebuild.
The village will live as long as the children are born.
Valya recounts evacuation
There are children in Posad-Pokrovske. The youngest participant of the singing group, 38-year-old Valya Yevchuk, comes to rehearsal with her 1-year-old son. She rides an electric bike, and in the child’s seat behind her, Maksym looks at the screen of a smartphone. From the screen, his father is speaking with him. He’s a long-haul driver, and hasn’t seen his little one for many months – ever since Valya had returned home from evacuation. When the full-scale invasion began, her husband was on a haul abroad, and Valya was four months pregnant. When the first shellings started, she moved from her house on the Kherson highway to her mother’s in the inner village. Even whilst pregnant, she had to become a pillar of support for her mother and disabled stepfather. When the attic windows were blown out, Valya had tried to shield them.
– I was playing with fire. Many people had died from shrapnel. Someone while going out to the toilet, or that kid, 13 years old – he got his head blown off.
Like everyone who didn’t leave the village immediately, Valya and her family spent the first two weeks in the basement.
“We sat there with icons, prayed and sang,” is her short summary of their life at the time. That summary is incomplete, because spending the whole time in the basement was impossible – work had to be done outside. The cow had to be fed and milked every day, and you can’t really get her into the bomb shelter. In mid-March, after the air attack on Posad-Pokrovske, the mass evacuation of residents began. Oftentimes, after living for a while in the Western regions or abroad, the residents would look for places to live in Odesa or Vinnytsia regions—closer to home. A year and a half after those events, during our conversation in the House of Culture, Valya recalls the moment of evacuation:
“We were being evacuated, and the cow was roaring, the cats were looking us in the eyes… The cow was pregnant. My mom wanted to give her up for slaughter, but I forbade it—I kept seeing myself, pregnant, and someone butchering me.”
In the end, volunteers evacuated them, and the family ended up in Lithuania, where Valya gave birth to Maksym. They were there for 8 months, but it was no easy life:
“Everybody thinks we went to Lithuania after big money. But we were getting 127 euros 88 euro cents.” When one of the neighbors sent them the photo of their destroyed home, Valya’s mother suffered a microstroke. But there was also another message, a happier one:
“Saw your cow—and her calf!” The family returned to Posad-Pokrovske in the spring of 2023. The cow survived, and is now being taken care of by another woman. Valya goes to her for milk. Valya, her mom and the little Maksym now have a temporary home—they are staying in a rebuilt house whose owners hadn’t returned, but have let the family stay there as long as they pay the electric bill. The water supply line has been destroyed in Posad-Pokrovske, so they get water from the neighbors who have a well. The laundry gets done by hand, but despite this, I notice red nail polish on Valya’s nails. Her mother also has a fresh manicure. As well as the woman that I met by the village council. The latter appeared sheepish at my question. “I wanted an orchid for my birthday, but my husband said, ‘Better get your nails done.'”
Vika gets the nails done
In the three days I spent in Posad-Pokrovske, I noticed the nails of the women who cycle up to the store to buy bread and sausage. I learned that before the full-scale invasion there used to be a beauty salon. Now there is only Vika.
“It’s right where the destroyed outbuilding is,” Vika Tatochenko explains how to find her.
That is an unreliable landmark in Posad-Pokrovske. When I go out to Khersonska Street, which is the highway, I see multiple destroyed outbuildings. Vika calls out to me from her window on the second floor, explaining that I have to go into the yard of the apartment complex and turn after the hole in the ground from a shell. In the manicurist’s work room everything seems normal, but the window is only half-transparent—the other half is covered by the already familiar sawdust panel. Vika plugs in the gas tank into a small stove, puts on the kettle to make instant coffee, and tells me that her mother saved some of her equipment. Without the family’s knowledge, she would come to Posad-Pokrovske while the battles were still raging here, before the liberation of the Kherson region. The beauty salon used to be on the first floor – in the burnt-out outbuilding. It even had heated floors. Now the empty widows have house plants in them, and there is a flag put up on the side. This building is one of the luckier ones: even though the outbuilding has burned down, and the roof was damaged, and the walls have holes, some apartments haven’t been damaged.
Vika doesn’t like going to the center and talking with her fellow villagers about what happened here. She repeats in different ways her view – that everybody has their own grief. Her father died from illness in evacuation, and her brothers serve in the AFU. When Vika takes smoking breaks, from her window she watches the Kherson highway and the military equipment traveling there. The war is very close, but she has no lack of clients—Vika only takes one day off a week. Her nails are covered with white matte polish, and when I ask her what color is the most popular in Posad-Pokrovske, she replies with no hesitation:
“Glitter.”
