It’s been a slog in Ukraine for the past few months. Not that things were rainbows and cupcakes before, of course. But for the past 2-3 months Ukraine has been going on the offense in many areas. Last year, right after Russia’s full-scale invasion, Ukraine was definitely in a defensive posture, just working to keep Russia at bay. And they did a great job. Then later in the year and again earlier this year, they managed to have some significant successes, liberating Kharkiv in the north and the Kherson in the south. But it was still largely just playing defense.

However, after months of training newly mobilized troops and receiving millions of dollars and euros in military hardware and ammunition, Ukraine felt they were in a position to really start pushing back against Russia. They’ve been doing so for the past few months, but it’s been slow progress. The big issue is that Russia has littered the Ukrainian landscape with mines. When navigating an area that’s become a mine field, you obviously want to watch your step, and that’s what Ukraine is doing. They are advancing, despite the mines and the entrenched defense Russia has had time to build, but it’s nothing like the rapid advances they had last year.

While I feel for Ukraine as a whole for going through all this turmoil and destruction, I feel particularly sorry for Kherson. My heart is first and foremost with Mariupol, but Kherson has had something of a bad break too. (And our neighbor’s family is from Kherson, so there’s that connection too.) Kherson is a large city just north of the Crimean peninsula, and when Russia started the war, forces from Crimea came north and took the city. They were able to do this because the leadership in the city had been collaborating with the Russians and essentially just handed the city over to them when they arrived. This was not a popular action with a lot of the population and there were protests and resistance. But largely the city escaped the destruction that places like Mariupol, Kharkiv and other towns saw in eastern Ukraine.

That situation changed after Russia was driven out of Kherson. Not being a Russia-controlled city anymore, it became another target for Russia’s frequent missile and drone attacks. It was essentially the first time in a year that the people of Kherson actually had to see and experience what so many other parts of their country had seen. That must have been very weird for some people. They’d heard stories of the destruction in other cities, I’m sure, but now — late into the war — they were finally seeing it first-hand.

When I was first coming to know Ukraine and its people, I would sometimes have encounters or hear stories about some people — usually older adults — who longed for a return to the Soviet times. Our knowledge of that time tells us that it was corrupt and difficult time and that existent for a lot of people meant low wages, “bread lines” and other privations. Why would people want that? Well, they wanted it because that’s what they understood; the devil they knew, as it were. They may not have lived well, but the lived and they knew how to work the system in order to keep on living. I sometimes wonder if the citizens of Kherson are going through a similar phase now. For the first part of the war, they were under occupation and had to submit to degrading edicts and resource shortages. But maybe that was better than a missile taking out the local school or part of an apartment block? Maybe there are some that are longing for those “peaceful” days of occupation.