Valya sows wheat
Valya’s destroyed house is on the same street where Vika works, by the Kherson highway. The road is getting restored as part of the experimental government project for reconstruction to rebuild “better than it was”. That is how the State Agency for Reconstruction and Infrastructure Development announced the rebuilding of this and five other settlements in other regions. This means that what was destroyed has to be rebuilt using new principles, not just return to how it was or restore some buildings. In Posad-Pokrovske, the queue for restoration is long – houses, an educational institution, the village council, the hospital, roads, electric and gas communications, water supply. An oblique fence surrounds the area where the first stage of reconstruction is underway. There is a picture on the fence of what Posad-Pokrovske may look like after reconstruction. The project render includes a family walking on the sidewalk, surrounded by one-storey buildings; for some reason, there is a pomegranate growing by the fence. The reconstruction concept was developed by “archimatika” bureau. They called accessibility and inclusiveness their main principles.
However, if you ask the residents, they will say that slow pace is the main feature of the reconstruction. The first five houses started to be rebuilt in the second half of August, and were promised to be completed by winter. There are only five because only those owners had all the necessary documents. But in the beginning of October, when I come up to one of the yards, I only see a laid foundation. Yesterday, on Monday, the workers didn’t come—they should be here today. Later they did indeed come, unloaded several concrete blocks, and crushed a viburnum bush by the gate. There is no gate now, and no fence. The transparent low village fences were replaced by a solid metal wall branded with the reconstruction program.
Many people in Posad-Pokrovske don’t have a concrete answer about what they will do during winter. “We’re hoping the winter will be warm”, some of them said. Others will winter elsewhere. Valya plans to go abroad, to her husband. Valya’s house did not get on the list of ones that will be rebuilt from scratch. The commission deemed it suitable for a capital renovation, but the woman doesn’t agree. The commission, she says, was looking at it from the side of the highway. If one looks from the inner yard, it’s clear that renovation won’t cut it.
She bought this house before she was married. For almost ten years Valya worked in the Moscow suburbs, where she also met her husband. We can see a concrete foundation around the house – the family planned to extend the building. In the yard, the husband installed gazebos, and a new fence around the house. There are no more gazebos, and the fence is destroyed. But in front of the house and up to the highway, the grass is cut and a tractor is collecting junk and tree branches – the debris that is left behind in any village that saw military action. Valya yearns for a tidy space, even though she doesn’t live in this house.
“Here we had white cedars, roses, and this is yucca,” she shows me what is left of her tidy yard and young garden. On the eve of war she planted some exotic species—blueberries, jujube. Thornless blackberries survived, as well as some of the grapes, and the pear gave an abundant harvest this year. Behind the house there is an almond tree – Valya picks one almond, a huge one, and I take it with me as a remembrance. Inside, the house is filled with a mix of earth, glass shards, pieces of clay walls, carpets, and personal belongings.
“I’ve been raking through it, looking for my wedding USB.”
Even though there is no garden anymore, Valya’s land has been demined. So she has decided to sow wheat for the winter. Valya doesn’t know if the commission decides her house should be rebuilt or renovated. Growing winter wheat, however, is something she can do herself, and do it now. It’s something she can control. She will rest in the evening, singing.
“Thank God Aunt Lena came back,” says Valya about Olena Tatochenko, the director of the club. “When you sing, you bare your soul, and it gets easier. For a second you forget about the horrors, forget that you felt all of this.” The women know: life goes on Rehearsal after rehearsal, it seems that life in Posad-Pokrovske is getting back on track, is becoming predictable, and you can even make plans. But shellings of Kherson can be heard well here, and there are no guarantees that the village won’t be hit. At the same time, reconstruction, however slowly, is underway. However, one day at the end of September, the village gets shaken by powerful explosions. The neighboring Kyselivka got hit. The voice from the phone loudspeaker – Aunt Lena’s – Olena Tatochenko’s – voice, sounds upset:
“The concert got canceled. They said, we’re in the zone of active hostilities again. So on Sunday, on the day of the canceled concert, she brings out a vase with red poppies and small flags.”
She puts the vase on top of a rushnyk, and the rushnyk on top of a long table, by which there is a row of seats that, evidently, survived in the House of Culture. At one end of the table people sell homemade cheeses, milk, fruit and veggies. At the other end, Olena Vasylivna turns to men who hang out by the village shop every day.
“Get here, boys, we’ll hold a minute of silence,” she pulls out a folder inscribed “We remember…This is our Sasha. This is Kolya. Our Seryozha…”
Those are the heroes of our village.
That was on Sunday. But on Monday Olena still holds the rehearsal for a concert that will not happen now, but will happen someday. They’ve been rehearsing since June, ever since they came back from evacuation. Valya brings a loudspeaker, and once again, the Point of Invincibility fills up with the sound of music I never thought could be heartfelt, and yet, I barely register that I’m about to start crying.
“Life goes on. On Tuesday, we gather at five,” says Olena to everyone while saying goodbye.
Translation — Olha Dubnevych
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[The translation of this publication was compiled with the support of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation within the framework “European Renaissance of Ukraine” project. Its content is the exclusive responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily reflect the views of the European Union and the International Renaissance Foundation]
